Activity . P OPULAR N OTIONS ABOUT THE D ISCIPLINE OF P SYCHOLOGY We mentioned above that everyday, almost everyone of us acts like a psychologist. We try to understand why someone behaved in the manner in which s/he did and come up with ready explanations. Not only this, most of us have developed our own theory of human behaviour.
If we want some worker to perform better than s/he has in the past, we know that we will need to push her/him. Maybe even use a stick because people are basically lazy. Such popular theories of human behaviour based on common sense may or may not be true if investigated scientifically. In fact, you will find that common sensical explanations of human behaviour are based on hindsight and explain very little.
For example, if a friend you love goes away to a distant place, what will happen to your attraction for her/him? There are two sayings which you may recall to answer this question. One of them is “Out of sight, out of mind”. The second one is “Distance makes the heart grow fonder”.
Both of them make opposite statements, so which one is true. The explanation you choose will depend on what happens in your life after your friend leaves. Suppose you are able to find a new friend, the saying “Out of sight, out of mind” will be used by you or others to explain your behaviour. If you are unable to find a new friend, you will keep remembering your friend fondly.
In this case, the saying “Distance makes the heart grow fonder” will explain your behaviour. Notice that in both cases the explanation follows the occurrence of behaviour. Common sense is based on hindsight. Psychology as a science looks for patterns of behaviour which can be predicted and not explained after the behaviour occurs.
Scientific knowledge generated by psychology often runs against common sense. One such example is a study performed by Dweck ( ). She was concerned with children who gave up too easily when faced with a difficult problem or failure. She wondered