Psychological misconceptions are unsubstantiated yet persistent beliefs that hinder the education and practice of psychology. Understanding their prevalence and relation to psychological knowledge is essential. We expected that as students' class level increased, endorsement of misconceptions and other unsubstantiated beliefs (i.e., paranormal and conspiracy beliefs) would decrease, whereas perceiving psychology as a science would increase.
A total of 1,584 Turkish psychology undergraduates (1,343 women, 233 men, 8 unidentified; M = 21.85, SD = 6.51) from various universities completed measures of psychological misconceptions, paranormal beliefs, conspiracy beliefs (generic and wellbeing-related), and perception of psychology as a science. Correlations showed that class level was negatively, albeit weakly, related to psychological misconceptions, paranormal beliefs, and wellbeing-related conspiracies. ANOVAs revealed that freshmen endorsed misconceptions and wellbeing-related conspiracies more strongly than higher-grade students, whereas seniors endorsed paranormal beliefs less strongly (Fs > 7.81, ps < .001, η² > .015). However, class level was unrelated to the three most strongly endorsed misconceptions: that the tongue has distinct taste regions, that matching instruction to learning styles improves achievement, and that subliminal messages drive product purchases.
In hierarchical regression, religiosity and interest in astrology explained 9% of the variance in misconceptions. Adding paranormal and conspiracy beliefs increased the explained variance to 28%, and adding psychology as a science in the last step raised it to 29%. All predictors except religiosity were significant, with perception of psychology as a science being the only negative predictor.
Overall, psychology education in Türkiye made only a modest contribution to reducing unsubstantiated beliefs. Viewing psychology as a science emerged as the key factor in reducing misconceptions beyond the influence of paranormal and conspiracy beliefs. The implications for education and the application of psychology were discussed.