The Power and the Peril of Pop Psychology
Curt and Katie chat about pop psychology. We look at what it is, how it influences society, the dangers of leaving it unchecked, and how therapists can support their clients in navigating through all the different self-help content. We also challenge the use of Enneagram and Myers Briggs as “identity” and talk about using pop psychology as a starting point for conversation rather than taking it all at face value.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
In this podcast episode we talk about the dangers of pop psychology
Curt has had a bee in his bonnet about pop psychology and the potential harms of watering down psychology for the public. We decided we’d take a critical look at what’s out there, including self-help, business, and news content that may be harming the public.
What is pop psychology?
- Researchers sharing their findings through popular media using lay language
- Applied psychology – practical self-help created by psychology practitioners geared toward improving your life
- Targeting people with mental health concerns to decrease suffering – may be created by people with lived experience and is self-help in the place of therapy
- Applying psychology to other realms (like business or sales, spirituality)
What are concerns with pop psychology?
“Myers Briggs, or DiSC or other, business-based identity studies…I see them as a way to get a start of a conversation…because they all read like horoscopes, and so they’re so aligned with how you’re viewing yourself in that moment. You’re like, ‘Oh, I’m a Enneagram this’ or ‘’m a Myers Briggs that’ or whatever it is. And so to me…I think there’s that element of: this is a tool, this is not your identity.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT
- Overemphasizing the importance of specific pop psychology principles and claiming these things as identity
- Not going back to the evidence base or looking at who the authors are (is it their research or is it a good storyteller who is extrapolating)
- The impact of the audience on which stories or psychological findings are shared
How does Malcolm Gladwell fit into this conversation about the dangers of pop psychology?
- He was enamored with the “Broken Windows” theory of policing and his writings influenced the use type of policing in New York (including Stop and Frisk)
- He ignored the criticism of these policies, like the racial bias that was seen
- He chose not to write about policies that were working to decrease the over prescribing opioids
- He has not recognized the influence on those who read his work
What role can therapists play in supporting our clients around pop psychology?
“As lay people, our clients who bring pop psychology into our sessions, we kind of have a responsibility to be able to respond to it in a way that isn’t just kind of like, let’s take this at face value. But being able to…use it as a starting point that actually moves things into the therapeutic principles, that helps to have us bring the stories to our clients in a way that brings real science to it.” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT
- Talk with our clients about what they are reading and use it as a starting point
- Bring the evidence-based science into the conversation
- Help them to create a unique, tailored plan for your client to use what works for them
- Correcting misinformation (e.g., the stages of grief)
- Putting out content that is accurate
- Staying current on what is being talked about in popular media
Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Nick Haslam blog: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Pop Psychology
Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow
Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational
Joseph Ledoux: The Emotional Brain
Napoleon Hill: Think and Grow Rich
Robert M. Sapolsky: Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers
Revisionist History episode on the opioid epidemic “In Triplicate”
Malcom Gladwell Podcast: Revisionist History
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
What is Our Fascination with Anything Vaguely Neuroscience?
Navigating the Social Media Self-Diagnosis Trend
Addressing Racism in Clinical Licensing Exams: An Interview with Ben Caldwell and Tony Rousmaniere
REPLAY – Structuring Self-Care
Death, Dying, and Grief: An interview with Jill Johnson-Young, LCSW
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm, LMFT
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/
Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).
… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)
Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:15
Welcome back modern therapists this is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm, with Katie Vernoy. And this is the podcast for therapists about the things that we do in our practices, the things that affects the therapy world. And today’s episode, I’m going to start with a quote from one of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams, this is from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. And the quote is the story so far, in the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Now, I start with this, because in this episode, we are talking about pop psychology, and where it got started, and how it’s affecting us and our practices. And I’m very reminiscent of Douglas Adams because the APA president about 50 years ago, George Miller talks about giving psychology away. And I think as we explore what we’re doing here today, this has made a lot of people very angry as psychology as a science gets watered down and is not necessarily been a great idea. And we are diving into pop psychology: is it good? Is it bad? Is it a mixed bag? Does the mixed bag make things bad? Is it kind of the poison Skittles sorts of things? So, we’re going to try and not cover a whole lot from previous episodes where we’ve gotten into like neuroscience, and some of that kind of stuff. We’ll overlap a little bit of that if you’re more interested in a deeper dive on some of those topics. We’ll link to those in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. But Katie, pop psychology: where do you wanna start?
Katie Vernoy 2:04
To not be like pop psychologists and just assume that we all are working from the same definition of things and just extrapolate out from there. Why don’t we talk about what is pop psychology and and what can we actually consider pop psychology versus actual psychology, and just schlock?
Curt Widhalm 2:25
I’m going to start with a blog from Nick Haslam. And Haslam is a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne. And in this blog, Nick breaks down that there’s different kinds of pop psychology. And while overall, I think we can look at pop psychology as taking science, taking what we know as being psychological principles based in research, peer reviewed sort of stuff, and transforming it out into more common language for the public, that we kind of need to separate out some different types. And Nick Haslam has identified that he kind of sees the there’s a few different kinds of ways out of this. There’s no science behind this. This is one person’s blogging opinion. But I’m gonna back it up and say that I like this at least as a starting place. And so kind of the first category that he identifies is media, books, whose primary aim is to inform the public about recent developments in scientific psychology, authored by academics or science journalists. These are people who have done the research, who are taking very scientific language, making it more out for the publicly available kinds of things. And some of the examples that are given on this are things like Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow. We’ve referenced that in this podcast before. Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, and Joseph Ledoux, The Emotional Brain. These are scientists who have a specific focus in mind and are trying to communicate that information out to the public.
Katie Vernoy 4:15
This also sounds like Brene Brown, Gabor Mate. Does Esther Perel do her own research? Like it seems like folks that are kind of in that space where they’re connected to some sort of research institution, they’re doing their own research and then become kind of pop psychologists because they go out and speak, they’re on the circuit, that kind of stuff or they write really well received books that you know, have a huge amount of people that are reading these more simplified lay language that is consumable by the public.
Curt Widhalm 4:50
Sure, John and Julie Gottman would be people that would might fit within this. You were bringing up kind of a point where we’ll kind of circle back to some of these people. There’s the curious cases of people who ended up making more of their living being out on the circuits that kind of deviate away from some of where their research is. And I’m gonna bring up, you know, people who have research that is credible, that’s ended up just kind of reaching a point of popularity where they aren’t really talking, they’re extrapolating more, they become kind of guilty of some of these other topics. And I’m talking about people like Jordan Peterson, and maybe even some of the stuff that I will say that there are periods where all of the people that you have listed, this has been absolutely true, that you got to take it with a giant grain of salt, depending on where you got to continue to be critical out of some of their messages.
Katie Vernoy 5:50
Well, and I think what you’re talking about is this feedback loop or folks who are interacting with their audience and, and continuing to probably be creative and think about things and, and potentially not even recognize the impact of their musings on the public because they’ve got credibility, they are scientists, but then when they start musing or getting caught in the feedback loop, those things may be taken as science and fact, but in fact, they’re just pre-research ideas.
Curt Widhalm 6:19
The second genre of pop psychology is a little bit more applied according to Haslam. This is instead of expanding on a scientific topic for a curious layperson, it offers guidance for people who want practical help with the challenges of everyday living. Often it is written or made by psychology practitioners, rather than by academics. And the authors or the creators behind this kind of media is a little bit more at arm’s length from the research on the topic. And great examples of this would be people like Curt Widhalm, and Katie Vernoy, who are not doing our own research. But we are the ones who are kind of expanding upon what other people have been saying, either taking it and putting it out there for curious audience kinds of people. This might be a lot of your Instagram, and Tiktok people who are therapists who have credential kinds of things who are taking, and kind of simplifying other people’s research and putting it out there for improvements in everyday living.
Katie Vernoy 7:26
And I think we have a lot of friends and colleagues who’ve written books and who have put those things out where they’ve, you know, kind of gathered the research or gathered their practical experience and put something into writing into like a journal or into a book that’s a self help book. So this is kind of Self Help for folks who want to improve their lives.
Curt Widhalm 7:49
Yes.
Katie Vernoy 7:49
Okay.
Curt Widhalm 7:51
The third and last group that Haslam described is targeting people with mental health problems. And kind of like the second group, it’s significantly different. It offers practical guidance, but rather than for kind of general everyday life improvement kinds of things, it’s more geared towards specific mental health problems with the aim to reduce suffering and dysfunction. So, this might end up being some of the people with like, lived experience kinds of things, without necessarily having the professional training to be a mental health practitioner kind of thing. So pop psychology, it doesn’t, you know, change kind of the relevance of any of this, but it’s helpful to kind of separate out that these are different categories under a larger umbrella.
Katie Vernoy 8:41
So the biggest difference between two and three is really the types of problems that are being addressed. The second one is Self Help for folks who are wanting to improve their lives. The third one is Self Help for folks who are deeply struggling and for whatever reason aren’t accessing therapy. And this is, in some ways a prequel or a replacement for therapy. And it could be practitioners, but you’re also saying it could be lived experience, folks?
Curt Widhalm 9:09
Yes.
Katie Vernoy 9:09
Okay, cool. I don’t know that that actually gets all of them. I mean, when we were talking beforehand, you were, you were saying that there’s also like this fourth category that you had in mind about business folks, and we expanded that out to influencers.
Curt Widhalm 9:24
Yeah.
Katie Vernoy 9:25
It seems like that those three categories don’t really cover all the things that we’re seeing in pop psychology these days.
Curt Widhalm 9:30
And this is maybe just kind of a critical addition to this blog thing. I think that it does help to take and kind of look at, you know, kind of the business minded people and the sales people who either have read some psychology stuff or other pop psychology sort of stuff, and been able to take some of those business principles or those psychology principles and add them to business kinds of things.
Katie Vernoy 9:54
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 9:55
They’re effective. They’re things that do work out of certain psychology sort of spheres. But I think in really kind of the self help sort of thing or kind of this very coachy sort of thing. And depending on how far back you want references to be the one that always comes to my mind is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill was maybe kind of one of the first classic examples of this. But you can get all the way up to things like Enneagram and that kind of stuff as far as like, there’s science principles that build the foundation of a corner of that household. But there’s a lot of stuff that has not been scientifically validated or can’t be validated through the structure of how it’s set up, that ends up making it to be something that is put out there as pop psychology sort of information.
… 10:48
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Katie Vernoy 10:49
Okay, so you said a whole bunch of stuff, but I just want to clarify for our listeners that you’re saying Enneagram are pop psychology, and there’s only a corner of things that are, are valid and based in psychological principles, the rest is, is fluff and, and pop psychology.
Curt Widhalm 11:08
You can address your emails to Curt@therapyreimagined.com. But I’m saying that Enneagram is not scientifically validated all the way through? Yes.
Katie Vernoy 11:22
Sure. Sure. I think, to me, the reason I point this out is I definitely want to get into conversations with our listeners, because some of our listeners love Enneagram. And they use it as though it’s an identity. And that’s, I’ve never seen it that way. I’ve always seen it as some of these pop psychology concepts, or a lot of these things like, honestly, Myers Briggs, or DiSC or other, you know, kind of business based, you know, kind of identity studies that got put in there, I see them as a way to get a start of a conversation, but it doesn’t necessarily actually say a whole lot about me, it’s more about the follow on conversation. Because they all read like horoscopes, and so they’re so aligned with how you’re viewing yourself in that moment. You’re like, Oh, I’m a Enneagram this or I’m a Myers Briggs that or whatever it is. And so to me, like, it’s freeing to have you say that, because I think there’s that element of this is a tool, this is not your identity.
Curt Widhalm 12:23
Oh, and what you’re speaking to is, it’s not just business that gets in or mixed with this, it’s also spirituality. And I think that there’s kind of the overlapping pieces between all of these things that in order to form an identity around oneself as an individual, it’s helpful to have a starting place as you’re referencing. Now, this is where we as therapists being based in things like evidence based psychology sorts of things, might use that as a starting piece of a conversation. We might use, you know, if you’re versed in things like astrology, or Enneagrams, or those kinds of things, to help people come back to kind of what their, you know, human condition aspects sorts of things are. But that’s not really what our profession is using that wholly unto itself. And I think that part of the dangers is that a lot of us who get into this field or had pop psychology as kind of an influence for us to become more interested in actual psychology and some of the scientists and science behind things have to be able to differentiate between who the author is, where in the author’s career this information come from, are they talking about really specific things in ways that are more digestible for the broader audiences of things in order to become more interested in things? For example, I look at somebody like Robert Sapolsky, the evolutionary psychologists out of Stanford who wrote a book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, that kind of gets into his research around stress, and around the ways that stress has impacted things, but done in a way that’s storytelling to make it make sense to people who aren’t out there, you know, shooting zebras after they’ve had an encounter with a lion where they didn’t get intact. But tranquilizer darts and that way they could go and test hormones, they weren’t shooting them with guns, people. But there’s a difference between that, you know, kind of that first category of like, these are people who are researchers who are taking their stuff and making it more accessible by giving examples versus people who are really good storytellers who are further removed from the actual research, who might take you know, some liberties here in there to be able to kind of over interpret what some of the messages are. And so we can succumb to really good storytelling at the cost of actual science.
Katie Vernoy 15:08
And to me, I feel like there’s a few ways, a few places I can go from this. But I want to address this, this part and then go back to something else we were talking about. But, but for me, this is what news media and popular news seems to do very well. They’ll take a research study, they’ll focus on one tiny little bit of an area of it, expand that out. And I don’t think they necessarily go super far into saying things that are untrue or unverified. You know, they use I think, at least the news media that I follow, they seem to they tell a reasonably accurate story about what this research has, has shown. But the the headline is very evocative. There’s there’s a lot of, you know, how am I going to sell this story? What is, what is going to resonate with the public? And so then things get framed in what is marketable or what is going to get the most views, versus what is actually accurate to the research in a very deep way. And so there’s been, you know, they do this with medical studies all the time. They do it with psychological studies all the time. And sometimes even the headlines are a question that make you think that, you know, the answer is going to be one thing, but when you go and read the story it’s something else. And sometimes we’re only just scanning the headlines. And so the content that we consume from folks who are a little further removed, who are whose job is, is more about storytelling, can be really fraught with some bias, it can be fraught with confirmatory bias, because like, hey, this aligns with what I’ve always thought it can be. It can be fraught with only getting a piece of the story because that piece is most interesting. And so, to me, whenever there’s something especially juicy in the news, and they are referencing a study, I try to always go back to the original study to see like, did they actually report this accurately? Do they understand it accurately? Because they’re a little bit more of a lay audience, they’re a little bit more removed. And, and how influenced were they, by their audience being interested in the story, because I think to me, that stuff gets very scary. And I think we’re as susceptible, although we have, we have knowledge and resources on how to sort through it. But we’re is susceptible as, as lay people with some of this types of pop psychology of like the latest research.
Curt Widhalm 17:30
I agree. And I think that there’s even an addition to what you’re saying, which is that as the reader, we’re capable of making those mistakes, but we also have to look at are the author’s intentionally also ignoring criticisms of the research that they’re putting out. And this has long been a criticism of somebody who I consider a fantastic storyteller, but whose dabbling into the science ends up becoming kind of questionable because of the rejection of a lot of contradictory information to the great narrative. And by this, I’m referring to Malcolm Gladwell.
Katie Vernoy 18:09
Ooh, okay. He’s somebody that I’ve read, too. And I’ve really appreciated some of the stories. So, what is your criticism of Malcolm Gladwell.
Curt Widhalm 18:17
So, we could do a whole sub series on criticisms, but so I’ll focus largely on kind of two things. Neither of these are directly into the therapy world, but they’re things that definitely have impacts on things that come up in therapy. Out, one of the ones that I will put out there, and this is the danger of kind of pop psychology being what can influence public policy kinds of things. One of the big proponents of things like broken windows theory of policing was Malcolm Gladwell. And because of his writings on this, this was something that largely influence NYPD to start to engage in stop and frisk policies, things that have largely been shown by sociologists who have a ton of racial bias in them. But further writings upon this end up having Malcolm Gladwell going into the 90s, directly being able to say, since stop and frisk has been put in place, New York’s drop in crime, through all sorts of statistics has dropped greatly. This policy ends up working. Now kind of ignores a lot of the other things that largely led to policies like that being a thing of the past. And Gladwell, in more recent years has talked about how he was enamored by the idea of broken windows theory, and that influenced a lot of his writings. And I think that there’s a qualitative way that a great storyteller can end up being able to kind of say like, you know what, I was responsible for a lot of people being traumatized by NYPD and a lot of people being wrongly accused of things because of this, with just kind of a little bit of a hand wave of a, you know, a lot of my writing was just kind of influenced by that, and golly, gee, look at this new book that I’m selling on this completely other topic.
Katie Vernoy 20:25
So, to fully understand this, what is broken windows policy?
Curt Widhalm 20:29
Broken windows policy is largely boiled down to: we should put more police in more areas that have things like graffiti and broken windows around.
Katie Vernoy 20:39
Okay.
Curt Widhalm 20:40
These kinds of areas are the places where criminals and therefore crime are more likely to happen. And if people just you know, took pride in their neighborhoods, and they fix things up like broken windows, then less crime would be there, because people would be more out there to, you know, have pride in their neighborhoods in these kinds of things. While ignoring the, you know, very real things like socioeconomic status disparities, and…
Katie Vernoy 21:07
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 21:07
…the biases of individual officers and all of that kind of stuff.
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Katie Vernoy 21:11
So, Malcolm Gladwell was enamored with broken windows theory, and then followed along with a stop and frisk idea where there’s, you know, we’re putting more officers in these neighborhoods with broken windows and blah, blah, blah. And then we’re, like, did he also say, like, and stop and frisk is a great idea because of some theory, or just because the research showed that…
Curt Widhalm 21:35
The research shows that stop and frisk works.
Katie Vernoy 21:38
So, it wasn’t like this is, this is the theoretical underpinnings of stop and frisk. It was, oh, after the fact that we look at some of the sociological data that says that it worked. And so I’m going to then extrapolate around why it works and and tell the story. And, and so it sounds, I mean, it sounds like you really wish that he had been held accountable for his impact on that.
Curt Widhalm 22:03
I wish that he would recognize the influence of his following. And I want to go to the other thing that I wanted to talk about the influence that kind of the pop psychologists or the pop scientists writing about things and using that to inform policy, versus the actual researchers. And we will link to the podcast episode of revisionist history. It is Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast where it’s kind of a fascinating listen to hear about kind of the underpinnings of why the opioid epidemic hit certain states harder than others and some of the policies that were in place in some of the states like California and New York that made it to where the opioid epidemic did not hit them as hard as states that did not have certain policies in place. But within this episode, Malcolm Gladwell talks about his time as the science writer at The Washington Post, and how as the science writer in Washington, DC at the time, this was kind of the epicenter of taking medical research and publishing it in the post that was then picked up by lawmakers as kind of here’s how scientists get their information out to legislatures and be able to inform policy on a national level. And one of the people who’s interviewed in the episode, who has since passed away is a person named Sidney Cole, who was kind of one of the driving forces of trying to get Washington Post writers to write about certain things. And in the 1980s, one of Sidney Cole’s big pushes was there is evidence that states like California, New York, Idaho and a couple of others have that really limits the ability for doctors to over prescribe opiates. And at the time, as a writer, Malcolm Gladwell largely ignored Sydney Cole’s pushes that would have probably saved hundreds of 1000s if not millions of opiate overdoses and deaths over the last 30 years by highlighting that this is effective policy. And…
Katie Vernoy 24:13
He, why did he ignore him?
Curt Widhalm 24:15
Because at the time Malcolm Gladwell thought that Sydney Cole was some big far off leftist that was just trying to push big government control and Gladwell admits that he believed that doctors did not need regulating on this kind of stuff. That highly educated people should be in control of running their own practices and their own businesses. Now again, in kind of that Gladwell-ian sort of way, we have kind of this okay, I I was wrong back then. There’s no real remorse to: I have a lot of power that resulted in a lot of people dying, listened to my podcast. So, there’s very real dangers as far as just having pop psychology end up being kind of the here go and take this information at kind of this very digestible level. I do want to point out just kind of like some of the stuff that Katie and I have done like, yes, we admit, with our podcasts, we bring a certain flavor of pop psychology out to our listeners that we are very grateful for. Sometimes that information makes it into really great hands. We’ve recently been contacted by people who are looking to inform policy based on an episode that we did last year with Tony Rousmaniere and Ben Caldwell about the racial biases in in particular, we were contacted about the E Triple P two exam. So this is stuff where there’s kind of this necessity to some of this information going out in a very digestible way. But as we get contacted, you know, there’s that little bit of pride thing like, Oh, we’re being contacted by somebody with a position of power, who’s taking our ideas and hoping to influence things. And then about four minutes into the conversation. I was like, and I should introduce you to the people who actually do the research on this. Don’t just take my word for this.
Katie Vernoy 26:18
Exactly. And I think that’s the thing that that I’m just really taking from what you’re saying, as well as some of the stuff I’ve been thinking about too, which is, when you get into that public eye as a storyteller, or if you’re consuming content from one of these storytellers, there really is a kind of cite your sources check on on where this is coming from. And even and this is much harder, what is being focused on and what is being ignored, which I think is really hard. Because I mean, we’ve experienced this as content creators that, you know, what are we going to focus on? What are we going to comment on? Or not comment on? Where are we going to put our attention? What is what is in our wheelhouse and what is not? And I think, at times when we’ve chosen to comment or not comment, it’s been really, really good ideas. And sometimes it’s not been, right? Like we were humans, we do all those things. And so to me, it’s, it’s just really interesting how much power as a society or maybe even as a as a species that we give to the storytellers about what we put into policy, how we act on a day to day basis. And so to me, I, I feel like there are I think, who good storytellers who who are able to condense material down and make it effective, and they stick to the science and they are responsible and whatever. And then there are folks who use that power to gain money and career and power and influence whatever it is. And I think I don’t want to not have pop psychology, because I do think it’s helpful. But I also don’t want us to be naive readers who don’t actually take the time to understand what it is that we’re reading or consuming.
Curt Widhalm 28:10
And I think that that’s ultimately the call to action on this episode is, you know, I was taught in my graduate program and to a certain degree, my undergraduate program about how to be cynical in researching or in reading research articles. And maybe I took, you know, that training a little bit too far as far as kind of my overall approach to life. And I found this as a benefit in being able to read some of the pop psychology sort of stuff. But it’s being able to read it with that intention. I admit, I really like reading a lot of Malcolm Gladwell stuff. I listened to a fair number of the podcast episodes that he puts out, not all of them. But it’s kind of coming with, okay, I’m here to listen to stories. And then it’s being able to dive into some of the things that get brought up. I look at you know, things like Daniel Pink sort of stuff that I know you’ve referenced quite a few times. And we’ll give you the credit for introducing me to Daniel Pink. And some of the stuff that I see right here and the kind of content that I consume, ends up being stuff that I’ve read some of these research things before. I can either say this is somebody who largely accurately represents what some of the research says, or I can say, all right, they’re, they’re using this as a mechanism to make a different point that might apply to a lot of people but isn’t necessarily critically valid as far as what what they’re trying to say. And I don’t know that lay people in general are going to go back to some of this stuff. And the way that this shows up in our therapy sessions as lay people, our clients who bring pop psychology into our sessions, we kind of have a responsibility to be able to respond to it in a way that isn’t just kind of like, let’s take this at face value. But being able to, as you said, at the beginning of the episode, use it as a starting point that actually moves things into the therapeutic principles that helps to have us bring the stories to our clients in a way that brings real science to it.
Katie Vernoy 30:32
Yeah, I agree. And I want to expand on that point, because I know, before we started recording, you asked, Do I use pop psychology in my sessions? And I, I honestly probably do more than I should. But I feel like when it’s opened as a conversation, whether it’s, you know, pulling from, you know, lived experience and and other pop psychology that comes through and seems really compelling. And I have clients say, hey, somebody said to try that, and I’d say, okay, and if I don’t see anything dangerous with it, or anything, that would be of concern. I say, Well, okay, well, that’s an experiment, let’s see what’s going on. And if that applies to you. And then there’s also a lot of the business pop psychology, whether it’s Dan Pink or or a lot of the other folks that we’d referenced in, you know, kind of the self, you know, systems of self care and optimal performance stuff. I use a lot of those things as starting points. And I think, and it’s not just like, Okay, well, what does this mean to you? And how does this impact your identity? But sometimes it’s like, how do we put together a unique plan for you, given that we have so many places to pull ideas from? And so to me, I feel like, even just in preparing for this episode, and in this conversation, I feel like I want to be more discerning. And I want to also honor that, that creativity just isn’t just within a research center. Creativity can happen in the world, and there are practical things that are worthwhile. It’s just, we have a higher level of responsibility than someone else, you know, a friend giving advice to be able to discern, is this real? Or is this hype?
Curt Widhalm 32:12
Or even if it’s things that are being misapplied, and misattuned before the episode, when we were preparing, you were talking about like stages of grief from…
Katie Vernoy 32:22
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 32:22
…Kubler Ross that how many clients end up coming in and being like, you know, I’m in my bargaining stage, and I can’t wait to get to my anger stage. I’ve had zero clients say that, but just just to, you know, be able to be like, those stages aren’t necessarily what the research packs up, like…
Katie Vernoy 32:44
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 32:44
You know, maybe not create an argument about what the science says and talks about just kind of where you’re at in your feelings right now.
Katie Vernoy 32:52
Sure.
Curt Widhalm 32:53
That’s maybe a small example. But we do have this responsibility with when clients end up bringing information in or if you are creating your own content that you make sure that you’re doing so accurately, and not just to build the following.
Katie Vernoy 33:10
And one more point before we wrap up, I think, as as I’ve been listening to what you’re talking about, and just thinking about all of the different pop psychology that comes into my room from my clients. I think we need to also understand what it is. For the longest time, I didn’t take an Enneagram test, I had no idea really what it was, I figured it was you know, one of the horoscope personality tests, and it pretty much is but but um, but I’ve had so many people talk about love languages, or emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence, I have looked at it, I think it has a scientific base and is very much pop psychology. But I think there’s a lot of things that just pop into pop in, that come into our offices that are based in the zeitgeist, the popular psychology of the day that I think we actually have to pay attention to those things to be able to understand what they’re talking about, because not all of our clients will be able to tell the story the way the author has. And so we need to, I think we need to have a sense of the things that are coming into our office or are likely to come into our office. So read the read the pop psychology, dig into where you know what it’s based in, identify if it’s helpful, useful or dangerous, and then be able to engage with your clients on some of these things.
Curt Widhalm 34:35
You can find our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. We’ll include links to some of the stuff that we referenced here. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. You can do that either by engaging with us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapists Group to continue on this conversation. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.
… 34:57
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