5 Psychology Terms You’re Probably Misusing

You’ve heard these a million times, but still, you need to use them correctly.

No matter what kind of business you’re in, you’re in the people business. Understanding how humans think and behave is key to success, whether you’re designing websites, composing music, or selling shoes. This means misunderstandings about psychology are more than just academic debates or reading motivational books.

Having as correct a model of the human mind as possible helps you get ahead. And unfortunately, many of us have a lot of wonky ideas about psychology. Many people believe many false things about psychology, thanks to ever-changing research findings and the media’s tendency to make claims and then fail to update the public on the latest results.

Here are five standard common terms you hear nearly every day that many people still thoroughly misunderstand.

1.Personality types

It is big business to sell companies and people in different ways to classify and label people’s “personality types.” But there’s one problem with this billion-dollar industry: personality types don’t exist.

Psychologists have used the “Big Five” model to measure basic personality features, such as openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, and extroversion. This model is scientifically validated and uncontroversial. But these traits aren’t binary. You can’t say either you’re extroverted or you’re not. Extroversion exists on a spectrum. You can be high, low, or somewhere in the middle (most of us are in the middle).

Population-level studies have shown that there are some common groups of personality types. For example, many people are high in neuroticism and extroversion but low in openness. Still, schemes like Myers-Briggs that claim to group individuals into “types” based on having a trait are, at best, a wild simplification of the science.

2. Brainwashing

This is another widely referenced psychological idea that doesn’t exist. The term was used to describe American soldiers in the Korean War who appeared to side with their captors politically or confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. But one important fact is often overlooked: almost all of them gave up the beliefs they were said to have been brainwashed into believing when they got home.

Despite this, the U.S. government spent years after the war investigating if there was some secret, nefarious way to force people to believe whatever they wanted them to feel. That would have been useful for the military, but no amount of government effort ever discovered any such method.

“It turns out that people can be persuaded, and they can be pressured or tortured into saying things they don’t believe.” “You don’t need a sinister psychological phenomenon to explain that,” concludes Lifehacker.

3. Learning styles

Are there different ways to teach something by leaning on listening, reading, active participation, or visualizations? Of course. But each person has a different style. That’s the best way for them to grasp new material in every situation. Psychological research shows that learning styles should be designed to suit the material, not the student. Some subjects are best conveyed visually, others through reading or a combination of techniques.

4. Learning curve

Almost all of us have used the phrase “steep learning curve” to describe something difficult to learn. Still, Lifehacker points out that the common term violates basic logic. Let’s say you visualize learning as a graph with time on the x-axis at the bottom and proficiency on the vertical y-axis. In that case, a steep upslope means you’re learning a lot in a short amount of time. “This would describe a subject that is easy to learn,” Lifehacker points out.

5. Willpower

Sometimes people mistake marketing for science, as in the case of personality types. Sometimes people need to understand science, as in the case of learning styles. But people often misuse psychological terms because the underlying science has shifted. They were taught an idea based on the latest studies at one time and never heard about later ones that complicated or overturned the earlier results.

There are many examples of this confusion, including around trendy terms like “power poses” and “grit.” Still, perhaps the quintessential example is “willpower.” Most of us are taught to think of willpower as a limited resource. Your brain can only fight temptation for so long, and once it’s worn out, God help you if you’re on a diet and come across a box of tasty doughnuts. But recent studies suggest willpower is a lot more complicated than that.

What seems like impulsivity may be different guesses about how likely future rewards will be. Why would you wait for that second marshmallow in the famous marshmallow test if a tough life has taught you lucky breaks are rare, and you can’t count on promises.? Attitude also plays a massive role in willpower. The more you believe you’re in control of your willpower, the more you seem to have.

This is a reminder that psychological knowledge is constantly updated and that the media sometimes needs to do a better job of keeping up with developments. Headline-friendly concepts get passed around and become common wisdom, even if the science behind them is shaky or outdated.

The takeaway for entrepreneurs and psychology students is caution. Every business is about people. Suppose you want to give yourself the best chance of understanding people, you need to be cautious about believing every psychological “truth” you come across.

Hope Trust conducts internship and training programs for psychology students. If you would like to enroll, email training@hopetrusindia.com