10 mind myths debunked: from sex addiction to the five stages of grief

Popular misconceptions include the 10,000-Hour Rule made famous by Malcolm Gladwell and people being left-brained or right-brained

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The human brain is not easily compartmentalised. Photo: Shutterstock

Matt Huston

Published: 9:00pm, 28 Sep 2019Updated: 9:00pm, 28 Sep 2019

Myths come in many shades. Some notions are baldly incorrect: there is no evidence that humans use only 10 per cent of their brains, for instance. Then there are misconceptions that contain a modicum of truth, or were once widely believed by experts. Some gain traction because they promise up-by-the-bootstraps solutions and a heavy dose of self-determination: it became faddish to tout 10,000 hours of practice as a sure-fire path to expertise.

Plenty of misconceptions involve cleaving people into discrete categories, artificial distinctions that belie the complexity of the human mind. And there are myths that serve as hedges against an unjust world: if multiple intelligences exist and everyone excels at something, the world would be a bit more fair. It’s high time we put the most enduring myths about human behaviour to bed, and see the mind – and the world – as it is.

Birth order

Personality is not shaped by whether one is a firstborn, the youngest, or an only child.

You’ve heard it from junior school on: firstborn children become strong-willed, dominant adults. And as parental helpers when younger siblings come along, the eldest grow to be the most conscientious of the bunch. Younger siblings, seeking a place in the family, become experimenters and are less conformist and conventional than firstborns. These are among the ideas proposed by psychologists who have argued that the spots children occupy in the family pecking order have lasting effects on who they are.

Careful testing of these hypotheses, however, finds little to no evidence for them. An investigation published this year found no support for the posited effect of birth order on the propensity to take risks. In 2015, German psychologists analysed data from thousands of people in the United States, Britain and Germany and found no significant correlations between birth order and traits such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, or imagination.