Fact Friday: Psychology ISN'T Mind Reading

You've heard it a thousand times; you've probably even said it yourself: "So, you're a psychologist? Do you know what I'm thinking right now? What am I thinking? Tell me what I'm thinking!"

While this might be a useful thing while playing All-Fours or trying to figure out why your girlfriend is giving you cut-eye, psychology can't help you read someone's thoughts.

Did you do something? Did you forget to do something?
We wish we could help you out, but we really don't know how.

The word "psychology" comes from the Greek words 'psykhe', meaning 'soul' and 'logia', which means 'study of'. So, quite literally then, we can say that psychology is the study of the soul.

But what is the soul?

In the 13th Century, Thomas Aquinas stated that all living organisms have a soul. His interpretation of the soul was that it was not a physical part of the body, but actually an act of the body. These acts of the body later became interpreted as the mind; thoughts, emotions and behaviours.

In the 19th Century, Wilhelm Wundt became the first person to call himself a psychologist and he identified psychology as a science separate from biology and philosophy. At the University of Leipzig in Germany, Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated to psychology, making it an independent and recognised field of study. In his lab, he explored the nature of mental disorders, abnormal behaviours and damaged parts of the brain.

As you can see, 'the study of the soul', changed into the study of mental functions, experiences and behaviours.

The reason people think that psychology is mind-reading is because, through many years of studying, psychologists have learned how to interpret behaviours. Mind-reading, as portrayed in popular culture, is a talent called mentalism. If you're familiar with TV shows such as Psych and The Mentalist, then you may already know that mentalism uses the observation of body-language, tone of voice and environmental cues in order to come to a conclusion. There may also be a certain degree of subliminal suggestion, which causes people to act or respond in a particular manner, allowing the mentalist to confirm or re-evaluate his or her observations. Because the cues used to draw the conclusion are so basic and everyday, most people overlook them, but when the information is gathered and effectively summarised by a mentalist, people are usually astonished and attribute it to psychic powers rather than mundane observation.

People also confuse psychology with telepathy, which is the transfer of information from one person to another without using any known senses or any physicial medium (eg: telephone, email, letter). The scientific community does not regard this type of thought-transference as a real occurrence. Many studies have been carried out with the hope of detecting and understanding telepathy, but the results are neither reliable nor valid.

Believe us when we say that telepathy doesn't exist.
(click to enlarge photo)