do the MEDIA present a distorted image of PSYCHOLOGY??

Question

do u think that the media present psychology more as a science or more as a form of common sense?
and do u feel like media present the diverse fields of psychology or only a few?

Answer 1

Tricky question, I struggle with this because I've been bought up knowing more about psychology than most people do, and now I'm studying it.

I do think that there are very wide well-known mis-conceptions about psychology, and I think alot of them must come from the media, but mis-conceptions can come from alot of place, and I think that it can't all be blamed on the media.

I think it probably is portrayed as common sense over science, but I also think it's portrayed in a different way, as something less important than science and alot more contraversial than common sense.

On here you can see many of the mis-conceptions. The fact that so many questions are about dream interpretation for a start, where that is only a tiny part of psychology, a theory even, and a whole lot of psychologists don't believe that dreams 'mean' things in the sense people on here look for.

I definitely don't think the meida presents the diverse fields and I don't think many people know about them. Such as the example above, dream interpretation was one of Freud's theories, but it's not set in stone in psychology, and really not as important and people think.

Freud is always represented somewhere and his is the most well-known stuff, even if people only know the contraversial stuff.

And the abnormal psychology is well known, with disorders etc. But everything else pretty much gets glossed over.

The reactions I get from telling people I study psychology show so much how little it's understood ('ooh can you read my mind?' etc.) . And I think that with the media being a big source of peoples 'education' on such matters, some of it must be to blame.

Answer 2

First of all, Psychology is a very diverse field. The media seems to only present images of clinical or counseling psychology, for the most part. (A couple of times I've heard a social psychologist on a radio show, but it wasn't very often, and it wasn't a mainstream show.) Within the images of clinical or counseling psychology, they don't stay true to the profession... They promote "pop" psychology.