Abstract
This chapter opens with a short biography of the American social psychologist and science writer Carol Tavris. Tavris speaks with Witkowski about the attitudes of academics toward pseudoscience and her own experiences writing about important findings from psychological science that have debunked many popular but incorrect beliefs, beliefs that have caused enormous personal and social damage. The two consider the gap between psychotherapy and science, and the difficulty of assessing precisely therapy’s benefits and harms. Tavris discusses the Stanford Prison Experiment, positive psychology, and the so-called crisis in psychology resulting in part from the shift from studies based on observing behavior to those based on self-reports. She then highlights psychology’s achievements and challenges and provides advice to aspiring public intellectuals and young psychologists.
Academics, like anyone else, will often turn a blind eye to evidence that they could be wrong about what they do or about a belief they hold.
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Selected Readings
Bluming, A., & Tavris, C. (2018). Estrogen matters: Why taking hormones in menopause can improve women’s well-being and lengthen their lives—Without raising the risk of breast cancer. New York: Little, Brown, Spark.
Gonzales, M. H., Tavris, C., & Aronson, J. (Eds.). (2010). The scientist and the humanist: A festschrift in honor of Elliot Aronson. New York: Psychology Press.
Tavris, C. (1989). Anger: The misunderstood emotion (rev. ed.). New York: Touchstone.
Tavris, C. (1992). The mismeasure of woman: Why women are not the better sex, the inferior sex, or the opposite sex. New York: Touchstone.
Tavris, C. (2011). Psychobabble and biobunk: Using psychological science to think critically about popular psychology (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Tavris, C., & Aronson, E. (2015/2020). Mistakes were made (but not by me): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts (rev. ed.). New York: Mariner Books.
Tavris, C., & Wade, C. (1984). The longest war: Sex differences in perspective (rev. ed.). New York: Harcourt.
Tavris, C., & Wade, C. (2001). Psychology in perspective (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade, C., Tavris, C., Sommers, S., & Shin, L. (2018). Invitation to psychology (7th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education.
Wade, C., Tavris, C., Sommers, S., & Shin, L. (2020). Psychology (13th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education.
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Witkowski, T. (2020). Carol Tavris: Writing About Psychological Science and Skepticism. In: Shaping Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50003-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50003-0_16
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