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[kostya_h]

1. Psychologists are largely incompetent. The kind of really basic statistics errors that are made in at even at prestigious institutions like Harvard would make a physicist the laughing stock of her profession. Historically psychology has been one deranged fad after another. In my own (limited) experience very few people with a serious intellectual inclination have gone on to study psychology, while the study itself is laughably easy. Psychologists I’ve never seemed bright to me. Now of course this might simply be my limited experience; and I’m sure that there are intelligent and competent psychologists.
(Of course there is also more empirical evidence than the anecdotal evidence I muster; if one graphs IQ versus intended direction of study, psychology does extremely poor.)

2. The posited psychological phenomena seem ‘too cool’;

the kind of cool fact you can tell at a party. In most cases that ‘fact’ is actually fiction. Freudian psychoanalysis is a particularly gregarious example: it has something to do with dreams and SEX and how all your problems are really caused by your desire to fuck your mom. It’s the kind of thing people say to sounds interesting; the kind of things people tell to get laid (and Freud did!). It’s also

3. A lot of these things really sound like voodoo or various religious/magic practices which should make you inherently skeptical.
Greg Cochran likes to joke that stereotype threat is really belief in the evil eye. Yes modern psychology does not invoke things like spirits/magic/gods but the way things are supposed to work seem to be broadly the same. The effect is extremely capricious, can often be influenced by simply believing and might often be averted by a simple everyday actions(let’s say painting eyes for social control or warding away spirits).

4. Psychology is of course not a new discipline, it does not require a lot of technical expertise or large machines. Most of modern progress is simply applications of statistics/large sample sizes. Moreover unlike say astronomy or deep-sea biology the body of facts of psychology is directly perceivable by everyday people. Hence if there were real effects that are particularly strong we would weakly expect various ancient or early modern thinkers from various different times and backgrounds to consistently name certain psychologial effects. For instance a lot was known about statics in various places and times long before people knew Newtonian mechanics. But this does not seem to be the case.

5. The claimed strength of the effect sizes are often very large. Telling yourself you will succeed at a test might increase your grade by 30% according to some of these studies. If this is really true why does it never seem to be used by actual successful people or businesses. Why was hypnosis never used to overthrow a government or escape from prison or any kinds of criminal acts. (Rasputin doesn’t count, most of the stories about him are made up or extremely unreliable).
Again there have been various claims that brainwashing has been used by modern governments but the idea of brainwashing does not require modern advances and could conceivably be discovered and utilized by historical societies. Why wasn’t brain washing used by say, Qing dynasty scholar-officials to institute an unstoppable army of zealots and cement imperial control?

6. A problem with a lot of psychology that rely on strong environmental effects is the intrinsic instability they would imply about human nature. As an example psychological effects that rely on your belief in it are very instable. If believing in being dumb makes you dumber than that reinforces your believe in being dumb etc. (of course it might have diminishing effects but this makes the theory more complicated: how strong is the diminishing effect, why is there a diminishing effect, how does it work etc) If eyes make you more law-abiding, yellow rooms foster conflict, the name ‘Dennis’ makes you want to become a dentist. What happens if you walk through a series of rooms having these features: do you change from amicable and prosocial to finding faults in minor grievances to suddenly really wanting to become a dentist?

7. Most of these theories do not really propose a real robust model. Most theories/models are necessary simple. Psychometrics posits a single number that measures intellectual ability. Now this might be wrong, and indeed I’m somewhat surprised that the myriad of seemingly different intellectual abilities can be be largely subsumed by a single number but it is simple. But it is a simple theory that posits a simple, unidirectional and quantifiable effect. Compare unconscious social priming: priming people with the word ‘retirement’ makes people slower because it makes people think of old people. But why doesn’t it make people walk faster because most of them are young and they constrast themselves with old people or they’re scared of death or retirement makes them conscious of the importance of having money later and so they really should be going right now etc. The point is that these aren’t really models but just-so stories.

8. The theory of evolution is the most powerful theory ever devised concerning all living systems, so one should always ask how a purported phenomenon dealing with people or life in general would fit in evolution. In this case if large numbers of people were really susceptible to strong hypnosis that would on the face of it be an extreme fitness cost. If placebo really cured cancer why isn’t your body always on super-placebo mode where it can cure cancer? There are of course several ways in how we can account for these probleims in the theory of evolution but I rarely seem to hear these problems being adressed. In general WHY would these effects actually exist?

9. Most of the things (psychometrics, twin studies) we do know about the mind seem to support nature over environment. Most of the purported effects are shared-environmental and support modern political sensibilities (i.e. Implicit racial biases).