Super Bowl Myth: Busted!

Didn't you hear? Today, Super Bowl Sunday is allegedly the biggest day for spousal abuse. In fact, more women are victims of spousal abuse on this day than on any other day of the year, with domestic violence centers reporting an increase of 40 percent.

Except problem: It isn't true. Not in the slightest. Snopes.com does an excellent job detailing the history of this whopper from its origins.

Must . . . Attack . . . Women??

It's also important to examine one tremendous flaw with this logic: In football, players are hitting other men. They are not hitting other women. If the object of a football game were to have the male players attack the female cheerleaders of the opposing team, this argument might have some merit. Then again, if a football game really were played with men routinely attacking women, the NFL would have a serious problem attracting fans. Most people would find such activity abhorrent.

If people really were that impressionable, wouldn't Call of Duty video games have sparked a massive increase in U.S. military enlistment? Behavioral psychologists know better.

And yet the fact the a statistic so absurd could gain such widespread currency for so long is a reminder that our brains are programmed to take mental shortcuts. As humans, we have cognitive process that is designed to filter out garbage and decide whether something makes sense based on what we already presume to be true. Psychologists call this confirmation bias.

Are we doomed, then to eternal suffering based on our own mental shortcomings? I think not. I think we can do better. In the last half century, the American public has endured a seismic shift on equal rights based on race, equal rights based on sexual orientation, and automotive safety. Can the tackling of today's gun culture be far behind?