Psychology is Not Just Common Sense: An Introductory Psychology Demonstration

Abstract

This article describes a simple demonstration that helps introductory psychology students overcome the misconception that psychology is just common sense. Early in the course, I recount Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) classic cognitive dissonance experiment and ask students to guess the outcome of the study. Because the vast majority of the class guesses an intuitive outcome, students are surprised by the actual, counterintuitive findings. This presentation provides a powerful demonstration that psychology is not just common sense. Evaluative data suggest that the demonstration achieves its aim. The technique is a good opening gambit for stimulating lively discussion and capturing students' interest.