{"id":2522,"date":"2017-11-10T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T08:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2017-12-06T21:38:43","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T21:38:43","slug":"the-dangers-of-weird-neuroscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/the-dangers-of-weird-neuroscience\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dangers of Weird Neuroscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AdobeStock_86304839_Credit\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How do psychologists know what they know about human mental processes?<\/p>\n

Quite often, they run studies to see how people behave: what do they remember? where do they look? what do they choose? how do they describe their thoughts?<\/p>\n

If they run those studies just right,\u00a0psychologists can test a very small number of people, and reach conclusions about a very large number of people.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they can reach conclusions about all 7,400,000,000\u00a0 of us.<\/p>\n

Unless…<\/strong><\/p>\n

What if that small group of people being studied isn’t even remotely a representative sample of the world’s population. What if almost all of them are psychology majors at American colleges and universities?<\/p>\n

What if they are–almost exclusively–from countries that are Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

(Notice that, cleverly, those adjectives acronym up to the word WEIRD.)<\/p>\n

Here’s an example of the problem. Last year, I spoke about Mindset at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa: a school<\/a> that draws students from all across the African continent.<\/p>\n

And yet, I know of no research at all<\/em> that\u00a0studies Mindset in an African cultural context. I could share with them research from the US, and from Hong Kong, and from France, and from Taiwan. But Africa? Nothing.<\/p>\n

How valid are Mindset conclusions for their students? We don’t really know–at least, “know” in the way that psychologists want to know things–until we do research in Africa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(By the way: if you know of some Mindset research done in Africa, please send it my way…)<\/p>\n

Beyond Psychology<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article<\/a> over at The Atlantic does a good job of describing this problem in neuroscience<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Because the sample of the population included in neuroscience studies is so skewed, the conclusions we reach about…say…typical brain development schedules are simply wrong.<\/p>\n

Better said: those conclusions are correct<\/em> about the subset of the population being studied, but not necessarily correct<\/em> for everyone else.<\/p>\n

And, of course, most people are “everyone else.”<\/p>\n

What Does This Problem Mean for Teachers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s my advice to teachers:<\/p>\n

When a researcher gives you advice, find out about the participants<\/em> included in their study. If those participants resemble your students, that’s good. But if not, you needn’t be too quick to adopt this researcher’s advice.<\/p>\n

For example: if a study of college students shows that a particular kind of challenging feedback promotes a growth mindset, that information is very helpful\u00a0for people who teach college<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But, if you teach 3rd grade, you might need to translate that challenging feedback to fit your students’ development. In fact, you might need to set it aside altogether.<\/p>\n

Because participants in these studies are often so WEIRD, we should beware extrapolating results to the rest of the world’s students, including our\u00a0own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do psychologists know what they know about human mental processes? Quite often, they run studies to see how people behave: what do they remember? where do they look? what do they choose? how do they describe their thoughts? If they run those studies just right,\u00a0psychologists can test a very small number of people, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,17],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-methodology","tag-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2529,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions\/2529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}