Sublime

In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias:23 seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias:24 seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth.

What’s Wrong With the Rorschach?, written with M. Teresa Nezworski, Scott Lilienfeld, and Howard Garb and released in 2003.

James Wood, a University of Texas psychology professor who would soon emerge as the Rorschach’s leading detractor, and two coauthors published a highly critical article in the respected journal Psychological Science. “Basic issues regarding the reliability and validity of the Comprehensive System have not been resolved,”

Yet the contents of our hidden depths seem to remain perpetually elusive. Freudian psychoanalysts can speculate about our hidden fears and desires; psychologists and neuroscientists can attempt to draw subtle and highly indirect conclusions from actions, heart-rate, skin conductance, pupil dilation and the rate of blood flow in the brain. But no hi

I count myself among a growing number of scientists who believe that the construction of self identity is not much better than the Lo-fi representations of other people we hold in our heads.

Neuroscientists sometimes refer disparagingly to these studies as “blobology,” their tongue-in-cheek label for studies that show which brain areas become activated as subjects experience X or perform task Y.

In December 2011, Professor John Stein, a leading Oxford neuroscientist, wrote, “Claims are being made about brain research that just aren’t true, and they are being accepted