Reading Psychology Articles Critically

There are generally two kinds of psychology articles—the ones you find in popular magazines, and the ones you find in research journals. Both have something to contribute to the public reservoir of knowledge, but both can also have flaws and they should be read with a discerning eye. If articles make claims, they should be able to back them up with strong evidence, and this goes for every research publication you read, not just psychology articles.

Pop psychology is sometimes used as a derogatory term in the field of psychology because it connotes fluffy and superficial psychology know-how that’s riddled with misconceptions. This might be true for some cases, but pop psych doesn’t deserve that much flak. To its credit, pop psych makes psychology findings easily digestible to the public and anyway it espouses ideas that aren’t too difficult to figure out or believe—can you believe that who people smile more feel happier? Actually, a lot of psychology concepts are pretty intuitive, but psychology is a science too and science has to investigate even the most obvious hypotheses. And investigating a hypothesis isn’t simply a matter of yes or no

Journal research articles are more specific and more likely to be accurate than pop psych articles are, but there are many factors that must be taken into account when examining psychology articles in general. First of all, pop psych articles tend to present things as if they are or they aren’t, or make it so people easily draw this conclusion. For example, an article might say, “Research shows that smiling makes you happier.” While it’s probably true, it’s not possible to say that research shows it, because research can only suggest. People should remember that often these studies involve artificial situations created in the lab and not real-life interaction. So psychology research articles would likely present the same info as, “Our study suggests that smiling can increase feelings of happiness.” This would be more accurate, but you still have to discern at this point. How exactly was the experiment conducted, and was the situation controlled so that the results wouldn’t be biased?

Take this overly-simplified hypothetical experiment: a group of college-aged males come into the lab and rate how happy they’re feeling, then walk around in a room and smile at each other, and then they rate their feelings of happiness afterwards. The results show that they were all happier after smiling, but there are some issues with this study. For example, the participants were all male, so who’s to say that these results can apply to females? Also, not every participant was necessarily exposed to the same condition. Some participants might have smiled at more people than others. The results of this study aren’t as valid because there are flaws in the design.

So whenever you come across psychology articles, pay attention to how they say things and what they say about them. Read with a critical eye and don’t readily believe everything that you read, including this pop psych article you’ve just read. Psychology is about behavior and the mind, and what you decide to do and think is up to you.