1. The behaviour of most lower animals – insects, reptiles and amphibians, most rodents, and birds – is instinctive and unaffected by learning.
2. For the first week of life a baby sees nothing but shades of gray-blue regardless of where he or she looks.
3. A child learns to talk more quickly if the adults around the child habitually repeat the word he or she is trying to say, using proper pronunciation.
4. The best way to get a chronically noisy child to settle down and pay attention is to punish him or her.
5. Slow learners remember more of what they learn than fast learners.
6. Highly intelligent people, geniuses, tend to be physically frail and socially isolated.
7. On the average, you cannot predict from a person’s grades at school and college whether he or she will do well in a career.
8. Most stereotypes are completely true.
9. In small amounts, alcohol is a stimulant.
10. The largest drug problem in the United States, in terms of the number of people affected, is marijuana.
11. Psychiatry is a subdivision of psychology.
12. Most developmentally handicapped people also have psychological disorders.
13. A third or more of the people suffering from severe psychological disorders are potentially dangerous.
14. Electroshock therapy is an outmoded technique rarely used in today’s mental hospitals.
15. The more severe the disorder, the more intensive the therapy required to cure it; for example, schizophrenics usually respond best to psychoanalysis.
16. Nearly all the psychological characteristics of men and women appear to be inborn; in all cultures, for example, women are more emotional and sexually less aggressive than man.
17. No reputable psychologist takes seriously such irrational phenomena as ESP, hypnosis, or the bizarre mental and physical achievements of Eastern yogis.