Psychology

Astrology claims that the positions of celestial bodies influence human personality and events, but controlled scientific tests have repeatedly found no effect beyond chance.

Christopher Langan is often called the world's smartest man with an IQ near 200. This is mixed to false. His figure comes from an unstandardized mail-in test he retook under a pseudonym, no clinically validated test can certify an IQ that high, his CTMU is dismissed as pseudoscience, and critics such as Professor Dave call him a self-promoting grifter rather than a genius.

The widespread belief that the full moon causes increased crime, hospital admissions, sleep disturbance, or psychiatric crises has been tested repeatedly in large statistical studies, which consistently find no meaningful correlation between lunar phase and these outcomes.

Daily horoscopes use statements vague enough to feel personal to almost anyone, and studies show they have no ability to predict events or describe individuals accurately.

The claim that goldfish have a nine-second memory or attention span, and the related claim that human attention spans have shrunk below that of a goldfish, are both unsupported. Research on goldfish cognition shows they can learn and retain associations for weeks or months, and the human attention span statistic traces to an unverified, uncited source.

Modern brain imaging shows that virtually all regions of the human brain are active at some point during normal daily functioning, and neuroscientists consider the widely repeated claim that people only use 10 percent of their brain capacity to be a myth with no basis in neuroscience.

Hypnosis is a real, measurable psychological state used therapeutically for pain management and anxiety, but it does not grant a hypnotist mind control over a subject. Research shows hypnotized individuals retain awareness, personal values, and the ability to refuse suggestions; claims of hypnotic mind control are not supported by controlled research.

Whether money buys happiness depends heavily on how the question is framed. Research shows higher income is associated with greater life satisfaction and emotional well-being, generally without the sharp plateau once widely cited around 75,000 dollars, though the relationship's strength and shape vary across studies and populations.

Cognitive science research consistently finds that multitasking, attempting two or more attention-demanding tasks simultaneously, reduces efficiency and increases errors compared with sequential focused work, contradicting the popular belief that multitasking makes people more productive.

The popular belief that romantic partners with opposite personalities are especially compatible is not well supported by relationship science. Large studies of couples generally find that similarity in values, attitudes, and personality traits predicts relationship satisfaction better than being opposites, though some specific traits show more complex patterns.

Brain imaging research finds no evidence that individuals consistently rely more on one brain hemisphere overall or that personality traits like logic versus creativity map onto whole-hemisphere dominance, though some specific functions are genuinely lateralized to one side of the brain.

Although most people have a preference for visual, auditory, or kinesthetic information, controlled studies find no evidence that matching teaching methods to a student's self-identified learning style improves learning outcomes, a conclusion reached by a major 2008 review commissioned specifically to test the theory.

Polygraph machines do not reliably detect lies. They measure physiological arousal, heart rate, skin conductance, and breathing, which correlates imperfectly with anxiety in general, not specifically with deception, and can be manipulated with countermeasures; major U.S. federal scientific reviews have found their accuracy insufficient for high-stakes decisions.

Subliminal advertising, imagery or messages presented below conscious perception threshold, does not reliably influence consumer purchasing behavior according to decades of controlled experimental research. The scare originated from a fabricated 1957 claim about hidden movie theater messages that the claimant himself later admitted he never actually tested.

Decades of research have found no reliable link between full moon phases and emergency room visits, violent crime, psychiatric hospital admissions, or other behavioral outcomes. The persistent belief in lunar effects on behavior is better explained by confirmation bias and selective memory than by any actual pattern in the data.

The 'Mandela Effect,' widespread shared false memories, is a genuine and well documented psychological phenomenon, but it is evidence of predictable ways human memory reconstructs and errs, not evidence of alternate realities, parallel universes, or simulation glitches, as some popular interpretations claim.

The claim that playing violent video games causes real-world violent behavior is not supported by the strongest available evidence. Large-scale reviews, including a 2020 Oxford study and the American Psychological Association's own more cautious 2020 policy statement, find weak or inconsistent links between violent game exposure and serious real-world aggression or crime.

The specific claim that first impressions form within exactly seven seconds is an oversimplified, widely repeated figure without a single clear scientific origin. Research does show people form rapid trait judgments from faces and behavior within milliseconds to a few seconds, but the precise 'seven second' figure is not a validated, universally agreed benchmark in the peer-reviewed literature.