Michael W. Eysenck graduated from University College London. He then moved immediately to Birkbeck University of London as a lecturer where he did his PhD on the von Restorff and 'release' memory effects. His research for several years focused on various aspects in memory (e.g., levels of processing; distinctiveness). Since then, his main focus has been on anxiety and cognition (including memory) in healthy populations and patients with anxiety disorders. Some of this research has focused on cognitive biases especially those affecting attentional and memory processes. Theoretically, he proposed his influential attentional control theory of anxiety in 2007 based on the assumption that anxious individuals' problems with cognitive processing often revolve around impaired attentional control. Most of this research and theorising was carried out at Royal Holloway University of London where he was Professor of Psychology between 1987 and 2009 (Head of Department, 1987-2005) and where since 2013 he has been a fellow. He continued this research during the period 2010-2020 at the University of Roehampton. He has published 67 books in psychology (many relating to human memory) including two research monographs on anxiety and cognition. He has been in Who's Who since 1989.

Preface

Chapter 1: Is psychology a science?

"Psychology is an inferior kind of science"

Reproducibility and the 'replication crisis'

Highly controlled experimental conditions

Clearly defined terminology

Predictability and testability: the 'theory crisis'

What should psychologists do?

Psychology is a different kind of science

Myths in psychology

Chapter 2: Visual perception

Myth: subliminal messages can motivate people's behaviour without their awareness

Myth: we generally detect changes in objects

Myth: visual perception provides us with very rich and accurate information about the environment at a glance

Myth: everyone agrees on the colour of a dress (or #theDress)

Myth: most people are 'face experts'

Why do we believe so many myths about visual perception?

Chapter 3: Mysteries of memory

Myth: "Memory is like a video camera"

Myth: memories do not change over time: they are permanent

Myth: repression and 'return of the repressed' are very common

Myth: amnesic patients have forgotten their pasts

Myth: the only function of (episodic) memory is to provide access to our past experiences

Myth: forgetting is a bad thing

Chapter 4: Thinking and cognition

Myth: 10,000 hours of practice produce outstanding performance

Myth: brain training improves your brain functioning and intelligence

Myth: we only use 10% of our brains

Myth: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon be much more intelligent than humans

Myth: nudges are very effective at changing people's behaviour

Chapter 5: Intelligence

Myth: there are multiple intelligences in the human mind

Myth: it is important to match teaching methods to learning styles

Myth: emotional intelligence is helpful in life

Myth: IQ scores only measure how good someone is at taking intelligence tests

Myth: intelligence does not depend on genetic factors

Chapter 6: Personality

Myth: high self-esteem is highly desirable (and low self-esteem very undesirable)

Myth: situational factors overwhelm personality when predicting behaviour

Myth: personality measures do not predict consequential outcomes (like health, wealth and divorce) well enough to be useful

Myth: parenting practices are a major source of personality differences

Myth: men are from Mars, women are from Venus (men and women have dramatically different personalities)

Chapter 7: Social psychology

Myth: Milgram proved that most people will obey immoral orders

Myth: crowds typically panic in threatening situations

Myth: Zimbardo proved that the power structure in prisons makes guards aggressive and violent

Myth: individual differences in attitudes are mostly learned

Myth: happiness is influenced most strongly by what happens to us

Chapter 8: Mental disorders and their treatment

Myth: mental illnesses are due almost entirely to people's life experiences

Myth: psychiatric diagnoses or labels stigmatise people

Myth: The Rorschach Inkblot test is a very useful way of diagnosing most mental illnesses

Myth: people with multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder) have more than one distinct personality

Myth: most psychotherapy requires lying on a couch and recalling one's childhood

Myth: antidepressants are much more effective than psychotherapy for treating depression

Chapter 9: Psychology and the law

Myth: an eyewitness's confidence is never a good predictor of their identification accuracy

Myth: experts can nearly always identify the culprit from fingerprinting evidence

Myth: DNA tests are almost infallible for identifying culprits

Myth: the polygraph test is very good at detecting lying

Myth: hypnosis enhances eyewitnesses' memory

Myth: Offender profiling is (very) useful in identifying culprits

Chapter 10: How to become a mythbuster

Why do people subscribe to myths?

Distorted research: biased experimental design, reporting and interpretations of findings

Biased textbook coverage

Members of the public: confirmation bias or wishful thinking

Members of the public: deficient thinking about intrinsically improbable beliefs

Members of the public: mistaken extrapolation from limited personal experience

Members of the public: plausible beliefs based on general knowledge (kernel of truth)

Conclusions

Chapter 11: Brave new world

Experiments: the gold standard?

Developing new methods

Experimenter bias

The jingle-jangle fallacies

Granularity problem

Scientific analysis: meta-analysis

Scientific reporting

Psychology as a cumulative science

Conclusions

References