Debunking and the Psychology of Error: A Historical Analysis of Psychological Matters

Abstract

The psychology of the paranormal has always reflected wider themes about the nature and status of psychology. This article, in examining these themes, seeks to show how qualitative research in the history of psychology can contribute to the understanding of psychological topics, ones that have fundamental relevance to the discipline of psychology as a whole. The article examines the construction of psychological expertise by analysing criticisms of unorthodox areas of psychological knowledge. It shows how psychological scientists have long deployed certain rhetorical strategies and that these have been designed not only to reject certain claims but also to construct both their opponents as unscientific and, in the process, themselves as scientific. Furthermore, through the construction and deployment of a psychology of error, critics have warranted both the need and value of psychological explanations for such beliefs and, in the process, constructed the superiority of scientific expertise over public views about psychological matters.

Keywords:

• debunking
• discursive psychology
• history of psychology
• paranormal belief
• parapsychology
• psychology of error

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Alan Collins and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the final draft of this article.

Notes

¹There is an extensive literature on the application of the theory of probabilities to empirical data, and the reader can enter it by way of the studies cited. (Boring 1966, p. xx)