The prevalence of certain popular misconceptions

Abstract

An investigation was made of the prevalence of belief in current superstitions in a group of high school students from two high schools in New York City. The study is based on the results from 100 individuals of each sex for whom intelligence records were available. The median age for both boys and girls is about 17 years. A true-false questionnaire of 40 items (none supported by scientific fact) based on one devised earlier by Nixon was used. The significant results of this study are compared with those obtained by Nixon in his investigation of such beliefs among college students. With the exception of 3 of the boys, all of both groups believed at least 10 of the statements to be true. The average number of statements marked true was 17.6 (S.D.4.72) for the boys and 19.9 (S.D.4.46) for the girls. The orders of merit for belief in the 40 statements correspond closely for the sexes, as shown by the rank-order coefficient, 0.92. The correlation between intelligence and misconceptions is entirely negligible for both boys and girls. The writers believe that, probably, the largest single factor in the explanation of such beliefs is lack of information. A list of 6 references is given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)