Within "real psychology", it's sometimes difficult to tease out
   the real from the pop; one of my fascinations is fads within the
   scientific communities; trends in ways-of-thinking of "This is
   science" "this is not science" through the decades. An example I
   first noticed in high school (I'm 42 now) was Skinner - and I
   was amazed at how thorough he was about his methodology; and yet
   I was confused at how it was presented as outdated, old-way,
   "not how we do things now".* It's not to say that I agreed or
   disagreed with him; but it was the way all of his thoroughness
   was disregarded because of the controversial notion that he
   forced us to consider, *"Are we running on automatic, not
   sometimes but always?"* Or how pop-psychology can influence
   policy; I looked into Common Core standards (which feeds into
   the testing which feeds into the curriculum) that's been making
   sweeping changes across the US; Grit as measure of success vs
   IQ.* The changes in the curriculum encourages failure to
   theoretically increase grit or tenacity or stick-to-it-iveness.
   I know of the studies and don't disagree that by some measures,
   it could be considered indicative of success.* But - I also know
   of people who went to military Boot Camp and never made it
   through the 6 month course; they were successfully "cracked"
   through forced failure but all the kings horses and all the
   kings men couldn't put them back together again, and they went
   home, neither who they were, nor who they were supposed to
   become. Case studies - granted - but it's precisely the outliers
   that I'm concerned about;* the little statistics "blips" that
   are averaged out - but they're real people here. And yet this
   fad - which is very American-biased - the death of IQ and the
   growth of Grit - is being implemented without extensive testing
   (none that I could find) on its effectiveness; statistical
   analysis of the past and surveys - yes; but it's being tested on
   millions of live kids very quickly... and I have hardly seen a
   peep about "what happens" when a child's internal models of
   "self" are broken down and reconstructed in this manner. They
   may be right; it may be the best thing.* People much smarter
   than I are hopefully working on it.* But I know how fads and
   trends are; and when there is a lack of opposing views, or
   without people bringing up the awkward questions and poking at
   the bread to see if it's fully baked; a lot of bad ideas can
   slide by because they "seem right" to large amount of people,
   with the after-effects not coming out until you have the
   casualties; New Math from the late 60/70s resulted in at least a
   few people I know of that generation who are forever dependent
   upon a calculator now, because of a fad that "If we teach like
   the Chinese, our kids will be mathematically smart like the
   Chinese kids". *sigh* sorry for the rant.* I get worked-up
   sometimes :P