6 Bullshit Facts About Psychology That Everyone Believes

Psychology is one of those subjects that everybody likes to think they know something about. We love to go around diagnosing our friends and co-workers, both to make sense of the world and to make ourselves feel like we're smarter than they are. But like any science that makes its way into the pop culture, a lot of the "common sense" statements we hear every day are so wrong that they border on raving idiocy. Such as... "If You Let Your Anger Out, You'll Feel Better!" You always hear people talk about how "cathartic" an experience was and how much better they feel, or you'll hear them say things like, "If you keep your anger bottled up, one day you'll just snap!" In fact the "about to go crazy because he can't express anger" character is a mainstay in television and movies (see that Simpsons episode where Ned Flanders finally loses it, and every movie where a renegade cop fires his gun into the air instead of unloading on the bad guy who just killed his wife). Why it is Bullshit: Figure 1.1 Related: