The notes on this site follow a syllabus. This is where the
rest goes — the claim everyone repeats that turns out to be wrong, the
notification nobody can parse, the question a course prospectus will not
answer honestly, and what the research says about the house you grew up in.
Written by Asst. Prof. Geetika Rai — Master's
in Applied Psychology, research in developmental psychology. Every claim
carries the source it came from.
Pick a subject
Eight of them. Each opens to its own page of sub-topics — or
read what each one is about further down.
A theory built on one caregiver, read in a house with four.
Psychology myths
Some of the most confidently repeated claims about how the mind works were tested properly and did not survive — and they are still taught, still printed in training material, and still shaping how students are told to study. A review of thirty-seven studies found that around 89% of teachers worldwide still hold at least one of them. This is where those get taken apart, carefully, with the actual evidence rather than a slogan.
Inside:
Learning styles are not real · You are not left-brained or right-brained · The ten percent claim
The eligibility exams decide who teaches and who is funded to do research, and most of what is written about them online is either a syllabus copied from a PDF or a promise about cut-offs nobody can keep. What is here instead: how to read a notification, what the paper has actually asked over the years, and which state's exam is genuinely yours. Every official fact carries the date it was checked and a link to the body that published it.
Inside:
The unit most candidates leave last · Which SET is yours · How to read a notification
Almost every answer to "should I do clinical or applied psychology" is published by somebody selling one of the two courses. These are written by somebody with nothing to sell you — including the unwelcome parts: which titles India actually regulates, what a certificate is and is not, and how many people complete a master's compared with how many get onto recognised training.
Inside:
Applied or clinical? · A certificate is not a licence · The quiet third route
An NCERT survey of around 3.8 lakh students found roughly 80% of those in Classes 9 to 12 reporting anxiety tied to exams and results. That is not a statistic about somebody else — it is most of the people reading this site. These posts are about what the pressure does, what helps, and where the line is between a hard week and something that needs more than a study plan.
Inside:
What "80% of students are anxious" actually means · The night before · When it is more than exam stress
Most of what a psychology textbook says about attachment, adolescence and family was established on Western, nuclear-family samples. Indian research on the same questions exists and is published — often in journals no search engine surfaces well. This is the section closest to my own research, and it is where I read that work against the households it actually describes.
Inside:
Attachment in a joint family · Why fifteen is difficult · The WEIRD problem
A paper is not a verdict; it is one attempt, under conditions the authors are obliged to tell you about. Learning to read the method and the limitations before the abstract changes what a degree feels like — and it is the single most transferable thing a psychology student can learn.
Inside:
Read the limitations first · Where Indian psychology is published · Spotting a predatory journal
The ideas that reverse themselves under exam pressure, taken one at a time and linked to the chapter they belong to. Reliability against validity, what a p-value does not mean, and the classic studies as they were actually reported rather than as they are repeated.
Inside:
Reliability and validity · What p < .05 does not mean · The classics, as actually reported
Written to a colleague rather than down to one: the unit students find driest and what makes it land, the first statistics lecture and where you lose the room, and how to correct a neuromyth in a staffroom without starting a fight.
Inside:
The first statistics lecture · Teaching Methods of Enquiry · When a student discloses distress
Some drafts here begin with a machine. That is worth saying plainly rather
than leaving you to wonder.
Nothing publishes without a person. A draft — however it
started — is read, checked and published by Asst. Prof. Geetika Rai under her
own name, and every study a draft names is opened before it goes live.
Confident-sounding error is the characteristic failure of machine writing,
and psychology is a field where a plausible citation to a study that never
replicated does real damage.
Found something wrong? Tell us on any
page — it reaches a person, and you do not need an account.