Jeff Ricker wrote:
> And does anyone know if similar kinds of studies have been done by
> anyone else (and more recently than 1977)?
>From my dissertation:
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In 1977, Eva Vaughan published the first of a series of articles
introducing the study of false prior beliefs in psychology to the journal
Teaching of Psychology. She identified a number of popular
discipline-specific beliefs that run counter to the findings of mainstream
psychological research, and created a "Test of Common Beliefs" (TCB) that
simply asked students to identify each as "true" or "false". She then looked
for change in prevalence of those beliefs across span of the introductory
psychology course. While some of the false beliefs were significantly
reduced across the semester, many of them were not. The total improvement of
only 5.5% (of 80 items) across a semester of introductory psychology was
very similar to the 6.6% noted by McKeachie (1960) on a similar list, the
roughly 4% improvement (on a 76-item version of the Test of Common Beliefs)
found by Lamal (1979), the 5-6% improvement on the TCB found by Gutman
(1979), and the 7.98% improvement found on a 14-item inventory derived from
the TCB by Gardner and Dalsing (1986). Furthermore, both Gutman (1979) and
Griggs and Ransdell (1987) observed that students tending to hold more of
the false beliefs from the list created by Vaughan tended to have lower
grades in their introductory psychology courses.
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Okay, so it's not a lot more recent, but it's something.
References:
Gardner, R. M., & Dalsing, S. (1986). Misconceptions about psychology among
college students. Teaching of Psychology, 13, 32-34.
Griggs, R.A. & Ransdell, S. E. (1987). Misconceptions tests or misconceived
tests? Teaching of Psychology, 14, 210-214.
Gutman, A. (1979). Misconceptions of psychology and performance in the
introductory course. Teaching of Psychology, 6, 159-161.
Lamal, P. A. (1979). College students' common beliefs about psychology.
Teaching of Psychology, 6, 155-158.
McKeachie, W. J. (1960). Changes in scores on the Northwestern
Misconceptions Test in six elementary psychology courses. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 51, 240-244.
Messer, W. S. & Griggs, R. A. (1989). Student belief and involvement in the
paranormal and performance in introductory psychology. Teaching of
Psychology, 16, 187-191.
Vaughan, E. D. (1977). Misconceptions about psychology among introductory
psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 4, 138-141.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
