There are a lot of myths that we tend to believe without even trying to discover whether they are true or not. Ben Ambridge tells us about 10 popular myths that exist in psychology that we think are absolutely right. To be honest, I was also surprised as it turned out that I actually also believed in some of them. For example, the popular one is that we just use 10% of our brain and if we used more we would be just geniuses (Ambridge, 2014). Of course, no one has proven this fact and it is just some guess. However, if to think logically we do so much stuff every second from thinking to designing powerful machinesand that means that it is impossible that we just use only 10 % of it as we tend to solve complicated tasks and so on. I would just say that sure if we develop our abilities we are able to do much more than we already do. So I believe that the point that the speaker is trying to express is that everything should have some scientific proof and if it does notthere is no reason to believe it and be, for example, 100% sure that men and women are completely different or that some ways to memorise stuff are better or worse. And I would completely agree on this point. In the next talk Martin Seligman is trying to explain that psychology was concerned to much about diseases and that made of course maybe a good contribution to studies but not to people. So to bring positivity is the next task of psychology in the future. Everyone should be happy and as it turns out just a few people are. They might have positive thinking for a few minutes but then can be depressed again. So what professor Seligman says is that right now psychology “is not good enough” (Seligman, 2004). We know about effects of different diseases and how it makes people behave but what we don’t know is how to simply make someone or ourselves enjoy life. That means if the next time you see that you have made someone happy I guess you can consider that s a win as for now psychology does not work on this and instead just analyses hard medical cases. I would agree that this could much more worth starting to discover and maybe make the world a better place to live.
The most interesting speech to my mind was given by Philip Zimbargo who showed how evil can be awake even in people who are good by their nature. The main point in his talk is that institutions and authorities have a huge impact on everyone which can make us do stuff we never thought are able of doing. When a person knows that they are performing some acts even cruel ones because someone told them to do that and that they will not be responsible for that, a person does not have a feeling of being guilty because it was not their choice to do that. However, fact is factthey did it anyway which proves that whether you are good or bad you still have that dark side and are capable of acting wild. Thus Mr Zimbargo claims that everything depends on circumstances in which a human being can be put in (Zimbargo, 2008). We saw awful pictures of tortures in prisons and it is honestly even hard to believe that people can treat each others like that. That is why we are under constant pressure of what is going on around us and by whom we are controlled.
The last talk was given by Dan Gilbert who tried to change our favourite thought that people do not change. Of course, there are times when you think that it is the end and there is no way to become a better person or take a different pass in life. So it is not actually true that we are all finished once we rich some age. Everyone can change and it is not obligatory that we stay the same till the rest of our lives (Gilbert, 2014). I strongly believe that everything depends on us and what we decide to do affects our lives and our future as well. It is never too late to become someone you have always thought to be as long as you have enough passion and put a lot of effort.
Works cited
Ambridge, B. (2014, Novemeber). Ben Ambridge: 10 myths about psychology, debunked [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_ambridge_10_myths_about_psychology_debunked
Gilbert, D. (2014, March). Dan Gilbert: The psychology of your future self [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_you_are_always_changing
Seligman, M. (2004, February). Martin Seligman: The new era of positive psychology [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology
Zimbargo, P. (2008, February). Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of evil [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil
