Quantifying the Pervasive: How Widely Held Are Psychological Misconceptions Among Undergraduate Students?

Abstract

Psychological misconceptions are widely held ideas that contradict current psychological research (Bensley et al., 2020). Belief in such myths contributes to introductory psychology students’ overconfidence of their prior knowledge (Bensley et al., 2015), limiting student engagement and comprehension. The present study sought to identify the prevalence and extent of community college students’ belief in psychological misconceptions in hopes of guiding educational efforts to combat these notions. Students completed an online questionnaire in a proctored environment (most typically while seated in a computer lab or classroom having Wi-Fi available), in which they were presented 14 myths and asked to label them as true or false. After rating each myth, participants were prompted to rate their confidence in their previous answer. The three main hypotheses were 1) there would be a negative correlation between the number of college psychology courses students completed and their myth belief scores, 2) psychology majors would endorse fewer myths than non-psychology majors, and 3) students who believe psychology is a science would believe in fewer myths. The first two hypotheses were not supported. However, there was a significant correlation identified for the third hypothesis. The generalizability of these findings is limited by a disproportionate number of female participants and a lack of ethnic and age diversity. Future research should replicate this study with a more diverse pool of participants. These findings suggest that instructors design interventions to target myths in the psychology courses they teach.