Psychiatry's stance towards scientifically implausible therapies: are we losing ground?

doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30276-7

The Lancet Psychiatry

Volume 6, Issue 10, October 2019, Pages 802-803

https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30276-7 Get rights and content

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Myths and misconceptions about personality traits and tests
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Many researchers in this area have been more interested in educating the general public and dispelling myths. At the forefront of this effort has been the work of Lilienfeld and colleagues (Bensley & Lilienfeld, 2015; Bensley & Lilienfeld, 2015; Lilienfeld et al., 2010; Rosen et al., 2019). Lilienfeld et al. (2010), a decade ago published 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology and numerous studies have used the 50 myths and 250 “mythlets” to test various hypotheses in this area (Furnham, 2018a; Furnham & Hughes, 2014).
This study examined the prevalence of myths about personality traits as set out in a book (Donnellan & Luca, 2021) and beliefs in the predictive validity of personality tests. In all, 616 participants completed a questionnaire in which they rated the extent to which they thought statements/facts about personality traits were true or false, and whether personality test scores could predict behaviours like health, wealth and marital satisfaction. In total, 12 of these myths were rated as true (definitely or partly) by the majority of the participants, particularly those that implied personality change and instability over time. Only six were rated as probably false, two as definitely false, and five as “Don't Know” by the majority of respondents. Overall, participants thought tests predicted leadership and depression best, and longevity and future earnings least well. There were a number of systematic individual correlates of these beliefs which indicated that participants' religious and political beliefs were related to these myths and misconceptions. Limitations of this, and similar studies, are noted, and implications are discussed.
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CommentPsychiatry's stance towards scientifically implausible therapies: are we losing ground?

Amer J Preventive Med

Trends Mol Med

Mesmerism and the end of the enlightenment in France

Furthering dissemination and implementation research: the need for more attention to external validity

Evidence-based mechanistic reasoning

J Royal Soc Med

Comment
Psychiatry's stance towards scientifically implausible therapies: are we losing ground?