Chapter 5: Exercises

Comprehension Check

1. What is the approximate annual revenue of the U.S. self-help industry? The corporate training industry? The personality testing industry? Why do these numbers matter for evaluating psychology claims?

2. Explain the "repeat customer problem" in the self-help industry. Why does the industry's growth potentially conflict with its stated goal of helping people?

3. What is the Kirkpatrick model for evaluating training programs? At which level do most corporate training evaluations stop, and why is this insufficient?

4. What is the Hawthorne effect, and how does it complicate the evaluation of corporate training programs?

5. Describe three ways the therapist-influencer phenomenon benefits public understanding of mental health, and three ways it may cause harm.

Application

6. Visit a bookstore (physical or online) and browse the self-help section. Choose three books. For each, note: - The promise on the cover (what transformation is offered?) - Whether specific research is cited on the back cover or in the introduction - Whether limitations or caveats are mentioned anywhere visible - The price What patterns do you notice?

7. Find a corporate training provider's website that offers personality assessment, resilience training, or mindset workshops. Analyze: - What psychology claims does the provider make? - What evidence does the provider cite? - Would that evidence survive Steps 3–6 of the toolkit? - What testimonials are used instead of evidence?

8. Find three therapist-influencer accounts on social media. For each, categorize their last 10 posts as: - (A) Accurate psychoeducation with appropriate nuance - (B) Oversimplified but pointing in the right direction - (C) Misleading or encouraging self-diagnosis What is the ratio across the three accounts?

9. Apply the incentive map to a psychology claim you frequently encounter. Trace who benefits at each stage of the pipeline (researcher, press office, journalist, influencer, product creator, audience). How does the incentive structure affect how the claim is presented at each stage?

10. A friend says "I found this amazing therapist on TikTok — she explains my attachment style perfectly, and I feel like she really gets me." Using what you've learned about parasocial relationships and the Barnum effect, how would you respond? (Remember: never shame someone for their beliefs.)

Critical Thinking

11. The chapter argues that the self-help industry has a structural incentive to manage problems rather than solve them. Is this argument fair? Could the same logic be applied to traditional therapy? What distinguishes the two?

12. Should there be regulatory standards for psychology claims in self-help books, similar to regulations on health claims in food marketing? What would be the benefits and drawbacks?

13. The incentive map shows that every actor in the psychology marketplace has incentives that push toward simplification. Is there any actor in the system whose incentives align with accuracy? If not, how could the system be reformed?

14. This chapter focuses on financial incentives. What other incentives (social status, identity, ideology) drive the spread of oversimplified psychology claims? Are non-financial incentives more or less powerful than financial ones?

15. Some self-help books are genuinely evidence-based (e.g., CBT workbooks for depression). How should consumers distinguish between evidence-based self-help and the rest? What signals should they look for?

Fact-Check Portfolio

16. For each of your 10 selected claims, create an incentive map: who profits financially from this claim being believed? Include authors, trainers, app developers, influencers, and industries. Note which claims have the largest financial ecosystems attached to them.