Sunday, September 5, 2010

Psychology Study Finds Only 23 Percent of Britons Are Normal [Science]

Psychology Study Finds Only 23 Percent of Britons Are Normal [Science]

Psychology Study Finds Only 23 Percent of Britons Are Normal [Science]

Posted: 05 Sep 2010 10:47 AM PDT

Psychology Study Finds Only 23 Percent of Britons Are NormalA new study in the British Journal of Psychology found that only 23% of Britons have no 'personality pathology'. Strange is the new normal, or something. While this would explain England's colonialism and obsession with darts, it seems pretty fishy.

The authors of the study write:

Of 8391 individuals interviewed and their personality status assessed, only a minority (n = 1933, 23%) had no personality pathology

So, the researchers called up 8391 people and interviewed them using a diagnostic questionnaire, and found that 77% of them were in some way mentally whacked: 48% had "personality difficulties", 21% had more-serious "personality disorders" and 7% had 'severe' personality disorders. England really took their World Cup performance hard.

But the blog Neuroskeptic believes that this high level of 'personality difficulties' is just a case of overzealous diagnosis:

We can conclude that "personality difficulties" should either be scrapped or renamed "normal". In which case the weird minority of people without any such features should be relabelled. Maybe they are best known as "saints", or "Übermenschen", or perhaps "people who lie on questionnaires".

Honestly 77% seems pretty low. Judging from the emails we get at Gawker, everyone in the world has severe personality disorders. [via Mindhacks]

Send an email to Adrian Chen, the author of this post, at adrian@gawker.com.


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