... and those around us. Psychology is therefore often criticized as being simply common sense and its validity as a science is rejected. Psychological findings which do not seem to agree with common sense are consequentially thought to be wrong, or if they are not understood they are thought not to belong to the field of psychology (Furnham et al. 2003). Houston agreed with these claims after giving a multiple-choice test to introductory psychology students. The test was based on topics that the students had not been previously exposed to, however on 15 out of 21 questions more students answered correctly than could be accounted for by chance, leading him to conclude that "a great many of psychology's basic principles are self-evident" (1983, p. 207, cited by Furnham et al. 2003, p. 102). Furnham et al. further explored the relationship between common sense and psychology by conducting a study comparing a group of ...

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