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How to Think Straight
About Psychology
ELEVENTH EDITION

Keith E. Stanovich
University of Toronto

330 Hudson Street, NY NY 10013

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stanovich, Keith E., 1950- author.
Title: How to think straight about psychology / Keith E. Stanovich,
University of Toronto.
Description: Eleventh edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey: Pearson Education,
[2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017037900| ISBN 9780134478623 | ISBN 0134478622
Subjects: LCSH: Psychology—Research—Methodology. | Mass
media—Psychological aspects. | Mass media—Objectivity.
Classification: LCC BF76.5 .S68 2018 | DDC 150.72—dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037900

1 17

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ISBN-10: 0-13-447862-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-447862-3
To Paula, who taught me how to think straight about life
Contents
Preface vi Essentialist Questions and the Misunderstanding
of Psychology 34
Summary 35
1 Psychology Is Alive and Well
(and Doing Fine Among the Sciences) 1 4 Testimonials and Case Study
Evidence: Placebo Effects and the
The Freud Problem 1
Amazing Randi 36
The Diversity of Modern Psychology 2
Implications of Diversity 3 The Place of the Case Study 37
Unity in Science 4 Why Testimonials Are Worthless: Placebo Effects 38
What, Then, Is Science? 5 The “Vividness” Problem 41
Systematic Empiricism 6 The Overwhelming Impact of the Single Case 43
Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication and Peer Why Vivid Anecdotes and Testimonials Are
Review 6 So Potent 43
Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists’ Search The Amazing Randi: Fighting Fire with Fire 44
for Testable Theories 8 Testimonials Open the Door to Pseudoscience 45
Psychology and Folk Wisdom: The Problem with Summary 49
“Common Sense” 9
Psychology as a Young Science 12 5 Correlation and Causation: Birth
Summary 13 Control by the Toaster Method 50

2 Falsifiability: How to Foil Little The Third-Variable Problem

Why Goldberger’s Evidence Was Better
51
52
Green Men in the Head 14
The Directionality Problem 54
Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion 15 Selection Bias 55
The Theory of Knocking Rhythms 16 Summary 57
Freud and Falsifiability 16
The Little Green Men 18 6 Getting Things Under Control:
Not All Confirmations Are Equal 19 The Case of Clever Hans 58
Falsifiability and Folk Wisdom 19
Snow and Cholera 59
The Freedom to Admit a Mistake 20
Thoughts Are Cheap 22 Comparison, Control, and Manipulation 59
Random Assignment in Conjunction with
Errors in Science: Getting Closer to the Truth 22
Manipulation Defines the True Experiment 60
Summary 24
The Importance of Control Groups 62

3 Operationism and Essentialism: The Case of Clever Hans, the Wonder Horse
Clever Hans in the 1990s and in the Present Day
65
67
“But, Doctor, What Does It Really
Prying Variables Apart: Special Conditions 69
Mean?” 25 Intuitive Physics 71
Why Scientists Are Not Essentialists 25 Intuitive Psychology 72
Essentialists Like to Argue About the Meaning Summary 73
of Words 26
Operationists Link Concepts to Observable 7 “But It’s Not Real Life!”:
Events 26 The “Artificiality” Criticism
Reliability and Validity 28 and Psychology 74
Direct and Indirect Operational Definitions 30
Scientific Concepts Evolve 30 Why Natural Isn’t Always Necessary 74
Operational Definitions in Psychology 32 The Random Sample Versus Random Assignment
Confusion 75
Operationism as a Humanizing Force 33

iv
 Contents v

Theory-Driven Research Versus Direct Applications 76 Failure to Use Sample-Size Information 111
Applications of Psychological Theory 78 The Gambler’s Fallacy 112
The “College Sophomore” Problem 79 A Further Word About Statistics and Probability 114
The Real-Life and College Sophomore Problems Summary 116
in Perspective 82
Summary 83
11 The Role of Chance in Psychology 117
8 Avoiding the Einstein Syndrome: The Tendency to Try to Explain Chance Events 117
The Importance of Converging Explaining Chance: Illusory Correlation and the
Evidence 84 Illusion of Control 119
Chance and Psychology 120
The Connectivity Principle 85
Coincidence 120
A Consumer’s Rule: Beware of Violations of
Personal Coincidences 122
Connectivity 85
Accepting Error in Order to Reduce Error:
The “Great-Leap” Model Versus the
Gradual-Synthesis Model 86 Clinical Versus Actuarial Prediction 123
Summary 128
Converging Evidence: Progress Despite Flaws 87
Types of Converging Evidence 89
Scientific Consensus 93 12 The Rodney Dangerfield of the
Methods and the Convergence Principle 94 Sciences 129
The Progression to More Powerful Methods 95
Psychology’s Image Problem 129
A Counsel Against Despair 96
Psychology and Parapsychology 130
Summary 98
The Self-Help Literature 131

9 The Misguided Search for the Recipe Knowledge 132

Psychology and Other Disciplines 133
“Magic Bullet”: The Issue of
Our Own Worst Enemies 134
Multiple Causation 99
Our Own Worst Enemies, Part II: Psychology
The Concept of Interaction 100 Has Become an Ideological Monoculture 137
The Temptation of the Single-Cause Explanation 102 Isn’t Everyone a Psychologist? Implicit Theories
Summary 104 of Behavior 142
The Source of Resistance to Scientific
10 The Achilles’ Heel of Human Psychology 142
Cognition: Probabilistic Reasoning 105 The Final Word 144
“Person-Who” Statistics 107
Probabilistic Reasoning and the Misunderstanding References 146
of Psychology 108
Name Index 162
Psychological Research on Probabilistic Reasoning 109
Insufficient Use of Probabilistic Information 110 Subject Index 166
Preface

T
here exists a body of knowledge that is unknown to of the pseudoscience industry, which is discussed in this
most people. This information concerns human be- book, increases the media’s tendency toward sensationalis-
havior and consciousness in their various forms. It tic reporting of science. This tendency is worse in psychol-
can be used to explain, predict, and control human actions. ogy than in other sciences, and understanding the reasons
Those who have access to this knowledge use it to gain an why this is so is an important part of learning how to think
understanding of other human beings. They have a more straight about psychology.
complete and accurate conception of what determines the This book, then, is directed not at potential researchers
behavior and thoughts of other individuals than do those in psychology but at a much larger group: the consumers of
who do not have this knowledge. psychological information. The target audience is the begin-
Surprisingly enough, this unknown body of knowledge ning psychology student and the general reader who have
is the discipline of psychology. encountered information on psychological issues in the
What can I possibly mean when I say that the discipline general media and have wondered how to go about evalu-
of psychology is unknown? Surely, you may be thinking, ating its validity.
this statement was not meant to be taken literally. Book- This book is not a standard introductory psychology
stores contain large sections full of titles dealing with psy- text. It does not outline a list of facts that psychological re-
chology. Television and radio talk shows regularly feature search has uncovered. Indeed, telling everyone to take an
psychological topics. Magazine articles and websites quote introductory psychology course at a university is probably
people called psychologists talking about a variety of top- not the ultimate solution to the inaccurate portrayal of psy-
ics. Yet, despite all of this, there is an important sense in chology in the media. There are many laypeople with a le-
which the field of psychology is unknown. gitimate interest in psychology who do not have the time,
The transfer of “psychological” knowledge that is tak- money, or access to a university to pursue formal study.
ing place via the media is largely an illusion. Few people are More importantly, as a teacher of university-level psycholo-
aware that the majority of the books they see in the psychol- gy courses, I am forced to admit that my colleagues and I of-
ogy sections of many bookstores are written by individuals ten fail to give our beginning students a true understanding
with absolutely no standing in the psychological communi- of the science of psychology. The reason is that lower-level
ty. Few are aware that many of the most visible psychologi- courses often do not teach the critical analytical skills that
cal “experts” have contributed no information to the fund of are the focus of this book. As instructors, we often become
knowledge in the discipline of psychology. obsessed with “content”—with “covering material.” Every
The flurry of media attention paid to “psychologi- time we stray a little from the syllabus to discuss issues such
cal” topics has done more than simply present inaccurate as psychology in the media, we feel a little guilty and begin
information. It has also obscured the very real and grow- to worry that we may not cover all the topics before the end
ing knowledge base in the field of psychology. The general of the term.
public is unsure about what is and is not psychology and Consider the average introductory psychology text-
is unable to independently evaluate claims about human book. Many now contain between 600 and 800 multicol-
behavior. Adding to this problem is the fact that many peo- umned pages and reference literally hundreds of studies in
ple have a vested interest in a public that is either without the published literature. Of course, there is nothing wrong
evaluative skills or that believes there is no way to evaluate with such books containing so much material. It simply re-
psychological claims. The latter view, sometimes called the flects the increasing knowledge base in psychology. There
“anything goes” attitude, is one of the fallacies discussed in are, however, some unfortunate side effects. Instructors are
this book, and it is particularly costly to the public. Many often so busy trying to cram their students full of dozens of
pseudosciences are multimillion-dollar industries that de- theories, facts, and experiments that they fail to deal with
pend on the lack of public awareness that claims about some of the fundamental questions and misconceptions
human behavior can be tested. The general public is also that students bring with them to the study of psychology.
unaware that many of the claims made by these pseudo- Rather than dealing directly with these misconceptions, the
sciences (e.g., astrology, psychic surgery, speed reading, instructors (and the introductory textbook authors) often
biorhythms, therapeutic touch, subliminal self-help tapes, hope that if students are exposed to enough of the empirical
facilitated communication, indigo children, psychic de- content of psychology, they will simply induce the answers
tectives) have been tested and proved false. The existence to their questions. All too often this hope is frustrated. In

vi
 Preface vii

a final review session—or in office hours at the end of the New to the Edition
term—instructors are often shocked and discouraged by
The eleventh edition of How to Think Straight About Psychology
questions and comments that might have been expected
has no major structural revisions because a chapter reorga-
on the first day of the course but not after 14 weeks: “But
nization occurred in a previous edition. The content and
psychology experiments aren’t real life; what can they tell
order of the chapters remain the same. At the request of re-
us?”; “Psychology can’t be a real science like chemistry,
viewers and users, this edition remains at the same length
can it?”; “But I heard a therapist on TV say the opposite of
as the tenth edition. Readers and users have not wanted the
what our textbook said”; “I think this theory is stupid—my
book to lengthen and, indeed, it has not. I have continued
brother behaves just the opposite of what it says”; “Psychol-
to update and revise the examples that are used in the book
ogy is nothing more than common sense, isn’t it?”; “Every-
(while keeping those that are reader favorites). Some dated
one knows what anxiety is—why bother defining it?” For
examples have been replaced with more contemporary stud-
many students, such questions are not implicitly answered
ies and issues. I have made a major effort to use contempo-
merely by a consideration of the content of psychology. In
rary citations that are relevant to the various concepts and
this book, I deal explicitly with the confusions that underlie
experimental effects that are mentioned. A large number of
questions and comments such as these.
new citations appear in this edition (290 new citations, to be
Unfortunately, research has shown that the average
exact!), so that the reader continues to have up-to-date refer-
introductory psychology course does surprisingly little to
ences on all of the examples and concepts.
correct students’ misconceptions about the discipline (Kow-
New examples, discussions, and sections have been
alski & Taylor, 2009; Lilienfeld, 2014; Taylor & Kowalski,
added. A sampling of these new additions include the
2004). This unfortunate fact provides the rationale for this
following issues and discussions: cell phone use while
book. Psychology students need explicit instruction in the
driving; the use of psychology in child custody disputes;
critical thinking skills that will transform them into inde-
pseudoscience in clinical psychology; the efficacy of crisis
pendent evaluators of psychological information.
counselling after traumatic events; the causes of people
Years after students have forgotten the content of an
making bad investment decisions; the “reading wars” in
introductory psychology course, they will still use the fun-
education; the effects of violent video games; facilitating
damental principles covered in this book to evaluate psycho-
communication in autism; conducting experiments over
logical claims. Long after Erikson’s stages of development
the Internet; the left-brain/right brain fallacy; health out-
have been forgotten, students will be using the thinking
comes of alcohol consumption; distraction from electronic
tools introduced in this text to evaluate new psychological
dashboard devices; coverage of the replication crisis in
information encountered in the media. Once acquired, these
psychology; a new emphasis on the evils of vanity publish-
skills will serve as lifelong tools that will aid in the evalua-
ing; an additional section on the relation between lab and
tion of knowledge claims. For example, these skills provide
field results in psychology; a discussion of the Amazon
some criteria for assessing the reliability of “expert” opin-
Mechanical Turk; a discussion of how vivid presentations
ion. Because the need to rely on expert opinion can never be
of results from neuroscience can skew conclusions; a dis-
eliminated in a complex society, the evaluation of an expert’s
cussion of the fallacies surrounding the mistaken idea of
credibility becomes essential to knowledge acquisition.
multitasking; a new discussion of Walter Mischel’s famous
Many psychologists are pessimistic about any effort to
marshmallow studies and how they exemplify going from
stem the tide of misinformation about their discipline. Al-
basic to applied research; a discussion of the danger of the
though this pessimism is, unfortunately, often justified, this
phrase “new study shows” in the media; many additional
“consumer’s guide” to psychology was motivated by the
examples of the use of meta-analytic studies in psychology
idea that psychologists must not let this problem become a
(including marriage longevity, brain training, predictors of
self-fulfilling prophecy.
job performance, and suicide prevention); a discussion of how
Although I have welcomed the opportunity to prepare
the media suggest that science is non-cumulative in their
several editions of How to Think Straight About Psychology, it
reporting of research on autism and reading disability
is unfortunately true that the reasons for the book’s exist-
and ADHD.
ence are just as applicable today as they were when I wrote
The goal of the book remains what it always was—to
the first edition. Students in introductory psychology cours-
present a short introduction to the critical thinking skills that
es enter with as many misconceptions as they ever did, and
will help the student to better understand the subject mat-
they think that unaided common sense is all they need to
ter of psychology. During the past decade and a half there
understand human behavior, or worse, they turn to pseu-
has been an increased emphasis on the teaching of critical
dosciences. Thus, the goals of all subsequent editions have
thinking in universities (Arum & Roksa, 2011; Sternberg,
remained the same: to present a short introduction to the
Roediger, & Halpern, 2006). Indeed, some state university
critical thinking skills that will help students to better un-
systems have instituted curricular changes mandating an
derstand the subject matter of psychology.
viii Preface

emphasis on critical thinking skills. At the same time, how- California State University at Sacramento; Michael O’Boyle,
ever, other educational scholars were arguing that critical Iowa State University; Blaine Peden, University of Wisconsin,
thinking skills should not be isolated from specific factual Eau Claire; John F. Pfister, Dartmouth College; Sam
content. How to Think Straight About Psychology combines Rakover, University of Haifa; Richard Redding, Hahneman
these two trends. It is designed to provide the instructor University; Michael Ross, University of Waterloo; John
with the opportunity to teach critical thinking within the Ruscio, Elizabethtown College; Walter Sa, Grand Valley
rich content of modern psychology. State University; Allen Salo, University of Maine at Presque
Readers are encouraged to send me comments at: keith. Isle; Frank Schieber, University of South Dakota; Mike
[email protected]. Seiler, Oakland University; Jillene Grover Seiver, Bellevue
College; Marjorie Semonick, University of Minnesota; David
Share, University of Haifa; Jeffrey Sherman, Northwestern
Acknowledgments University; Linda Siegel, University of British Columbia; Nor-
Many of the individuals I have acknowledged in earlier edi- man Silverman, University of Illinois, Chicago; Frank Smoll,
tions continue to contribute ideas for the book. However, I University of Washington; Paul Solomon, Williams College;
must single out Richard West of James Madison University, Mike Stadler, University of Missouri; Maggie Toplak, York
who has been a most valuable continuing contributor to the University; Larry Vandervert, Spokane Falls Community
book’s evolution. A humane scholar and a true friend, his College; John Vokey, University of Lethbridge; Carol Wade,
intellectual and emotional support is much appreciated. College of Marin; Marty Wall, University of Toronto; Bar-
Several other scholars have provided valuable feed- bara Wanchisen, Baldwin-Wallace College; Toni G. Wegner,
back on this and earlier editions. These include Wayne University of Virginia; Edward Wisniewski, Northwestern
Bartz, American River College; Christopher Bauer, Uni- University; Murray S. Work, California State University at
versity of New Hampshire; Ludy Benjamin, Texas A&M Sacramento; and Edward Zuckerman, Guilford Press.
University; Angela M. Birkhead-Flight, University of Cin- Special thanks to Gerald L. Peterson from Saginaw Val-
cinnati; Virginia Blankenship, University of Northern Ari- ley State University for some very insightful comments.
zona; Edward C. Chang, Northern Kentucky University; The insights from many discussions about teaching
Michael Choban, West Virginia Wesleyan University; James methodology with Ted Landau, Larry Lilliston, and Dean
Clark, University of Winnipeg; Jim Coan, University of Purcell, all of Oakland University, were incorporated into
Arizona; Ellen Cole, Alaska Pacific University; Ellen Cotter, the book. Reviewers of recent editions who were par-
Georgia Southwestern State University; Anne Cunningham, ticularly helpful include Michael Choban, West Virginia
University of California, Berkeley; Ian Deary, University Wesleyan University; David DiBattista, Brock Univer-
of Edinburgh; Julie Deisinger, Saint Xavier University; David sity; Steven Isonio, Golden West College; John Ruscio,
DiBattista, Brock University; Wallace Dixon, Heidelberg Col- Elizabethtown College; Allen Salo, University of Maine at
lege; Mark Fineman, Southern Connecticut State University; Presque Isle; Cindy Sifonis, Oakland University; Michael
Herbert Fink, SUNY–Brockport; Heinz Fischer, Long Beach Tagler, Nebraska Wesleyan University; and Chris Ward,
City College; Ronald Gandelman, Rutgers University; Mi- Stonehill College.
chael Gasser, University of Northern Iowa; Traci A. Giuliano, My editor at Pearson, Priya Christopher, has provid-
Southwestern University; William Graziano, Purdue Uni- ed guidance, enthusiasm, and support for the book. The
versity; Nancy J. Gussett, Baldwin-Wallace College; Gordon production process benefitted from the support of: Erin
Hammerle, Adrian College; Randy Hansen, Oakland Univer- Mitchell, Carly Czech, Anita Castro, Courtney Welsh, Al-
sity; William L. Hathaway, Regent University; George Heise, lison Campbell, Anju Baskar, and Joel Morgan Kearney.
Indiana University; Albert Heldt, Grand Rapids Junior Col- Robyn Macpherson is thanked for her diligent library and
lege; Dori Henderson, Metropolitan State University; George reference assistance on several editions prior to this one.
Howard, University of Notre Dame; Barry Kendall, Ontario, Finally, I wish to thank Paula J. Stanovich for more than
Canada; Bernie Koenig, Fanshawe College; Victor Koop, just the emotional support that is routinely alluded to in
Goshen College; Andy Kwong, University of New South acknowledgments. Her concern for all human beings, par-
Wales; P. A. Lamal, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; ticularly those less fortunate, is an inspiration to all who know
Stephen Louisell, Kalamazoo Community College; Gwen her. A view we both share is that all human beings should
Lupfer-Johnson, University of Alaska, Anchorage; Marga- have the opportunity to utilize their full potential. This book
ret Matlin, State University of New York-Geneseo; Douglas attests to the fact that I have had such an opportunity. Paula
Mook, University of Virginia; Timothy Moore, York University; works to speed the day when this opportunity will be fully
Edward Morris, University of Kansas; Joseph E. Morrow, extended to all individuals with disabilities.
Chapter 1
Psychology Is Alive
and Well (and Doing
Fine Among the
Sciences)
Learning Objectives
1.1 Explain why Freud’s methods are unrepresentative of modern
psychology
1.2 Describe the implications of diversity in the field of psychology

1.3 Differentiate psychology from other disciplines that deal with

human behavior
1.4 Describe the three features that define science

1.5 Distinguish between psychology and folk wisdom.

1.6 Explain the reasons for the hostility directed towards psychology
as a discipline

The Freud Problem

Stop 100 people on the street and ask them to name a psychologist, either living or dead.
Record the responses. Of course, Dr. Phil and other “media psychologists” would cer-
tainly be named. If we leave out the media and pop psychologists, however, and con-
sider only those who have had an impact on psychology as a discipline, there would
be no question about the outcome of this informal survey. Sigmund Freud would be
the winner hands down. B. F. Skinner would finish a distant second (Roediger, 2016;
Sternberg, 2016). No other psychologist would get enough recognition even to bother
about. Thus, Freud, along with the pop psychology presented in the media, largely
defines psychology in the public mind.
The notoriety of Freud has greatly affected the general public’s views of psychol-
ogy and has contributed to many misunderstandings. For example, many introduc-
tory psychology students are surprised to learn that if all the members of the American
Psychological Association (APA) who were concerned with Freudian psychoanalysis
were collected, they would make up less than 5 percent of the membership (Engel,
2008). In another major psychological association, the Association for Psychological
Science, they would be even less common. One popular introductory psychology
textbook (Wade & Tavris, 2008) is over 700 pages long, yet contains only 15 pages on
which either Freud or psychoanalysis is mentioned—and these 15 pages often contain
1
2 Chapter 1

criticism (“most Freudian concepts were, and still are, rejected by most empirically
oriented psychologists,” p. 19). Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik (2014)
calls Freudian theory a zombie idea that has haunted English departments of universi-
ties long after it had nearly disappeared from psychology.
In short, modern psychology is not obsessed with the ideas of Sigmund Freud, nor is it
largely defined by them. Freud’s work is an extremely small part of the varied set of issues,
data, and theories that concern modern psychologists. This larger body of research and
theory encompasses the work of 5 Nobel Prize winners (David Hubel, Daniel Kahneman,
Herbert Simon, Roger Sperry, and Torsten Wiesel) and 17 winners of the National Medal
of Science (Lowman & Benjamin, 2012), all of whom are virtually unknown to the public.
It is bad enough that Freud’s importance to modern psychology is vastly exaggerated.
What makes the situation worse is that Freud’s methods of investigation are completely
unrepresentative of how modern psychologists conduct their research. In fact, Freud’s
methods give an utterly misleading impression of psychological research. For example,
Freud did not use controlled experimentation, which, as we shall see in Chapter 6, is the
most potent weapon in the modern psychologist’s arsenal of methods. Freud thought that
case studies could establish the truth or falsity of theories. We shall see in Chapter 4 why
this idea is mistaken. As one historian of psychotherapy has noted, “If Freud himself was a
scientist, it was a strange science he was promulgating. . . . Psychoanalysis contained theo-
ries and hypotheses, but it lacked a method of empirical observation” (Engel, 2008, p. 17).
Finally, a critical problem with Freud’s work concerns the connection between
theory and behavioral data. As we shall see in Chapter 2, for a theory to be considered
scientific, the link between the theory and behavioral data must meet some minimal
requirements. Freud’s theories do not meet these criteria (Boudry & Buekens, 2011;
Dufresne, 2007; Engel, 2008). To make a long story short, Freud built an elaborate the-
ory on a database (case studies and introspection) that was not substantial enough
to support it. Freud concentrated on building complicated theoretical structures, but
he did not, as modern psychologists do, ensure that they would rest on a database of
reliable, replicable behavioral relationships. In summary, familiarity with Freud’s style
of work can be a significant impediment to the understanding of modern psychology.
In this chapter, we shall deal with the Freud problem in two ways. First, when
we illustrate the diversity of modern psychology, the rather minor position occupied
by Freud will become clear. Second, we shall discuss what features are common to
psychological investigations across a wide variety of domains (features missing
from Freud’s work). We will see that there is one unifying characteristic of modern
psychology: the quest to understand behavior by using the methods of science.

The Diversity of Modern Psychology

There is, in fact, a great diversity of content in modern psychology. A textbook once
referred to psychology as “a loosely federated intellectual empire that stretches from
the domains of the biological sciences on one border to those of the social sciences on
the other” (p. 774, Gleitman, 1981). Understanding that psychology is composed of an
incredibly wide and diverse set of investigations is critical to an appreciation of the nature
of the discipline. Simply presenting some of the concrete indications of this diversity will
illustrate the point. The APA has 54 different divisions, each representing either a particu-
lar area of research or a particular area of practice (see Table 1.1). From the table, you can
see the range of subjects studied by psychologists, the range of settings involved, and the
different aspects of behavior studied. The other large organization of psychologists—the
Association for Psychological Science—is just as diverse. Actually, Table 1.1 understates
the diversity within the field of psychology because it gives the impression that each divi-
sion is a specific specialty area. In fact, each of the 54 divisions listed in the table is a broad
area of study that contains a wide variety of subdivisions! In short, it is difficult to exag-
gerate the diversity of the topics that fall within the field of psychology.
 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine among the Sciences) 3

Table 1.1 Divisions of the American Psychological Association

1. General Psychology 30. Psychological Hypnosis
2. Teaching of Psychology 31. State Psychological Association Affairs
3. Experimental Psychology 32. Humanistic Psychology
5. Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics 33. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
6. Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology 34. Population and Environmental Psychology
7. Developmental Psychology 35. Psychology of Women
8. Personality and Social Psychology 36. Psychology of Religion
9. Psychological Study of Social Issues 37. Child and Family Policy and Practice
10. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 38. Health Psychology
12. Clinical Psychology 39. Psychoanalysis
13. Consulting Psychology 40. Clinical Neuropsychology
14. Industrial and Organizational Psychology 41. Psychology and Law
15. Educational Psychology 42. Psychologists in Independent Practice
16. School Psychology 43. Family Psychology
17. Counseling Psychology 44. Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues
18. Psychologists in Public Service 45. Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues
19. Military Psychology 46. Media Psychology
20. Adult Development and Aging 47. Exercise and Sport Psychology
21. Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology 48. Peace Psychology
22. Rehabilitation Psychology 49. Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy
23. Consumer Psychology 50. Addictions
24. Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 51. Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity
25. Behavior Analysis 52. International Psychology
26. History of Psychology 53. Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
27. Community Psychology 54. Pediatric Psychology
28. Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse 55. Pharmacotherapy
29. Psychotherapy 56. Trauma Psychology

NOTE: There is no Division 4 or 11.

Implications of Diversity
Many people come to the study of psychology hoping to learn the one grand psychologi-
cal theory that unifies and explains all aspects of human behavior. Such hopes are often
disappointed, because psychology contains not one grand theory, but many different theo-
ries, each covering a limited aspect of behavior. The diversity of psychology guarantees
that the task of theoretical unification will be immensely difficult. Indeed, many psycholo-
gists would argue that such a unification is impossible. Others, however, are searching for
greater unification within the field (Brewer, 2013; Schwartz et al., 2016; Simonton, 2015).
For example, the coherence of psychology as a discipline has increased over the last three
decades due to the theoretical efforts of evolutionary psychologists. These researchers
have tried to bring unification to our conceptualization of human psychological processes
by viewing them as mechanisms serving critical evolutionary functions such as kinship
recognition, mate selection, cooperation, social exchange, and child rearing (Buss, 2011;
Cartwright, 2016; Geary, 2005, 2009). Likewise, Cacioppo (2007) points to subfields
such as social cognitive neuroscience as tying together numerous specialty areas within
psychology—in this case, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and neuropsychology.
No matter what their position on the issue of the coherence of the subject matter
of psychology, all psychologists agree that theoretical unification will be an extremely
difficult task. The lack of theoretical integration leads some critics of psychology to
denigrate the scientific progress that psychology has made. Such criticism often arises
from the mistaken notion that all true sciences must have a grand, unifying theory. It is
a mistaken notion because many other sciences also lack a unifying conceptualization.
4 Chapter 1

Some scholars have argued that the term “psychology” implies a coherence
of subject matter that is not characteristic of the discipline. As a result, a number
of leading university departments in the United States have been changing their
names to Department of Psychological Sciences (Jaffe, 2011; Klatzky, 2012). The term
“sciences” conveys two of the important messages of this chapter. That the term is
plural signals the point about the diversity of content in the discipline that we have
been discussing. The term “sciences” also signals where to look for the unity in the dis-
cipline of psychology—not to its content, but instead to its methods. Here is where we
actually find more unity of purpose among psychologists.

Unity in Science
Simply to say that psychology is concerned with human behavior does not distinguish
it from other disciplines. Many other professional groups and disciplines—including
economists, novelists, the law, sociology, history, political science, and anthropology—
are, in part, concerned with human behavior. Psychology is not unique in this respect.
Practical applications do not establish any uniqueness for the discipline of psy-
chology either. For example, many university students decide to major in psychology
because they have the laudable goal of wanting to “help people.” But helping people is
an applied part of an incredibly large number of fields, including social work, educa-
tion, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, police science, human resources,
and speech therapy. Similarly, the goal of training applied specialists to help people
by counseling them does not demand that we have a discipline called psychology.
Helping people by counseling them is an established part of many other fields, includ-
ing education, social work, police work, nursing, pastoral work, occupational therapy,
and many others.
It is easy to argue that there are really only two things that justify psychology as
an independent discipline. The first is that psychology studies the full range of human
and nonhuman behavior with the techniques of science. The second is that the applica-
tions that derive from this knowledge are scientifically based. Were this not true, there
would be no reason for psychology to exist.
Psychology is different from other behavioral fields in that it attempts to give the
public two guarantees. One is that the conclusions about behavior that it produces
derive from scientific evidence. The second is that practical applications of psychology
have been derived from and tested by scientific methods. Does psychology ever fall
short of these goals? Yes, quite often (Duarte et al., 2015; Ferguson, 2015; Lilienfeld,
2012). This book is about how we might better attain them. I will return in Chapter 12 to
the issue of psychologists themselves undermining their own legitimacy by not meeting
appropriate scientific standards. But, in principle, these are the standards that justify
psychology as an independent field. If psychology ever decides that these goals are not
worth pursuing—that it does not wish to adhere to scientific standards—then it might
as well fold its tent and let its various concerns devolve to other disciplines because it
would be a totally redundant field of intellectual inquiry.
Clearly, then, the first and most important step that anyone must take in under-
standing psychology is to realize that its defining feature is that it is the data-based sci-
entific study of behavior. Comprehending all of the implications of this fact will occupy
us for the rest of this book, because it is the primary way that we develop the ability
to think straight about psychology. Conversely, the primary way that people get con-
fused in their thinking about psychology is that they often fail to realize that it is a sci-
entific discipline. For example, it is quite common to hear people outside the discipline
voice the opinion that psychology is not a science. Why is this a common occurrence?
Attempts to convince the public that psychology cannot be a science stem from
a variety of sources. For example, there currently exist many industries surrounding
 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine among the Sciences) 5

pseudoscientific belief systems that have a vested interest in convincing the public
that anything goes in psychology and that there are no rational criteria for evaluating
psychological claims. This is the perfect atmosphere in which to market claims like:
“Lose weight through hypnosis,” “Develop your hidden psychic powers,” and “Learn
French while you sleep,” along with the many other parts of the multibillion-dollar
self-help industry that either are not based on scientific evidence or, in many cases, are
actually contradicted by much available evidence.
Another source of resistance to scientific psychology stems from the tendency
to oppose the expansion of science into areas where unquestioned authorities and
“common sense” have long reigned. History provides many examples of initial pub-
lic resistance to the use of science rather than philosophical speculation, theological
edict, or folk wisdom to explain the natural world. Each science has gone through a
phase of resistance to its development. Learned contemporaries of Galileo refused to
look into his new telescope because the existence of the moons of Jupiter would have
violated their philosophical and theological beliefs. For centuries, the understanding
of human anatomy progressed only haltingly because of prohibitions on the dissec-
tion of human cadavers. Charles Darwin was repeatedly denounced. Paul Broca’s
Society of Anthropology was opposed in France in the nineteenth century because
knowledge about human beings was thought to be subversive to the state.
Each scientific step to greater knowledge about human beings has evoked opposi-
tion. This opposition eventually dissipated, however, when people came to realize that
science does not destroy the meaning of our lives but enhances it. Who now believes
that astronomy’s mapping of the galaxies and its intricate theories about the composi-
tion of distant stars destroy our wonder at the universe? Who would substitute the
health care available in their community for that available before human cadavers
were routinely dissected? An empirical attitude toward the stars or the human body
has not diminished humanity. More recently, Darwin’s evolutionary synthesis laid
the foundation for startling advances in biology. Nevertheless, as we get closer to the
nature of human beings and their origins, vestiges of opposition remain. Many people
remain uncomfortable with the implications of evolutionary theory (Dennett, 1995;
Stanovich, 2004). If evolutionary biology, with its long and impressive record of scien-
tific achievements, still engenders public opposition, is it any wonder that psychology,
the most recent discipline to bring long-held beliefs about human beings under scien-
tific scrutiny, currently provokes people to deny its validity?

What, Then, Is Science?

In order to understand what psychology is, we must understand what science is. We
can begin by dealing with what science is not. First, science is not defined by sub-
ject matter. Any aspect of the universe is fair game for the development of a scientific
discipline, including all aspects of human behavior. We cannot divide the universe
into “scientific” and “nonscientific” topics. Although strong forces throughout history
have tried to place human beings outside the sphere of scientific investigation, they
have been unsuccessful, as we shall see. The reactions against psychology as a scien-
tific discipline probably represent the modern remnants of this ancient struggle.
Science is also not defined by the presence of instruments and experimental appa-
ratus. It is not the test tube, the computer, the electronic equipment, or the investiga-
tor’s white coat that defines science. These are the trappings of science but are not its
defining features. Science is, rather, a way of thinking about and observing the uni-
verse that leads to a deep understanding of its workings.
In the remainder of this chapter, we shall discuss three important and interrelated
features that define science: (1) the use of systematic empiricism; (2) the production of pub-
lic knowledge; and (3) the examination of solvable problems. Although we shall examine
6 Chapter 1

each feature separately, remember that the three connect to form a coherent general struc-
ture. (For a more detailed discussion of the general characteristics of a science, see the
works of Bronowski, Medawar, and Popper listed in the references section of this book.)

Systematic Empiricism
If you look up the word empiricism in any dictionary, you will find that it means “the prac-
tice of relying on observation.” Scientists find out about the world by examining it. The
fact that this point may seem obvious to you is an indication of the spread of the scientific
attitude in the past couple of centuries. In the past, it has not always seemed so obvious.
Recall the example of Galileo. With his primitive telescope, Galileo claimed to have seen
moons around the planet Jupiter at a time when it was thought by learned people that
there were only seven “heavenly bodies” (five planets, the sun, and the moon). This was
at a time when it was thought that knowledge was best obtained through pure thought
or through appeal to authority. Some contemporary scholars refused to look into Galileo’s
telescope. Others said the telescope was designed to trick. Still others said that it worked
on Earth but not in the sky (Shermer, 2011). Another scholar, Francesco Sizi, attempted to
refute Galileo not with observations, but with the following argument:
There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two eyes and a
mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two unpropitious, two
luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent. From which and
many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven metals, etc., which
it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is neces-
sarily seven. . . . Besides, the Jews and other ancient nations, as well as modern
Europeans, have adopted the division of the week into seven days, and have
named them from the seven planets; now if we increase the number of planets,
this whole system falls to the ground. . . . Moreover, the satellites are invisible to
the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore
would be useless and therefore do not exist.
(Hung, 2013, p. 426)

The point is not that the argument is laughably idiotic, but that it was seen at the
time as a suitable rebuttal to an actual observation! We laugh now because we have
the benefit of hindsight. Three centuries of the demonstrated power of the empiri-
cal approach give us an edge on poor Sizi. Take away those years of empiricism, and
many of us might have been there nodding our heads and urging him on. No, the
empirical approach is not necessarily obvious, which is why we often have to teach it,
even in a society that is dominated by science.
Empiricism pure and simple is not enough, however. Note that the heading for this
section is “Systematic Empiricism.” Observation is fine and necessary, but pure, unstruc-
tured observation of the natural world will not lead to scientific knowledge. Write down
every observation you make from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go
to bed on a given day. When you finish, you will have a great number of facts, but you will
not have a greater understanding of the world. Scientific observation is termed systematic
because it is structured so that the results of the observation reveal something about the
underlying nature of the world. Scientific observations are usually theory driven; they
test different explanations of the nature of the world. They are structured so that, depend-
ing on the outcome of the observation, some theories are supported and others rejected.

Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication

and Peer Review
Scientific knowledge is public in a special sense. By public, we, of course, do not mean
that scientific observations are posted on community center bulletin boards. Instead,
we refer to the fact that scientific knowledge does not exist solely in the mind of a
 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine among the Sciences) 7

particular individual. In an important sense, scientific knowledge does not exist at all
until it has been submitted to the scientific community for criticism and empirical test-
ing by others. Knowledge that is considered “special”—the province of the thought
processes of a particular individual, immune from scrutiny and criticism by others—
can never have the status of scientific knowledge. Likewise, science rejects the claim
that particular groups have access to special knowledge (Lukianoff, 2012).
Science makes the idea of public verifiability concrete via the procedure of repli-
cation. In order to be considered in the realm of science, a finding must be presented
to the scientific community in a way that enables other scientists to attempt the same
experiment and obtain the same results. When this occurs, we say that the finding
has been replicated. Scientists use replication to define the idea of public knowledge.
Replication ensures that a particular finding is not due simply to the errors or biases of
a particular investigator. In short, for a finding to be accepted by the scientific commu-
nity, it must be possible for someone other than the original investigator to duplicate
it. When a finding is presented in this way, it becomes public. It is no longer the sole
possession of the original researcher; it is instead available for other investigators to
extend, criticize, or apply in their own ways.
The poet John Donne told us that “no man is an island.” In science, no researcher
is an island. Each investigator is connected to the scientific community and its
knowledge base. It is this interconnection that enables science to grow cumulatively.
Researchers constantly build on previous knowledge in order to go beyond what is
currently known. This process is possible only if previous knowledge is stated in such
a way that any investigator can use it to build on.
By publicly verifiable knowledge, then, we mean findings presented to the scientific
community in such a way that they can be replicated, criticized, or extended by any-
one in the community. This is a most important criterion not only for scientists but also
for the layperson, who, as a consumer, must evaluate scientific information presented
in the media. One important way to distinguish charlatans and practitioners of pseu-
doscience from legitimate scientists is that the former often bypass the normal chan-
nels of scientific publication and instead go straight to the media with their “findings.”
One ironclad criterion that will always work for the public when presented with sci-
entific claims of uncertain validity is the question, Have the findings been published
in a recognized scientific journal that uses some type of peer review procedure? The
answer to this question will almost always separate pseudoscientific claims from the
real thing.
Peer review is a procedure in which each paper submitted to a research journal is
critiqued by several scientists, who then submit their criticisms to an editor. The editor
is usually a scientist with an extensive history of work in the specialty area covered by
the journal. The editor decides whether the weight of opinion warrants publication of the
paper, publication after further experimentation and statistical analysis, or rejection
because the research is flawed or trivial. Legitimate journals publish statements of their
editorial policies in each issue and on their websites, so you should always check to
see whether a journal is peer reviewed. This is even more important now because the
web has spawned dozens of open-access journals that will publish anything for a fee
(Levitin, 2016). These vanity web journals prey on young scholars desperate to publish
in order to get tenure at universities. Their presence on the web makes it harder for the
general public to discern peer-reviewed scientific research from things on the web that
look scientific but have not undergone the scrutiny of peer review.
Not all information in peer-reviewed scientific journals is necessarily correct
(Gilbert et al., 2016; Open Science Collaboration, 2015), but at least it has met a crite-
rion of peer criticism and scrutiny. Peer review is a minimal criterion, not a stringent
one, because most scientific disciplines publish dozens of different journals of varying
quality. Most scientific ideas can get published somewhere in the legitimate literature
if they meet some rudimentary standards. The idea that only a narrow range of data
8 Chapter 1

and theory can get published in science is false. This is an idea often suggested by pur-
veyors of bogus remedies and therapies who try to convince the media and the public
that they have been shut out of scientific outlets by a conspiracy of “orthodox science.”
But consider for a minute just how many legitimate outlets there are in a field like
psychology. The APA database PsycINFO summarizes articles from over 2,000 differ-
ent journals. Most of these journals are peer reviewed. Virtually all halfway legitimate
theories and experiments can find their way into this vast array of publication outlets.
Indeed, if anything, there are probably too many scientific journals. And there are cer-
tainly too many non-peer-reviewed journals and vanity journals that are not reviewed
at all (Kolata, 2017).
Again, I am not suggesting that all ideas published in peer-reviewed psychologi-
cal journals are necessarily valid. On the contrary, I emphasized earlier that this is
only a minimal criterion. However, the point is that the failure of an idea, a theory, a
claim, or a therapy to have adequate documentation in the peer-reviewed literature
of a scientific discipline is a very sure sign. Particularly when the lack of evidence is
accompanied by a media campaign to publicize the claim, it is a sure sign that the idea,
theory, or therapy is bogus.
The mechanisms of peer review vary somewhat from discipline to discipline, but
the underlying rationale is the same. Peer review is one way that science institutional-
izes the attitudes of objectivity and public criticism (replication is another). Ideas and
experimentation undergo a honing process in which they are submitted to other criti-
cal minds for evaluation. Ideas that survive this critical process have begun to meet
the criterion of public verifiability. The peer review process is far from perfect, but it
is really the only consumer protection that we have. To ignore it is to leave ourselves
at the mercy of the multimillion-dollar pseudoscience industries that are so good at
manipulating the media to their own ends (see Chapter 12). In subsequent chapters,
we will discuss in much more detail the high price we pay for ignoring the checks and
balances inherent in the true scientific practice of psychology.

Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists’ Search

for Testable Theories
Science deals with solvable, or specifiable, problems. This means that the types of ques-
tions that scientists address are potentially answerable by means of currently available
empirical techniques. If a problem is not solvable or a theory is not testable by the
empirical techniques that scientists have at hand, then scientists will not attack it. For
example, the question “Will three-year-old children given structured language stimu-
lation during day care be ready for reading instruction at an earlier age than children
not given such extra stimulation?” represents a scientific problem. It is answerable by
currently available empirical methods. The question “Are human beings inherently
good or inherently evil?” is not an empirical question and, thus, is simply not in the
realm of science. Likewise, the question “What is the meaning of life?” is not an empir-
ical question and so is outside the realm of science.
Science advances by positing theories to account for particular phenomena in
the world, by deriving predictions from these theories, by testing the predictions
empirically, and by modifying the theories based on the tests. The sequence might
be portrayed as follows: theory S prediction S test S theory modification. So what
a scientist often means by the term solvable problem is “testable theory.” What makes a
theory testable? The theory must have specific implications for observable events in
the natural world; this is what is meant by empirically testable. This criterion of testabil-
ity is often called the falsifiability criterion, and it is the subject of Chapter 2.
By saying that scientists tackle empirically solvable problems, we do not mean
to imply that different classes of problems are inherently solvable or unsolvable and
that this division is fixed forever. Quite the contrary: Some problems that are currently
 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine among the Sciences) 9

unsolvable may become solvable as theory and empirical techniques become more
sophisticated. For example, decades ago, historians would not have believed that the
controversial issue of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered a child by his slave Sally
Hemings was an empirically solvable question. Yet, by 1998, this problem had become
solvable through advances in genetic technology, and a paper was published in the
journal Nature (Foster et al., 1998) indicating that it was highly probable that Jefferson
was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson.
This is how science in general has developed and how new sciences have come
into existence. There is always ample room for disagreement about what is currently
solvable. Scientists themselves often disagree on this point as it relates to a particu-
lar problem. Thus, although all scientists agree on the solvability criterion, they may
disagree on its specific applications. Nobel laureate Peter Medawar titled one of his
books The Art of the Soluble to illustrate that part of the creativity involved in science is
finding the problem on the farthest edge of the frontier of human knowledge that will
yield to empirical techniques.
Psychology itself provides many good examples of the development from the
unsolvable to the solvable. There are many questions (such as “How does a child
acquire the language of his or her parents?”, “Why do we forget things we once
knew?”, or “How does being in a group change a person’s behavior and thinking?”)
that had been the subjects of philosophical speculation for centuries before anyone rec-
ognized that they could be addressed by empirical means. As this recognition slowly
developed, psychology coalesced as a collection of problems concerning behavior in
a variety of domains. Psychological issues gradually became separated from philoso-
phy, and a separate empirical discipline evolved.
Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker (1997) discusses how ignorance can be
divided into problems and mysteries. In the case of problems, we know that an answer
is possible and what that answer might look like even though we might not actu-
ally have the answer yet. In the case of mysteries, we can’t even conceive of what an
answer might look like. Using this terminology, we can see that science is a process
that turns mysteries into problems. In fact, Pinker (1997) noted that he wrote his book
How the Mind Works “because dozens of mysteries of the mind, from mental images to
romantic love, have recently been upgraded to problems” (p. ix).

Psychology and Folk Wisdom:

The Problem with “Common Sense”
We all have implicit models of behavior that govern our interactions and our thoughts
about ourselves and other people. Indeed, some social, personality, and cognitive psy-
chologists study the nature of these implicit psychological theories. However, most
people never think about their theories in a clear and logical manner. Instead, we usu-
ally become aware of them only when attention is drawn to them or when we find
them challenged in some way.
Actually, our personal models of behavior are not really coherent in the way that
an actual theory would have to be. Instead, we carry around a ragbag of general prin-
ciples, homilies, and clichés about human behavior that we draw on when we feel that
we need an explanation. The problem with this commonsense knowledge, this folk
wisdom, is that much of it contradicts itself and is, therefore, unfalsifiable (the prin-
ciple of falsifiability is the topic of the next chapter).
Often a person uses some folk proverb to explain a behavioral event even
though, on an earlier occasion, this same person used a directly contradictory folk
proverb to explain the same type of event. For example, most of us have heard or
said, “look before you leap.” Now there’s a useful, straightforward bit of behavioral
10 Chapter 1

advice—except that I vaguely remember admonishing on occasion, “he who hesitates

is lost.” And “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is a pretty clear prediction of an
emotional reaction to separation. But then what about “out of sight, out of mind”?
And if “haste makes waste,” why do we sometimes hear that “time waits for no man”?
How could the saying “two heads are better than one” not be true? Except that “too
many cooks spoil the broth.” If I think “it’s better to be safe than sorry,” why do I also
believe “nothing ventured, nothing gained”? And if “opposites attract,” why do “birds
of a feather flock together”? I have counseled many students to “never to put off until
tomorrow what you can do today.” But I hope my last advisee has never heard me say
this, because I just told him, “cross that bridge when you come to it.”
The enormous appeal of clichés like these is that, taken together as implicit “expla-
nations” of behavior, they cannot be refuted. No matter what happens, one of these
explanations will be cited to cover it. No wonder we all think we are such excellent
judges of human behavior and personality. Our folk wisdom gives us an explanation
for anything and everything that happens. As such, folk wisdom is cowardly in the
sense that it takes no risk that it might be refuted.
That folk wisdom is “after the fact” wisdom, and that it actually is useless in
a truly predictive sense, is why sociologist Duncan Watts titled one of his books:
Everything Is Obvious—Once You Know the Answer (2011). Watts discusses a clas-
sic paper by Lazarsfeld (1949) in which, over 60 years ago, he was dealing with the
common criticism that “social science doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already
know.” Lazarsfeld listed a series of findings from a massive survey of 600,000 soldiers
who had served during World War II; for example, that men from rural backgrounds
were in better spirits during their time of service than soldiers from city backgrounds.
People tend to find all of the survey results to be pretty obvious. In this example,
for instance, people tend to think it obvious that rural men would have been used
to harsher physical conditions and thus would have adapted better to the conditions
of military life. It is likewise with all of the other findings—people find them pretty
obvious. Lazarsfeld then reveals his punchline: All of the findings were the opposite
of what was originally stated. For example, it was actually the case that men from city
backgrounds were in better spirits during their time of service than soldiers from rural
backgrounds. The last part of the learning exercise is for people to realize how easily
they would have explained just the opposite finding. In the case of the actual outcome,
people tend to explain it (when told of it first) by saying that they expected it because
city men are used to working in crowded conditions and under hierarchical authority.
They never realize how easily they would have concocted an explanation for exactly
the opposite finding!
So sometimes our folk theories of behavior can’t be refuted. We will see in the
next chapter why this inability to be refuted makes such theories not very useful.
However, a further problem occurs even in cases in which our folk beliefs do have
some specificity; that is, even when they are empirically testable. The problem is that
psychological research has shown that, when many common cultural beliefs about
behavior are subjected to empirical test, they turn out to be false.
It is not difficult to generate instances of folk beliefs (or “common sense”) that
are wrong. Take, for example, the idea that children who excel academically, or who
read a lot, are not socially or physically adept. This idea still circulates in our society
even though it is utterly false. There is evidence that, contrary to “commonsense” folk
belief, readers and academically inclined individuals are more physically robust and
are more socially involved than are people who do not read (Singh et al., 2012). People
who are readers are more likely to play sports, jog, exercise, and participate in extra-
curricular activities than are people who do not read very much.
Many of our folk beliefs about behavior arise and take on a life of their own.
For example, over several years, the folk belief has developed in our society and in
schools that low self-esteem is a cause of aggression. But empirical investigations
 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine among the Sciences) 11

have indicated that there is no connection between aggression and low self-esteem
(Bushman et al., 2009; Krueger et al., 2008). If anything, the opposite appears to be
the case—aggression is more often associated with high self-esteem. Likewise, an
extremely popular hypothesis for the past couple of decades has been that school
achievement problems are the result of low self-esteem in students. In fact, it turns out
that the relationship between self-esteem and school achievement is more likely to be
in the opposite direction from that assumed by educators and parents. It is superior
accomplishment in school (and in other aspects of life) that leads to high self-esteem
and not the reverse (Lilienfeld et al., 2012).
Another example of folk wisdom gone wrong is the common admonition
to students that if they become unsure about an answer that they have given on a
multiple-choice test they should never switch from their original choice. Not only do
most students think that they should not switch when uncertain of an answer, but
even Barron’s Guide to GRE Preparation advises “Exercise great caution if you decide
to change an answer. Experience indicates that many students who change answers
change to the wrong answer” (Kruger et al., 2005, p. 725). This advice is completely
wrong. The advice is wrong because the folk myth that changing answers decreases
a person’s score is dead wrong. Actual research has shown that when doubts about a
multiple-choice answer arise, students are better off switching from their first answer
(Kruger et al., 2005; Lilienfeld et al., 2010).
A case where we can really see folk wisdom run amok is in the folk myth that
we use only 10 percent of our brainpower. Despite having absolutely no basis in
cognitive neuroscience (Ferguson et al., 2017; Lilienfeld et al., 2010; Stix, 2015), this
one has been around for decades and has taken on the status of what has been termed
a “psycho-fact”—a statement about psychology that is not true but which has been
repeated so much that the average person thinks that it is a fact. It is likewise with
the belief that some people are “left-brained” and other people are “right-brained,” or
that certain aspects of personality are controlled by the left side of the brain and other
aspects of personality by the right side. Although modern neuroscience research does
show subtle specializations throughout the brain, the strongly stated popularizations
of this idea in terms of “left” or “right” are invariably nonsense—particularly in the
context of the finding that our brains work in an integrated fashion (Lilienfeld et al.,
2010; Radford, 2011).
Consider what happened at the trial of former White House aide Lewis (Scooter)
Libby in 2007. Expert testimony from a renowned research psychologist was disal-
lowed because the judge ruled that it was well known that memory was fallible and
that juries can safely rely on their common sense to ascertain how memory works.
In fact, studies show that almost 30 percent of the population believe that human
memory “operates like a tape recorder” (Lilienfeld, 2012). Contrary to what the judge
thought, 30 percent of his jury badly needed to hear from the expert!
Folk beliefs are not always immune to evidence. Sometimes, when the contradic-
tory evidence becomes too widely known, folk psychology (“common sense”) does
change. For example, years ago, one widely held cliché about children was “Early ripe,
early rot.” The cliché reflected the belief that childhood precocity was associated with
adult abnormality, a belief sustained by many anecdotes about childhood prodigies
who came to ruin in later life. In this case, the psychological evidence documenting
the inaccuracy of the cliché has been absorbed into the general culture, and you will
almost never hear this bit of folk “wisdom” anymore.
Nevertheless, new folk myths are being created all the time, and a few will, of
course, go viral. It seems that for every folk myth that we kill with evidence, another
pops up in its place! For example, in the past decade it has been common to hear the
claim that the millennial generation, because it has grown up with technology, has the
ability to multitask—that they can add secondary tasks to the primary one they are
doing without any loss of efficiency in accomplishing the primary task. Millennials
12 Chapter 1

themselves sometimes claim that they can study just as well while texting friends and
watching television at the same time. This folk belief is false. Millennials are no better
than anyone else at multitasking, because research shows that virtually all people are
performance-impaired when multitasking (Jaffe, 2012; Kirschner & van Merrienboer,
2013; Ophir et al., 2009; Strayer et al., 2013). When doing additional tasks, everyone’s
performance (millennials and nonmillennials) on their primary task is impeded.
The same wishful thinking that has fueled the idea that multitasking is possible
facilitates the development of other folk myths. For example, many people believe that
“we are each intelligent in our own way”—a belief not supported by actual research
on the nature of intelligence (Deary, 2013; Ferguson et al., 2017; Waterhouse, 2006).
Other people believe that speed reading (reading at several times the normal rate with
little loss in comprehension) is possible. It is not (Rayner et al., 2016).
These problems with folk psychology would not be so damaging if people real-
ized the fallibility of their folk beliefs. Instead, however, surveys have shown (see
Lilienfeld, 2012) that over 80 percent of the public thinks that adequate training in psy-
chology is provided by daily life! To the contrary, we need the discipline of psychology
because it provides tests of the empirical basis of common sense. Sometimes common
sense beliefs do not hold up when tested, as we saw in many of the previous examples.
From the examples discussed—and many more could be cited—we can see that psy-
chology’s role as the empirical tester of much folk wisdom often brings it into conflict
with many widely held cultural beliefs. Psychology is often the bearer of the “bad tid-
ings” that comfortable folk beliefs do not stand up to the cold light of day. Perhaps it is
not surprising that many people would like not only to ignore the message but also to
do away with the messenger.

Psychology as a Young Science

Psychology’s battle to establish its problems as empirically solvable has only recently
been won. But as the science progresses, psychologists will address more and more
issues that are the subject of strongly held beliefs about human beings because many of
these problems are empirically testable. Psychologists now study such highly charged
topics as the development of moral reasoning, the psychology of romantic love, the
efficacy of prayer, the determinants of crime, the efficacy of different family structures,
and the factors that make divorce more likely. Studies of childhood sexual activity,
for example, have incited much controversy (Lilienfeld, 2010; Rind, 2008). Psychology
studies many things that people have strong opinions about, such as altruism, greed,
and lying (Ariely, 2013; Greene, 2013). Some people object to empirical investigation in
these areas; yet there has been scientific progress in each one of them.
Finally, people often are offended simply by the presentation of simple descriptive
facts about human behavior. For example, it is enough to offend some people to just
report the simple fact that children growing up in single-parent households are more
likely to experience poverty and behavioral problems (Chetty et al., 2014; McLanahan
et al., 2013; Murray, 2012; Parker, 2014). This is the type of opposition to simple empiri-
cal facts about human behavior that psychology has to deal with on a regular basis.
This opposition, when the issue is a heated one, can get hostile and can be person-
ally directed at psychologists. Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus was subjected to
death threats and lawsuits when her research revealed that people’s claims of having
uncovered repressed memories of abuse and molestation were not reflective of reality
(Observations, 2017; Sleek, 2017). There are subgroups in the population who do not
like many of the findings coming out of scientific psychology, including, for exam-
ple, that intelligence is partially heritable; that there are evolutionary explanations for
some of our sexual behaviors; and that there are cognitive biases that lead us to believe
 Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine among the Sciences) 13

in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories (Buss, 2011; Deary, 2013; Ferguson, et al.,
2017; Shermer 2011, 2017; Stanovich et al., 2016).
Psychology is often in a no-win situation as a discipline. On the one hand, some
people object to calling psychology a science and deny that psychologists can estab-
lish empirical facts about behavior. On the other hand, there are those who object to
the investigation of certain areas of human behavior because they fear that the facts
uncovered by psychology might threaten their beliefs. Skinnerian psychologists regu-
larly deal with these contradictory criticisms. For instance, critics have argued that the
laws of reinforcement formulated by behaviorists do not apply to human behavior.
At the same time, other critics are concerned that the laws will be used for the rigid
and inhumane control of people. Thus, the behaviorists are faced with some critics
who deny that their laws can be applied and others who charge that their laws can be
applied all too easily!
Examples such as this arise because the relatively new science of psychol-
ogy has just begun to uncover facts about aspects of behavior that have previously
escaped study. The relative youth of psychology as a science partially explains why
many people are confused about the discipline. Nevertheless, during the past several
decades, psychology has become firmly established in the interconnecting structure of
knowledge that we call science. Failure to appreciate this fact is the source of almost all
of the confused thinking about psychology that you will encounter.

Summary
Psychology is an immensely diverse discipline covering later chapters of this book. Science renders knowledge
a range of subjects that are not always tied together by public by procedures such as peer review and mechanisms
common concepts. Instead, what unifies the discipline is such as replication.
that it uses scientific methods to understand behavior. The Psychology is a young science and, thus, is often in
scientific method is not a strict set of rules; instead it is conflict with so-called folk wisdom. This conflict is typical
defined by some very general principles. Three of the most of all new sciences, but understanding it helps to explain
important are that (1) science employs methods of system- some of the hostility directed toward psychology as a dis-
atic empiricism; (2) it aims for knowledge that is publicly cipline. This characteristic of questioning common wisdom
verifiable; and (3) it seeks problems that are empirically also makes psychology an exciting field. Many people are
solvable and that yield testable theories (the subject of the drawn to the discipline because it holds out the possibility
next chapter). The structured and controlled observations of actually testing “common sense” that has been accepted
that define systematic empiricism are the subject of several without question for centuries.
 Chapter 2
Falsifiability: How
to Foil Little Green
Men in the Head
Learning Objectives
2.1 Illustrate the importance of falsifiability to scientific theory

2.2 Describe how, when a science advances, the errors made increase
in specificity

In 1793, a severe epidemic of yellow fever struck Philadelphia. One of the leading doc-
tors in the city at the time was Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independ-
ence. During the outbreak, Rush was one of the few physicians who were available to
treat literally thousands of yellow fever cases. Rush adhered to a theory of medicine
that dictated that illnesses accompanied by fever should be treated by vigorous blood-
letting (the removal of blood from the body either by using an instrument such as a
lancet or by the application of leeches). He administered this treatment to many pa-
tients, including himself when he came down with the illness. Critics charged that his
treatments were more dangerous than the disease. However, following the epidemic,
Rush became even more confident of the effectiveness of his treatment, even though
many of his patients had died. Why?
One writer summarized Rush’s attitude this way: “Convinced of the correctness of
his theory of medicine and lacking a means for the systematic study of treatment out-
come, he attributed each new instance of improvement to the efficacy of his treatment
and each new death that occurred despite it to the severity of the disease” (Eisenberg,
1977, p. 1106). In other words, if the patient got better, this improvement was taken
as proof that bloodletting worked. If instead the patient died, Rush interpreted this
to mean that the patient had been too ill for any treatment to work. We now know
that Rush’s critics were right: His treatments were as dangerous as the disease. In this
chapter, we will discuss how Rush went wrong. His error illustrates one of the most
important principles of scientific thinking, one that is particularly useful in evaluating
psychological claims.
In this chapter, we focus in more detail on the third general characteristic of
science that we discussed in Chapter 1: Scientists deal with solvable problems.
What scientists most often mean by a solvable problem is a “testable theory.” The way
scientists make sure they are dealing with testable theories is by ensuring that their
theories are falsifiable, that is, that they have implications for actual events in the
natural world. We will see why what is called the falsifiability criterion is so important
in psychology.

14
 Falsifiability: How to Foil Little Green Men in the Head 15

Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion

Benjamin Rush fell into a fatal trap when assessing the outcome of his treatment. His
method of evaluating the evidence made it impossible to conclude that his treatment
did not work. If the recovery of a patient meant confirmation of his treatment (and,
hence, his theory of medicine), then it only seems fair that the death of a patient should
have meant disconfirmation. Instead, he rationalized away these disconfirmations. By
interpreting the evidence as he did, Rush violated one of the most important rules
regarding the construction and testing of theories in science: He made it impossible to
falsify his theory.
Scientific theories must always be stated in such a way that the predictions derived
from them could potentially be shown to be false (Koepsell, 2015). Thus, the methods
of evaluating new evidence relevant to a particular theory must always include the
possibility that the data will falsify the theory. This principle is often termed the
falsifiability criterion, and its importance in scientific progress has been most forcefully
articulated by Karl Popper, a philosopher of science whose writings are read widely by
working scientists (Firestein, 2016).
The falsifiability criterion states that, for a theory to be useful, the predictions
drawn from it must be specific. The theory must go out on a limb, so to speak, because
in telling us what should happen, the theory must also imply that certain things will
not happen. If these latter things do happen, then we have a clear signal that some-
thing is wrong with the theory: It may need to be modified, or we may need to look
for an entirely new theory. Either way, we will end up with a theory that is nearer to
the truth. By contrast, if a theory does not rule out any possible observations, then the
theory can never be changed, and we are frozen into our current way of thinking, with
no possibility of progress. Thus, a successful theory is not one that accounts for every
possible outcome because such a theory robs itself of any predictive power. As biolo-
gist Stuart Firestein (2016) puts it, we should have confidence in science not because it
is always right, but instead because it is possible to prove it wrong.
Because we shall often refer to the evaluation of theories in the remainder of this
book, we must clear up one common misconception surrounding the word theory. The
misconception is reflected in the commonly used phrase “Oh, it’s only a theory.” This
phrase captures what laypeople often mean when they use the word theory: an unveri-
fied hypothesis, a mere guess, a hunch. It implies that one theory is as good as another.
This is most definitely not the way the word theory is used in science! When scientists
refer to theories, they do not mean unverified guesses.
A theory in science is an interrelated set of concepts that is used to explain a body
of data and to make predictions about the results of future experiments. Hypotheses are
specific predictions that are derived from theories (which are more general and com-
prehensive). Currently viable theories are those that have had many of their hypoth-
eses confirmed. The theoretical structures of such theories are, thus, consistent with a
large number of observations. However, when the database begins to contradict the
hypotheses derived from a theory, scientists begin trying to construct a new theory (or,
more often, simply make adjustments in the previous theory) that will provide a bet-
ter interpretation of the data. Thus, the theories that are under scientific discussion are
those that have been verified to some extent and that do not make many predictions
that are contradicted by the available data. They are not mere guesses or hunches.
The difference between the layperson’s and the scientist’s use of the word the-
ory has often been exploited by people who want creationism taught in the public
schools (Miller, 2008; Scott, 2005). Their argument often is “After all, evolution is only
a theory.” This statement is intended to suggest the layperson’s use of the term theory.
In common language, the term theory means “only a guess.” However, the theory of
evolution by natural selection is not a theory in the layperson’s sense (to the contrary,
in the layperson’s sense, it would be called a fact; see Randall, 2005). Instead, it is a
16 Chapter 2

theory in the scientific sense. It is a conceptual structure that is supported by a large

and varied set of data (Dawkins, 2010, 2016). It is not a mere guess, equal to any other
guess. Instead, it interlocks with knowledge in a host of other disciplines, including
geology, physics, chemistry, and all aspects of biology. The distinguished biologist
Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973) made this point in a famous article titled “Nothing in
Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.”

The Theory of Knocking Rhythms

A hypothetical example will show how the falsifiability criterion works. A student
knocks at my door. A colleague in my office with me has a theory that makes pre-
dictions about the rhythms that different types of people use to knock. Before I open
the door, my colleague predicts that the person behind it is a female. I open the door
and, indeed, the student is a female. Later I tell my colleague that I am impressed,
but only mildly so because he had a 50 percent chance of being correct even without
his “theory of knocking rhythms”—actually even higher, because on most campuses,
females outnumber males. He says he can do better. Another knock comes. My col-
league tells me it is a male under 22 years old. I open the door to find a male student
whom I know to be just out of high school. I comment that I am somewhat impressed
because our university has a considerable number of students over the age of 22. Yet
I still maintain that, of course, young males are quite common on campus. Thinking
me hard to please, my colleague proposes one last test. After the next knock, my col-
league predicts, “Female, 30 years old, 5 feet 2 inches tall, carrying a book and a purse
in the left hand and knocking with the right.” After opening the door and confirming
the prediction completely, I have quite a different response. I say that, assuming my
colleague did not play a trick and arrange for these people to appear at my door, I am
now in fact extremely impressed.
Why the difference in my reactions? Why do my friend’s three predictions yield
three different responses, ranging from “So what?” to “Wow!”? The answer has to
do with the specificity and precision of the predictions. The more specific predic-
tions made a greater impact when they were confirmed. Notice, however, that the
specificity varied directly with the falsifiability. The more specific and precise the
prediction was, the more potential observations there were that could have falsified
it. For example, there are a lot of people who are not 30-year-old females and 5 feet
2 inches tall. Note that implicitly, by my varied reactions, I signaled that I would be
more impressed by a theory that made predictions that maximized the number of
events that should not occur.
Good theories, then, make predictions that expose themselves to falsification. Bad
theories do not put themselves in jeopardy in this way. They make predictions that are so
general that they are almost bound to be true (e.g., the next person to knock on my door
will be less than 100 years old) or are phrased in such a way that they are completely
protected from falsification (as in the Benjamin Rush example). In fact, a theory can be so
protected from falsifiability that it is simply no longer considered scientific at all. Indeed,
it was philosopher Karl Popper’s attempt to define the criteria that separate science from
nonscience that led him to emphasize the importance of the falsifiability principle. There
is a direct link here to psychology and to our discussion of Freud in Chapter 1.

Freud and Falsifiability

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Popper was searching for the underlying
reasons that some scientific theories seem to lead to advances in knowledge and oth-
ers lead to intellectual stagnation (Hacohen, 2000). Einstein’s general relativity theory,
for example, led to startlingly new observations (for instance, that the light from a
distant star bends when it passes near the sun) precisely because its predictions were
Another random document with
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whom a general characterization would do no manner of justice. He
was an overseer, but he was something more. With the malign and
tyrannical qualities of an overseer he combined something of the
lawful master. He had the artfulness and mean ambition of his class,
without its disgusting swagger and noisy bravado. There was an
easy air of independence about him; a calm self-possession; at the
same time a sternness of glance which well might daunt less timid
hearts than those of poor slaves, accustomed from childhood to
cower before a driver’s lash. He was one of those overseers who
could torture the slightest word or look into impudence, and he had
the nerve not only to resent, but to punish promptly and severely.
There could be no answering back. Guilty or not guilty, to be
accused was to be sure of a flogging. His very presence was fearful,
and I shunned him as I would have shunned a rattlesnake. His
piercing black eyes and sharp, shrill voice ever awakened
sensations of dread. Other overseers, how brutal soever they might
be, would sometimes seek to gain favor with the slaves, by indulging
in a little pleasantry; but Gore never said a funny thing, or
perpetrated a joke. He was always cold, distant, and
unapproachable—the overseer on Col. Edward Lloyd’s plantation—
and needed no higher pleasure than the performance of the duties of
his office. When he used the lash, it was from a sense of duty,
without fear of consequences. There was a stern will, an iron-like
reality about him, which would easily have made him chief of a band
of pirates, had his environments been favorable to such a sphere.
Among many other deeds of shocking cruelty committed by him was
the murder of a young colored man named Bill Denby. He was a
powerful fellow, full of animal spirits, and one of the most valuable of
Col. Lloyd’s slaves. In some way—I know not what—he offended this
Mr. Austin Gore, and in accordance with the usual custom the latter
undertook to flog him. He had given him but few stripes when Denby
broke away from him, plunged into the creek, and standing there
with the water up to his neck refused to come out; whereupon, for
this refusal, Gore shot him dead! It was said that Gore gave Denby
three calls to come out, telling him if he did not obey the last call he
should shoot him. When the last call was given Denby still stood his
ground, and Gore, without further parley, or without making any
further effort to induce obedience, raised his gun deliberately to his
face, took deadly aim at his standing victim, and with one click of the
gun the mangled body sank out of sight, and only his warm red blood
marked the place where he had stood.

Gore Shooting Denby.

This fiendish murder produced, as it could not help doing, a
tremendous sensation. The slaves were panic-stricken, and howled
with alarm. The atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out in
reprobation of it. Both he and Col. Lloyd arraigned Gore for his
cruelty; but he, calm and collected, as though nothing unusual had
happened, declared that Denby had become unmanageable; that he
set a dangerous example to the other slaves, and that unless some
such prompt measure was resorted to there would be an end to all
rule and order on the plantation. That convenient covert for all
manner of villainy and outrage, that cowardly alarm-cry, that the
slaves would “take the place,” was pleaded, just as it had been in
thousands of similar cases. Gore’s defense was evidently
considered satisfactory, for he was continued in his office, without
being subjected to a judicial investigation. The murder was
committed in the presence of slaves only, and they, being slaves,
could neither institute a suit nor testify against the murderer. Mr.
Gore lived in St. Michaels, Talbot Co., Maryland, and I have no
reason to doubt, from what I know to have been the moral sentiment
of the place, that he was as highly esteemed and as much respected
as though his guilty soul had not been stained with innocent blood.
I speak advisedly when I say that killing a slave, or any colored
person, in Talbot Co., Maryland, was not treated as a crime, either by
the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, ship carpenter of
St. Michaels, killed two slaves, one of whom he butchered with a
hatchet, by knocking his brains out. He used to boast of having
committed the awful and bloody deed. I have heard him do so
laughingly, declaring himself a benefactor of his country, and that
“when others would do as much as he had done, they would be rid of
the d——d niggers.”
Another notorious fact which I may state was the murder of a
young girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age, by her mistress,
Mrs. Giles Hicks, who lived but a short distance from Col. Lloyd’s.
This wicked woman, in the paroxysm of her wrath, not content at
killing her victim, literally mangled her face, and broke her breast-
bone. Wild and infuriated as she was, she took the precaution to
cause the burial of the girl; but, the facts of the case getting abroad,
the remains were disinterred, and a coroner’s jury assembled, who,
after due deliberation, decided that “the girl had come to her death
from severe beating.” The offense for which this girl was thus hurried
out of the world was this, she had been set that night, and several
preceding nights, to mind Mrs. Hicks’ baby, and having fallen into a
sound sleep the crying of the baby did not wake her, as it did its
mother. The tardiness of the girl excited Mrs. Hicks, who, after calling
her several times, seized a piece of fire-wood from the fire-place,
and pounded in her skull and breast-bone till death ensued. I will not
say that this murder most foul produced no sensation. It did produce
a sensation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mrs. Hicks, but
incredible to tell, for some reason or other, that warrant was never
served, and she not only escaped condign punishment, but the pain
and mortification as well of being arraigned before a court of justice.
While I am detailing the bloody deeds that took place during my
stay on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another dark
transaction, which occurred about the time of the murder of Denby.
On the side of the river Wye, opposite from Col. Lloyd’s, there
lived a Mr. Beal Bondley, a wealthy slaveholder. In the direction of
his land, and near the shore, there was an excellent oyster fishing-
ground, and to this some of Lloyd’s slaves occasionally resorted in
their little canoes at night, with a view to make up the deficiency of
their scanty allowance of food by the oysters that they could easily
get there. Mr. Bondley took it into his head to regard this as a
trespass, and while an old man slave was engaged in catching a few
of the many millions of oysters that lined the bottom of the creek, to
satisfy his hunger, the rascally Bondley, lying in ambush, without the
slightest warning, discharged the contents of his musket into the
back of the poor old man. As good fortune would have it, the shot did
not prove fatal, and Mr. Bondley came over the next day to see Col.
Lloyd about it. What happened between them I know not, but there
was little said about it and nothing publicly done. One of the
commonest sayings to which my ears early became accustomed,
was that it was “worth but a half a cent to kill a nigger, and half a cent
to bury one.” While I heard of numerous murders committed by
slaveholders on the eastern shore of Maryland, I never knew a
solitary instance where a slaveholder was either hung or imprisoned
for having murdered a slave. The usual pretext for such crimes was
that the slave had offered resistance. Should a slave, when
assaulted, but raise his hand in self-defense, the white assaulting
party was fully justified by southern law, and southern public opinion
in shooting the slave down, and for this there was no redress.
 CHAPTER IX.
CHANGE OF LOCATION.

Miss Lucretia—Her kindness—How it was manifested—“Ike”—A battle with

him—Miss Lucretia’s balsam—Bread—How it was obtained—Gleams of
sunlight amidst the general darkness—Suffering from cold—How we took
our meal mush—Preparations for going to Baltimore—Delight at the
change—Cousin Tom’s opinion of Baltimore—Arrival there—Kind
reception—Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld—Their son Tommy—My relations to
them—My duties—A turning-point in my life.

I HAVE nothing cruel or shocking to relate of my own personal

experience while I remained on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, at the home
of my old master. An occasional cuff from Aunt Katy, and a regular
whipping from old master, such as any heedless and mischievous
boy might get from his father, is all that I have to say of this sort. I
was not old enough to work in the field, and there being little else
than field-work to perform, I had much leisure. The most I had to do
was to drive up the cows in the evening, to keep the front-yard clean,
and to perform small errands for my young mistress, Lucretia Auld. I
had reasons for thinking this lady was very kindly disposed toward
me, and although I was not often the object of her attention, I
constantly regarded her as my friend, and was always glad when it
was my privilege to do her a service. In a family where there was so
much that was harsh and indifferent, the slightest word or look of
kindness was of great value. Miss Lucretia—as we all continued to
call her long after her marriage—had bestowed on me such looks
and words as taught me that she pitied me, if she did not love me.
She sometimes gave me a piece of bread and butter, an article not
set down in our bill of fare, but an extra ration aside from both Aunt
Katy and old master, and given as I believed solely out of the tender
regard she had for me. Then too, I one day got into the wars with
Uncle Abel’s son “Ike,” and had got sadly worsted; the little rascal
struck me directly in the forehead with a sharp piece of cinder, fused
with iron, from the old blacksmith’s forge, which made a cross in my
forehead very plainly to be seen even now. The gash bled very
freely, and I roared and betook myself home. The cold-hearted Aunt
Katy paid no attention either to my wound or my roaring except to tell
me it “served me right; I had no business with Ike; it would do me
good; I would now keep away from ‘dem Lloyd niggers.’” Miss
Lucretia in this state of the case came forward, and called me into
the parlor (an extra privilege of itself), and without using toward me
any of the hard and reproachful epithets of Aunt Katy, quietly acted
the good Samaritan. With her own soft hand she washed the blood
from my head and face, brought her own bottle of balsam, and with
the balsam wetted a nice piece of white linen and bound up my
head. The balsam was not more healing to the wound in my head,
than her kindness was healing to the wounds in my spirit, induced by
the unfeeling words of Aunt Katy. After this Miss Lucretia was yet
more my friend. I felt her to be such; and I have no doubt that the
simple act of binding up my head did much to awaken in her heart an
interest in my welfare. It is quite true that this interest seldom
showed itself in anything more than in giving me a piece of bread
and butter, but this was a great favor on a slave plantation, and I was
the only one of the children to whom such attention was paid. When
very severely pinched with hunger, I had the habit of singing, which
the good lady very soon came to understand, and when she heard
me singing under her window, I was very apt to be paid for my
music. Thus I had two friends, both at important points,—Mas’r
Daniel at the great house, and Miss Lucretia at home. From Mas’r
Daniel I got protection from the bigger boys, and from Miss Lucretia I
got bread by singing when I was hungry, and sympathy when I was
abused by the termagant in the kitchen. For such friendship I was
deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections of slavery, it is a
true pleasure to recall any instances of kindness, any sunbeams of
humane treatment, which found way to my soul, through the iron
grating of my house of bondage. Such beams seem all the brighter
from the general darkness into which they penetrate, and the
impression they make there is vividly distinct.
 As before intimated, I received no severe treatment from the
hands of my master, but the insufficiency of both food and clothing
was a serious trial to me, especially from the lack of clothing. In
hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost in a state of
nudity. My only clothing—a little coarse sack-cloth or tow-linen sort of
shirt, scarcely reaching to my knees, was worn night and day and
changed once a week. In the day time I could protect myself by
keeping on the sunny side of the house, or in stormy weather, in the
corner of the kitchen chimney. But the great difficulty was to keep
warm during the night. The pigs in the pen had leaves, and the
horses in the stable had straw, but the children had no beds. They
lodged anywhere in the ample kitchen. I slept generally in a little
closet, without even a blanket to cover me. In very cold weather I
sometimes got down the bag in which corn was carried to the mill,
and crawled into that. Sleeping there with my head in and my feet
out, I was partly protected, though never comfortable. My feet have
been so cracked with the frost that the pen with which I am writing
might be laid in the gashes. Our corn meal mush, which was our only
regular if not all-sufficing diet, when sufficiently cooled from the
cooking, was placed in a large tray or trough. This was set down
either on the floor of the kitchen, or out of doors on the ground, and
the children were called like so many pigs, and like so many pigs
would come, some with oyster-shells, some with pieces of shingles,
but none with spoons, and literally devour the mush. He who could
eat fastest got most, and he that was strongest got the best place,
but few left the trough really satisfied. I was the most unlucky of all,
for Aunt Katy had no good feeling for me, and if I pushed the
children, or if they told her anything unfavorable of me, she always
believed the worst, and was sure to whip me.
As I grew older and more thoughtful, I became more and more
filled with a sense of my wretchedness. The unkindness of Aunt
Katy, the hunger and cold I suffered, and the terrible reports of
wrongs and outrages which came to my ear, together with what I
almost daily witnessed, led me to wish I had never been born. I used
to contrast my condition with that of the black-birds, in whose wild
and sweet songs I fancied them so happy. Their apparent joy only
deepened the shades of my sorrow. There are thoughtful days in the
lives of children—at least there were in mine—when they grapple
with all the great primary subjects of knowledge, and reach in a
moment conclusions which no subsequent experience can shake. I
was just as well aware of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous
character of slavery, when nine years old, as I am now. Without any
appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, to regard God
as “Our Father,” condemned slavery as a crime.
I was in this unhappy state when I received from Miss Lucretia
the joyful intelligence that my old master had determined to let me go
to Baltimore to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, a brother to Mr. Thomas
Auld, Miss Lucretia’s husband. I shall never forget the ecstacy with
which I received this information, three days before the time set for
my departure. They were the three happiest days I had ever known. I
spent the largest part of them in the creek, washing off the plantation
scurf, and thus preparing for my new home. Miss Lucretia took a
lively interest in getting me ready. She told me I must get all the dead
skin off my feet and knees, for the people in Baltimore were very
cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty; and besides she was
intending to give me a pair of trowsers, but which I could not put on
unless I got all the dirt off. This was a warning which I was bound to
heed, for the thought of owning and wearing a pair of trowsers was
great indeed. So I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time
in my life in the hope of reward. I was greatly excited, and could
hardly consent to sleep lest I should be left. The ties that ordinarily
bind children to their homes, had no existence in my case, and in
thinking of a home elsewhere, I was confident of finding none that I
should relish less than the one I was leaving. If I should meet with
hardship, hunger, and nakedness, I had known them all before, and I
could endure them elsewhere, especially in Baltimore, for I had
something of the feeling about that city that is expressed in the
saying that “being hanged in England is better than dying a natural
death in Ireland.” I had the strongest desire to see Baltimore. My
cousin Tom, a boy two or three years older than I, had been there,
and, though not fluent in speech (he stuttered immoderately), he had
inspired me with that desire by his eloquent descriptions of the place.
Tom was sometimes cabin-boy on board the sloop “Sally Lloyd”
(which Capt. Thomas Auld commanded), and when he came home
from Baltimore he was always a sort of hero among us, at least till
his trip to Baltimore was forgotten. I could never tell him anything, or
point out anything that struck me as beautiful or powerful, but that he
had seen something in Baltimore far surpassing it. Even the “great
house,” with all its pictures within, and pillars without, he had the
hardihood to say, “was nothing to Baltimore.” He bought a trumpet
(worth sixpence) and brought it home; told what he had seen in the
windows of the stores; that he had heard shooting-crackers, and
seen soldiers; that he had seen a steamboat; that there were ships
in Baltimore that could carry four such sloops as the “Sally Lloyd.”
He said a great deal about the Market house; of the ringing of the
bells, and of many other things which roused my curiosity very much,
and indeed which brightened my hopes of happiness in my new
home. We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore early on a Saturday
morning. I remember only the day of the week, for at that time I had
no knowledge of the days of the month, nor indeed of the months of
the year. On setting sail I walked aft and gave to Col. Lloyd’s
plantation what I hoped would be the last look I should give to it, or
to any place like it. After taking this last view, I quitted the quarter-
deck, made my way to the bow of the boat, and spent the remainder
of the day in looking ahead; interesting myself in what was in the
distance, rather than in what was near by, or behind. The vessels
sweeping along the bay were objects full of interest to me. The broad
bay opened like a shoreless ocean on my boyish vision, filling me
with wonder and admiration.
Late in the afternoon we reached Annapolis, stopping there not
long enough to admit of going ashore. It was the first large town I
had ever seen, and though it was inferior to many a factory village in
New England, my feelings on seeing it were excited to a pitch very
little below that reached by travelers at the first view of Rome. The
dome of the State house was especially imposing, and surpassed in
grandeur the appearance of the “great house” I had left behind. So
the great world was opening upon me, and I was eagerly acquainting
myself with its multifarious lessons.
We arrived in Baltimore on Sunday morning, and landed at
Smith’s wharf, not far from Bowly’s wharf. We had on board a large
flock of sheep, for the Baltimore market; and after assisting in driving
them to the slaughter house of Mr. Curtiss, on Loudon Slater’s hill, I
was conducted by Rich—one of the hands belonging to the sloop—
to my new home on Alliciana street, near Gardiner’s ship-yard, on
Fell’s point. Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld, my new master and mistress,
were both at home and met me at the door with their rosy-cheeked
little son Thomas, to take care of whom was to constitute my future
occupation. In fact it was to “little Tommy,” rather than to his parents,
that old master made a present of me, and, though there was no
legal form or arrangement entered into, I have no doubt that Mr. and
Mrs. Auld felt that in due time I should be the legal property of their
bright-eyed and beloved boy Tommy. I was struck with the
appearance especially of my new mistress. Her face was lighted with
the kindliest emotions; and the reflex influence of her countenance,
as well as the tenderness with which she seemed to regard me,
while asking me sundry little questions, greatly delighted me, and lit
up, to my fancy, the pathway of my future. Little Thomas was
affectionately told by his mother, that “there was his Freddy,” and that
“Freddy would take care of him;” and I was told to “be kind to little
Tommy,” an injunction I scarcely needed, for I had already fallen in
love with the dear boy. With these little ceremonies I was initiated
into my new home, and entered upon my peculiar duties, then
unconscious of a cloud to dim its broad horizon.
I may say here that I regard my removal from Col. Lloyd’s
plantation as one of the most interesting and fortunate events of my
life. Viewing it in the light of human likelihoods, it is quite probable
that but for the mere circumstance of being thus removed, before the
rigors of slavery had fully fastened upon me; before my young spirit
had been crushed under the iron control of the slave-driver, I might
have continued in slavery until emancipated by the war.
 CHAPTER X.
LEARNING TO READ.

City annoyances—Plantation regrets—My mistress—Her history—Her

kindness—My master—His sourness—My comforts—Increased
sensitiveness—My occupation—Learning to read—Baneful effects of
slaveholding on my dear, good mistress—Mr. Hugh forbids Mrs. Sophia to
teach me further—Clouds gather on my bright prospects—Master Auld’s
exposition of the Philosophy of Slavery—City slaves—Country slaves—
Contrasts—Exceptions—Mr. Hamilton’s two slaves—Mrs. Hamilton’s cruel
treatment of them—Piteous aspect presented by them—No power to
come between the slave and slaveholder.

ESTABLISHED in my new home in Baltimore, I was not very long in

perceiving that in picturing to myself what was to be my life there, my
imagination had painted only the bright side; and that the reality had
its dark shades as well as its light ones. The open country which had
been so much to me, was all shut out. Walled in on every side by
towering brick buildings, the heat of the summer was intolerable to
me, and the hard brick pavements almost blistered my feet. If I
ventured out on to the streets, new and strange objects glared upon
me at every step, and startling sounds greeted my ears from all
directions. My country eyes and ears were confused and bewildered.
Troops of hostile boys pounced upon me at every corner. They
chased me, and called me “Eastern-Shore man,” till really I almost
wished myself back on the Eastern Shore. My new mistress happily
proved to be all she had seemed, and in her presence I easily forgot
all outside annoyances. Mrs. Sophia was naturally of an excellent
disposition—kind, gentle, and cheerful. The supercilious contempt
for the rights and feelings of others, and the petulence and bad
humor which generally characterized slaveholding ladies, were all
quite absent from her manner and bearing toward me. She had
never been a slaveholder—a thing then quite unusual at the South—
but had depended almost entirely upon her own industry for a living.
To this fact the dear lady no doubt owed the excellent preservation of
her natural goodness of heart, for slavery could change a saint into a
sinner, and an angel into a demon. I hardly knew how to behave
towards “Miss Sopha,” as I used to call Mrs. Hugh Auld. I could not
approach her even as I had formerly approached Mrs. Thomas Auld.
Why should I hang down my head, and speak with bated breath,
when there was no pride to scorn me, no coldness to repel me, and
no hatred to inspire me with fear? I therefore soon came to regard
her as something more akin to a mother than a slaveholding
mistress. So far from deeming it impudent in a slave to look her
straight in the face, she seemed ever to say, “look up, child; don’t be
afraid.” The sailors belonging to the sloop esteemed it a great
privilege to be the bearers of parcels or messages to her, for
whenever they came, they were sure of a most kind and pleasant
reception. If little Thomas was her son, and her most dearly loved
child, she made me something like his half-brother in her affections.
If dear Tommy was exalted to a place on his mother’s knee, “Feddy”
was honored by a place at the mother’s side. Nor did the slave-boy
lack the caressing strokes of her gentle hand, soothing him into the
consciousness that, though motherless, he was not friendless. Mrs.
Auld was not only kind-hearted, but remarkably pious; frequent in her
attendance of public worship, much given to reading the Bible, and
to chanting hymns of praise when alone. Mr. Hugh was altogether a
different character. He cared very little about religion; knew more of
the world and was more a part of the world, than his wife. He set out
doubtless to be, as the world goes, a respectable man, and to get on
by becoming a successful ship-builder, in that city of ship-building.
This was his ambition, and it fully occupied him. I was of course of
very little consequence to him, and when he smiled upon me, as he
sometimes did, the smile was borrowed from his lovely wife, and like
all borrowed light, was transient, and vanished with the source
whence it was derived. Though I must in truth characterize Master
Hugh as a sour man of forbidding appearance, it is due to him to
acknowledge that he was never cruel to me, according to the notion
of cruelty in Maryland. During the first year or two, he left me almost
exclusively to the management of his wife. She was my law-giver. In
hands so tender as hers, and in the absence of the cruelties of the
plantation, I became both physically and mentally much more
sensitive, and a frown from my mistress caused me far more
suffering than had Aunt Katy’s hardest cuffs. Instead of the cold,
damp floor of my old master’s kitchen, I was on carpets; for the corn
bag in winter, I had a good straw bed, well furnished with covers; for
the coarse corn meal in the morning, I had good bread and mush
occasionally; for my old tow-linen shirt, I had good clean clothes. I
was really well off. My employment was to run of errands, and to
take care of Tommy; to prevent his getting in the way of carriages,
and to keep him out of harm’s way generally. So for a time
everything went well. I say for a time, because the fatal poison of
irresponsible power, and the natural influence of slave customs,
were not very long in making their impression on the gentle and
loving disposition of my excellent mistress. She regarded me at first
as a child, like any other. This was the natural and spontaneous
thought; afterwards, when she came to consider me as property, our
relations to each other were changed, but a nature so noble as hers
could not instantly become perverted, and it took several years
before the sweetness of her temper was wholly lost.
 Mrs. Auld Learning Him to Read.
The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the Bible aloud, for
she often read aloud when her husband was absent, awakened my
curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the
desire to learn. Up to this time I had known nothing whatever of this
wonderful art, and my ignorance and inexperience of what it could do
for me, as well as my confidence in my mistress, emboldened me to
ask her to teach me to read. With an unconsciousness and
inexperience equal to my own, she readily consented, and in an
incredibly short time, by her kind assistance, I had mastered the
alphabet and could spell words of three or four letters. My mistress
seemed almost as proud of my progress as if I had been her own
child, and supposing that her husband would be as well pleased, she
made no secret of what she was doing for me. Indeed, she exultingly
told him of the aptness of her pupil, and of her intention to persevere
in teaching me, as she felt her duty to do, at least to read the Bible.
And here arose the first dark cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the
precursor of chilling blasts and drenching storms. Master Hugh was
astounded beyond measure, and probably for the first time
proceeded to unfold to his wife the true philosophy of the slave
system, and the peculiar rules necessary in the nature of the case to
be observed in the management of human chattels. Of course he
forbade her to give me any further instruction, telling her in the first
place that to do so was unlawful, as it was also unsafe; “for,” said he,
“if you give a nigger an inch he will take an ell. Learning will spoil the
best nigger in the world. If he learns to read the Bible it will forever
unfit him to be a slave. He should know nothing but the will of his
master, and learn to obey it. As to himself, learning will do him no
good, but a great deal of harm, making him disconsolate and
unhappy. If you teach him how to read, he’ll want to know how to
write, and this accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself.”
Such was the tenor of Master Hugh’s oracular exposition; and it must
be confessed that he very clearly comprehended the nature and the
requirements of the relation of master and slave. His discourse was
the first decidedly anti-slavery lecture to which it had been my lot to
listen. Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of what he said, and like an
obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction indicated
by him. The effect of his words on me was neither slight nor
transitory. His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy
weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not
soon to be allayed. This was a new and special revelation, dispelling
a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had
struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to
perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. “Very well,” thought I.
“Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to
the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct
pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I needed, and it
came to me at a time and from a source whence I least expected it.
Of course I was greatly saddened at the thought of losing the
assistance of my kind mistress, but the information so instantly
derived to some extent compensated me for the loss I had sustained
in this direction. Wise as Mr. Auld was, he underrated my
comprehension, and had little idea of the use to which I was capable
of putting the impressive lesson he was giving to his wife. He wanted
me to be a slave; I had already voted against that on the home
plantation of Col. Lloyd. That which he most loved I most hated; and
the very determination which he expressed to keep me in ignorance
only rendered me the more resolute to seek intelligence. In learning
to read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as much to
the opposition of my master as to the kindly assistance of my
amiable mistress. I acknowledge the benefit rendered me by the
one, and by the other, believing that but for my mistress I might have
grown up in ignorance.
 CHAPTER XI.
GROWING IN KNOWLEDGE.

My mistress—Her slaveholding duties—Their effects on her originally noble

nature—The conflict in her mind—She opposes my learning to read—Too
late—She had given me the “inch,” I was resolved to take the “ell”—How I
pursued my study to read—My tutors—What progress I made—Slavery—
What I heard said about it—Thirteen years old—Columbian orator—
Dialogue—Speeches—Sheridan—Pitt—Lords Chatham and Fox—
Knowledge increasing—Liberty—Singing—Sadness—Unhappiness of
Mrs. Sophia—My hatred of slavery—One Upas tree overshadows us all.

I LIVED in the family of Mr. Auld, at Baltimore, seven years, during

which time, as the almanac makers say of the weather, my condition
was variable. The most interesting feature of my history here, was
my learning to read and write under somewhat marked
disadvantages. In attaining this knowledge I was compelled to resort
to indirections by no means congenial to my nature, and which were
really humiliating to my sense of candor and uprightness. My
mistress, checked in her benevolent designs toward me, not only
ceased instructing me herself, but set her face as a flint against my
learning to read by any means. It is due to her to say, however, that
she did not adopt this course in all its stringency at first. She either
thought it unnecessary, or she lacked the depravity needed to make
herself forget at once my human nature. She was, as I have said,
naturally a kind and tender-hearted woman, and in the humanity of
her heart and the simplicity of her mind, she set out, when I first went
to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought
to treat another.
Nature never intended that men and women should be either
slaves or slaveholders, and nothing but rigid training long persisted
in, can perfect the character of the one or the other. Mrs. Auld was
singularly deficient in the qualities of a slaveholder. It was no easy
matter for her to think or to feel that the curly-headed boy, who stood
by her side, and even leaned on her lap, who was loved by little
Tommy, and who loved little Tommy in turn, sustained to her only the
relation of a chattel. I was more than that; she felt me to be more
than that. I could talk and sing; I could laugh and weep; I could
reason and remember; I could love and hate. I was human, and she,
dear lady, knew and felt me to be so. How could she then treat me
as a brute without a mighty struggle with all the noblest powers of
her soul. That struggle came, and the will and power of the husband
was victorious. Her noble soul was overcome, and he who wrought
the wrong was injured in the fall no less than the rest of the
household. When I went into that household, it was the abode of
happiness and contentment. The wife and mistress there was a
model of affection and tenderness. Her fervent piety and watchful
uprightness made it impossible to see her without thinking and
feeling “that woman is a Christian.” There was no sorrow nor
suffering for which she had not a tear, and there was no innocent joy
for which she had not a smile. She had bread for the hungry, clothes
for the naked, and comfort for every mourner who came within her
reach. But slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these
excellent qualities, and her home of its early happiness. Conscience
cannot stand much violence. Once thoroughly injured, who is he who
can repair the damage? If it be broken toward the slave on Sunday, it
will be toward the master on Monday. It cannot long endure such
shocks. It must stand unharmed, or it does not stand at all. As my
condition in the family waxed bad, that of the family waxed no better.
The first step in the wrong direction was the violence done to nature
and to conscience, in arresting the benevolence that would have
enlightened my young mind. In ceasing to instruct me, my mistress
had to seek to justify herself to herself, and once consenting to take
sides in such a debate, she was compelled to hold her position. One
needs little knowledge of moral philosophy to see where she
inevitably landed. She finally became even more violent in her
opposition to my learning to read than was Mr. Auld himself. Nothing
now appeared to make her more angry than seeing me, seated in
some nook or corner, quietly reading a book or newspaper. She
would rush at me with the utmost fury, and snatch the book or paper
from my hand, with something of the wrath and consternation which
a traitor might be supposed to feel on being discovered in a plot by
some dangerous spy. The conviction once thoroughly established in
her mind, that education and slavery were incompatible with each
other, I was most narrowly watched in all my movements. If I
remained in a separate room from the family for any considerable
length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was
at once called to give an account of myself. But this was too late: the
first and never-to-be-retraced step had been taken. Teaching me the
alphabet had been the “inch” given, I was now waiting only for the
opportunity to “take the ell.”
Filled with the determination to learn to read at any cost, I hit
upon many expedients to accomplish that much desired end. The
plan which I mainly adopted, and the one which was the most
successful, was that of using my young white playmates, with whom
I met on the streets, as teachers. I used to carry almost constantly a
copy of Webster’s spelling-book in my pocket, and when sent on
errands, or when play-time was allowed me, I would step aside with
my young friends and take a lesson in spelling. I am greatly indebted
to these boys—Gustavus Dorgan, Joseph Bailey, Charles Farity, and
William Cosdry.
Although slavery was a delicate subject, and very cautiously
talked about among grown up people in Maryland, I frequently talked
about it, and that very freely, with the white boys. I would sometimes
say to them, while seated on a curbstone or a cellar door, “I wish I
could be free, as you will be when you get to be men.” “You will be
free, you know, as soon as you are twenty-one, and can go where
you like, but I am a slave for life. Have I not as good a right to be free
as you have?” Words like these, I observed, always troubled them;
and I had no small satisfaction in drawing out from them, as I
occasionally did, that fresh and bitter condemnation of slavery which
ever springs from nature unseared and unperverted. Of all
conscience, let me have those to deal with, which have not been
seared and bewildered with the cares and perplexities of life. I do not