Psychology
Psychology
Psychology is
the science of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena,
as well as feelings and thought. It is an academic discipline of immense scope.
Psychologists also seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains,
linking the discipline to neuroscience.
As a social science, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of
individuals and groups.
A professional practitioner or
researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as
social, behavioral, or cognitive
scientists. Some psychologists attempt to
understand the role of mental functions in individual and social
behavior. Others explore the physiological and biological processes
that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.
Psychologists explore behavior
and mental processes, including perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, subjective
experiences, motivation, brain functioning,
and personality. Psychologists'
interests extend to interpersonal relationships, psychological resilience, family resilience,
and other areas within social psychology.
Psychologists also consider the unconscious mind. Research psychologists
employ empirical methods to infer
causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. Some,
but not all, clinical and counseling psychologists rely on symbolic
interpretation.
While psychological knowledge
is often applied to the assessment and treatment of mental health problems, it
is also directed towards understanding and solving problems in several spheres
of human activity. By many accounts, psychology ultimately aims to benefit
society. Many psychologists are involved in some kind of therapeutic role,
practicing in clinical, counseling, or school settings. Other psychologists
conduct scientific research on a wide range of topics related to mental
processes and behavior. Typically the latter group of psychologists work in
academic settings (e.g., universities, medical schools, hospitals). Another
group of psychologists is employed in industrial and organizational settings. Yet
others are involved in work on human development, aging, sports, health,
forensics, and the media.
Etymology
and definitions
The word psychology derives
from the Greek word psyche, for spirit or soul. The latter part of the word
"psychology" derives from -λογία -logia, which
refers to "study" or "research". The Latin word psychologia was
first used by the Croatian humanist and Latinist Marko Marulić in
his book, Psichiologia
de ratione animae humanae (Psychology, on the Nature of the Human
Soul) in the late 15th century or early 16th century. The earliest
known reference to the word psychology in English was by Steven Blankaart in
1694 in The Physical Dictionary. The dictionary refers to
"Anatomy, which treats the Body, and Psychology, which treats of the
Soul."
In 1890, William James defined psychology as
"the science of mental life, both of its phenomena and their
conditions." This definition enjoyed widespread currency for decades.
However, this meaning was contested, notably by radical behaviorists such
as John
B. Watson, who in 1913 defined the discipline as a "natural
science," the theoretical goal of which "is the prediction and
control of behavior." Since James defined "psychology," the
term more strongly implicates scientific experimentation. Folk psychology refers
to the understanding of ordinary people, as contrasted with that of psychology
professionals.
History
The ancient civilizations of
Egypt, Greece, China, India, and Persia all engaged in the philosophical study
of psychology. In Ancient Egypt the Ebers Papyrus mentioned depression and
thought disorders. Historians note that Greek philosophers,
including Thales, Plato,
and Aristotle (especially
in his De
Anima treatise), addressed the workings of the
mind. As early as the 4th century BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates theorized
that mental
disorders had physical rather than supernatural causes.
In China, psychological
understanding grew from the philosophical works of Laozi and Confucius, and
later from the doctrines of Buddhism. This body of knowledge
involves insights drawn from introspection and observation, as well as
techniques for focused thinking and acting. It frames the universe in term of a
division of physical reality and mental reality as well as the interaction
between the physical and the mental. Chinese philosophy also emphasized
purifying the mind in order to increase virtue and power. An ancient text known
as The
Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine identifies the
brain as the nexus of wisdom and sensation, includes theories of personality
based on yin–yang balance,
and analyzes mental disorder in terms of physiological and social
disequilibria. Chinese scholarship that focused on the brain advanced during
the Qing
Dynasty with the work of Western-educated Fang Yizhi
(1611–1671), Liu
Zhi (1660–1730), and Wang Qingren (1768–1831). Wang Qingren
emphasized the importance of the brain as the center of the nervous system,
linked mental disorder with brain diseases, investigated the causes of dreams
and insomnia, and
advanced a theory of hemispheric lateralization in brain function.
Influenced by Hinduism, Indian philosophy explored
distinctions in types of awareness. A central idea of the Upanishads and
other Vedic texts
that formed the foundations of Hinduism was the distinction between a person's
transient mundane self and their eternal, unchanging soul.
Divergent Hindu doctrines and Buddhism have challenged
this hierarchy of selves, but have all emphasized the importance of reaching
higher awareness. Yoga encompasses
a range of techniques used in pursuit of this goal. Theosophy, a
religion established by Russian-American philosopher Helena Blavatsky, drew
inspiration from these doctrines during her time in British India.
Psychology was of interest
to Enlightenment
thinkers in Europe. In Germany, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716)
applied his principles of calculus to the mind, arguing that mental activity
took place on an indivisible continuum. He suggested that the difference
between conscious and unconscious awareness is only a matter of degree. Christian Wolff identified
psychology as its own science, writing Psychologia Empirica in
1732 and Psychologia Rationalis in 1734. Immanuel Kant advanced
the idea of anthropology as
a discipline, with psychology an important subdivision. Kant, however,
explicitly rejected the idea of an experimental psychology,
writing that "the empirical doctrine of the soul can also never approach
chemistry even as a systematic art of analysis or experimental doctrine, for in
it the manifold of inner observation can be separated only by mere division in
thought, and cannot then be held separate and recombined at will (but still
less does another thinking subject suffer himself to be experimented upon to
suit our purpose), and even observation by itself already changes and displaces
the state of the observed object." In 1783, Ferdinand Ueberwasser (1752-1812)
designated himself Professor of Empirical Psychology and Logic and
gave lectures on scientific psychology, though these developments were soon
overshadowed by the Napoleonic
Wars. At the end of the Napoleonic era, Prussian authorities
discontinued the Old University of Münster. Having consulted
philosophers Hegel and Herbart,
however, in 1825 the
Prussian state established psychology as a mandatory discipline in its
rapidly expanding and highly influential educational system.
However, this discipline did not yet embrace experimentation. In England,
early psychology involved phrenology and the response to social problems including alcoholism,
violence, and the country's crowded "lunatic" asylums.
Beginning of experimental psychology
The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, a researcher at the University of Berlin, was another 19th-century contributor to the field. He
pioneered the experimental study of memory and developed quantitative models of
learning and forgetting. In the early twentieth century, Wolfgang
Kohler, Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka co-founded
the school of Gestalt psychology (not
to be confused with the Gestalt therapy of Fritz
Perls). The approach of Gestalt psychology is based
upon the idea that individuals experience things as unified wholes. Rather
than reducing thoughts and
behavior into smaller component elements, as in structuralism, the Gestaltists
maintained that whole of experience is important, and differs from the sum of
its parts.
Psychologists in Germany,
Denmark, Austria, England, and the United States soon followed Wundt in setting
up laboratories. G.
Stanley Hall, an American who studied with Wundt,
founded a psychology lab that became internationally influential. The lab was
located at Johns Hopkins University.
Hall, in turn, trained Yujiro Motora,
who brought experimental psychology, emphasizing psychophysics, to the Imperial
University of Tokyo. Wundt's assistant, Hugo
Münsterberg, taught psychology at Harvard to
students such as Narendra Nath Sen Gupta—who,
in 1905, founded a psychology department and laboratory at the University
of Calcutta. Wundt's students Walter
Dill Scott, Lightner Witmer, and James McKeen Cattell worked on developing tests of mental ability.
Cattell, who also studied with eugenicist Francis
Galton, went on to found the Psychological
Corporation. Witmer focused on the mental testing
of children; Scott, on employee selection.
Another student of Wundt, the
Englishman Edward
Titchener, created the psychology program at Cornell
University and advanced "structuralist" psychology. The idea behind structuralism was to
analyze and classify different aspects of the mind, primarily through the
method of introspection. William
James, John Dewey, and Harvey
Carr advanced the idea of functionalism, an expansive approach to psychology that underlined the
Darwinian idea of a behavior's usefulness to the individual. In 1890, James
wrote an influential book, The Principles of Psychology, which expanded on the structuralism. He memorably
described "stream of consciousness."
James's ideas interested many American students in the emerging
discipline. Dewey integrated psychology with societal concerns, most
notably by promoting progressive education,
inculcating moral values in children, and assimilating immigrants.
A different strain of
experimentalism, with a greater connection to physiology, emerged in South
America, under the leadership of Horacio G. Piñero at the University of Buenos
Aires. In
Russia, too, researchers placed greater emphasis on the biological basis for
psychology, beginning with Ivan Sechenov's
1873 essay, "Who Is to Develop Psychology and How?" Sechenov advanced
the idea of brain reflexes and
aggressively promoted a deterministic view
of human behavior. The Russian-Soviet physiologist Ivan Pavlov discovered
in dogs a learning process that was later termed "classical
conditioning" and applied the process to human
beings.
Consolidation and funding
American psychology gained
status upon the U.S.'s entry into World War I. A standing committee headed
by Robert
Yerkes administered mental tests ("Army
Alpha" and "Army Beta") to almost 1.8 million
soldiers. Subsequently, the Rockefeller family, via the Social Science Research Council, began to provide funding for behavioral
research. Rockefeller charities funded the National Committee on Mental
Hygiene, which disseminated the concept of mental illness and lobbied for
applying ideas from psychology to child rearing. Through the Bureau of
Social Hygiene and later funding of Alfred Kinsey, Rockefeller foundations helped establish research on
sexuality in the U.S. Under the influence of the Carnegie-funded Eugenics
Record Office, the Draper-funded Pioneer
Fund, and other institutions, the eugenics
movement also influenced American psychology.
In the 1910s and 1920s, eugenics became a standard topic in psychology classes. In
contrast to the US, in the UK psychology was met with antagonism by the
scientific and medical establishments, and up until 1939, there were only six
psychology chairs in universities in England.
During World War II and the
Cold War, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies established themselves as
leading funders of psychology by way of the armed forces and in the new Office of Strategic
Services intelligence agency. University of
Michigan psychologist Dorwin Cartwright reported that university researchers
began large-scale propaganda research in 1939–1941. He observed that "the
last few months of the war saw a social psychologist become chiefly responsible
for determining the week-by-week-propaganda policy for the United States Government."
Cartwright also wrote that psychologists had significant roles in managing the
domestic economy. The
Army rolled out its new General Classification Test to
assess the ability of millions of soldiers. The Army also engaged in
large-scale psychological research of troop morale and mental
health. In the 1950s, the Rockefeller
Foundation and Ford Foundation collaborated with the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) to fund research
on psychological warfare. In 1965,
public controversy called attention to the Army's Project Camelot—the "Manhattan Project" of social science—an
effort which enlisted psychologists and anthropologists to analyze the plans
and policies of foreign countries for strategic purposes.
In Germany after World War I,
psychology held institutional power through the military and subsequently
expanded along with the rest of the military under the Third Reich. Under the direction of Hermann Göring's cousin Matthias Göring, the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute was renamed the Göring Institute. Freudian
psychoanalysts were expelled and persecuted
under the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi Party, and all psychologists had to distance themselves
from Freud and Adler, founders of psychoanalysis who were also
Jewish. The Göring Institute was well-financed throughout the war with a
mandate to create a "New German Psychotherapy." This psychotherapy
aimed to align suitable Germans with the overall goals of the Reich. As
described by one physician, "Despite the importance of analysis, spiritual
guidance and the active cooperation of the patient represent the best way to
overcome individual mental problems and to subordinate them to the requirements
of the Volk and the Gemeinschaft." Psychologists were to provide Seelenführung [lit.,
soul guidance], the leadership of the mind, to integrate people into the new
vision of a German community. Harald Schultz-Hencke melded psychology with the Nazi theory of biology
and racial origins, criticizing psychoanalysis as a study of the weak and
deformed. Johannes Heinrich Schultz, a
German psychologist recognized for developing the technique of autogenic
training, prominently advocated sterilization and
euthanasia of men considered genetically undesirable, and devised techniques
for facilitating this process.
After the war, new institutions
were created although some psychologists, because of their Nazi affiliation,
were discredited. Alexander
Mitscherlich founded a prominent applied
psychoanalysis journal called Psyche. With funding from the
Rockefeller Foundation, Mitscherlich established the first clinical
psychosomatic medicine division at Heidelberg University. In 1970, psychology
was integrated into the required studies of medical students.
After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks promoted
psychology as a way to engineer the "New Man" of socialism.
Consequently, university psychology departments trained large numbers of
students in psychology. At the completion of training, positions were made available
for those students at schools, workplaces, cultural institutions, and in the
military. The Russian state emphasized pedology and the study of child development. Lev
Vygotsky became prominent in the field of
child development. The Bolsheviks also promoted free love and embraced the doctrine of psychoanalysis as an
antidote to sexual repression. Although pedology and intelligence testing
fell out of favor in 1936, psychology maintained its privileged position as an
instrument of the Soviet Union. Stalinist purges took a heavy toll and instilled a climate of fear
in the profession, as elsewhere in Soviet society. Following World War II,
Jewish psychologists past and present, including Lev Vygotsky, A.R. Luria, and
Aron Zalkind, were denounced; Ivan Pavlov (posthumously) and Stalin himself
were celebrated as heroes of Soviet psychology. Soviet academics
experienced a degree of liberalization during the Khrushchev Thaw. The topics of cybernetics, linguistics, and genetics
became acceptable again. The new field of engineering psychology emerged. The field involved the study of the mental
aspects of complex jobs (such as pilot and cosmonaut). Interdisciplinary
studies became popular and scholars such as Georgy Shchedrovitsky developed systems theory approaches to human
behavior.
Twentieth-century Chinese
psychology originally modeled itself on U.S. psychology, with translations from
American authors like William James, the establishment of university psychology
departments and journals, and the establishment of groups including the Chinese
Association of Psychological Testing (1930) and the Chinese Psychological
Society (1937). Chinese psychologists were
encouraged to focus on education and language learning. Chinese psychologists
were drawn to the idea that education would enable modernization. John Dewey,
who lectured to Chinese audiences between 1919 and 1921, had a significant
influence on psychology in China. Chancellor T'sai Yuan-p'ei introduced him at Peking University as a greater thinker than Confucius. Kuo
Zing-yang who received a PhD at the University
of California, Berkeley, became President of Zhejiang University and popularized behaviorism. After the Chinese Communist Party gained control of the country, the Stalinist Soviet
Union became the major influence, with Marxism–Leninism the leading social doctrine and Pavlovian
conditioning the approved means of behavior change. Chinese psychologists
elaborated on Lenin's model of a "reflective" consciousness,
envisioning an "active consciousness" (pinyin: tzu-chueh neng-tung-li) able to transcend
material conditions through hard work and ideological struggle. They developed
a concept of "recognition" (pinyin: jen-shih)
which referred to the interface between individual perceptions and the socially
accepted worldview; failure to correspond with party doctrine was
"incorrect recognition." Psychology education was centralized
under the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
supervised by the State Council. In
1951, the Academy created a Psychology Research Office, which in 1956 became
the Institute of Psychology. Because most leading psychologists were educated
in the United States, the first concern of the Academy was the re-education of
these psychologists in the Soviet doctrines. Child psychology and pedagogy for
the purpose of a nationally cohesive education remained a central goal of the
discipline.
Disciplinary
organization
Institutions
In 1920, Édouard Claparède and Pierre Bovet created a new applied psychology organization called the
International Congress of Psychotechnics Applied to Vocational Guidance, later
called the International Congress of Psychotechnics and then the International
Association of Applied Psychology. The IAAP is
considered the oldest international psychology association. Today, at
least 65 international groups deal with specialized aspects of
psychology. In response to male predominance in the field, female
psychologists in the U.S. formed the National Council of Women Psychologists in
1941. This organization became the International Council of Women Psychologists
after World War II and the International Council of Psychologists in 1959.
Several associations including the Association of Black
Psychologists and the Asian American
Psychological Association have arisen to promote the inclusion of non-European
racial groups in the profession.
The International Union
of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) is the world
federation of national psychological societies. The IUPsyS was founded in 1951
under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and
Scientific Organization (UNESCO). Psychology
departments have since proliferated around the world, based primarily on the
Euro-American model. Since 1966, the Union has published the International
Journal of Psychology. IAAP and IUPsyS agreed in 1976 each to hold a
congress every four years, on a staggered basis.
IUPsyS recognizes 66 national
psychology associations and at least 15 others exist. The American
Psychological Association is the oldest and largest. Its membership has
increased from 5,000 in 1945 to 100,000 in the present day. The APA
includes 54
divisions, which since 1960 have steadily
proliferated to include more specialties. Some of these divisions, such as
the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the American Psychology–Law Society, began as autonomous groups.
The Interamerican
Psychological Society, founded in 1951, aspires to
promote psychology across the Western Hemisphere. It holds the Interamerican
Congress of Psychology and ha had 1,000 members in year 2000. The European
Federation of Professional Psychology Associations, founded in 1981, represents
30 national associations with a total of 100,000 individual members. At least
30 other international organizations represent psychologists in different regions.
In some places, governments
legally regulate who can provide psychological services or represent themselves
as a "psychologist." The APA defines a psychologist as someone
with a doctoral degree in psychology.
Boundaries
Early practitioners of
experimental psychology distinguished themselves from parapsychology, which in the late nineteenth century enjoyed popularity
(including the interest of scholars such as William James). Some people
considered parapsychology to be part of "psychology." Parapsychology,
hypnotism, and psychism were major
topics at the early International Congresses. But students of these fields were
eventually ostractized, and more or less banished from the Congress in
1900–1905. Parapsychology persisted for a time at Imperial University in
Japan, with publications such as Clairvoyance and Thoughtography by
Tomokichi Fukurai, but here too it was mostly shunned by 1913.
As a discipline, psychology has
long sought to fend off accusations that it is a "soft" science.
Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn's 1962 critique
implied psychology overall was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking agreement on
the type of overarching theory found in mature sciences such as chemistry and
physics Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys
and questionnaires, critics asserted that psychology is not an objective
science. Skeptics have suggested that personality, thinking, and emotion cannot
be directly measured and are often inferred from subjective self-reports, which
may be problematic. Experimental psychologists have devised a variety of ways
to indirectly measure these elusive phenomenological entities.
Divisions still exist within
the field, with some psychologists more oriented towards the unique experiences
of individual humans, which cannot be understood only as data points within a
larger population. Critics inside and outside the field have argued that
mainstream psychology has become increasingly dominated by a "cult of
empiricism," which limits the scope of research because investigators
restrict themselves to methods derived from the physical
sciences. Feminist critiques have argued that claims to scientific
objectivity obscure the values and agenda of (historically) mostly male
researchers. Jean Grimshaw, for example, argues that mainstream
psychological research has advanced a patriarchal agenda
through its efforts to control behavior.
Major
schools of thought
Biological
The contemporary field of behavioral
neuroscience focuses on the physical basis of
behavior. Behaviorial neuroscientists use animal models, often relying on rats,
to study the neural, genetic, and cellular mechanisms that underlie behaviors
involved in learning, memory, and fear responses. Cognitive
neuroscientists, by using neural imaging tools,
investigate the neural correlates of psychological processes in humans. Neuropsychologists conduct psychological assessments to determine how
an individual's behavior and cognition are related to the brain. The biopsychosocial
model is a cross-disciplinary, holistic model
that concerns the ways in which interrelationships of biological,
psychological, and socio-environmental factors affect health and behavior.
Evolutionary psychology approaches thought and behavior from a modern evolutionary
perspective. This perspective suggests that psychological adaptations evolved
to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. Evolutionary
psychologists attempt to find out how human psychological traits are evolved
adaptations, the results of natural selection or sexual selection over the
course of human evolution.
The history of the biological
foundations of psychology includes evidence of racism. The idea of white
supremacy and indeed the modern concept of race itself arose during the process
of world conquest by Europeans. Carl von Linnaeus's
four-fold classification of humans classifies Europeans as intelligent and
severe, Americans as contented and free, Asians as ritualistic, and Africans as
lazy and capricious. Race was also used to justify the construction of socially
specific mental disorders such as drapetomania and dysaesthesia aethiopica—the behavior of uncooperative African slaves. After
the creation of experimental psychology, "ethnical psychology"
emerged as a subdiscipline, based on the assumption that studying primitive
races would provide an important link between animal behavior and the
psychology of more evolved humans.
Behavioral
Early behavioral researchers
studied stimulus–response pairings, now known as classical
conditioning. They demonstrated that when a
biologically potent stimulus (e.g., food that elicits salivation) is paired
with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g., a bell) over several learning trials,
the neutral stimulus by itself can come to elicit the response the biologically
potent stimulus elicits. Ivan Pavlov—known best for inducing dogs to salivate
in the presence of a stimulus previously linked with food—became a leading
figure in the Soviet Union and inspired followers to use his methods on
humans. In the United States, Edward Lee Thorndike initiated "connectionist" studies by trapping animals in "puzzle
boxes" and rewarding them for escaping. Thorndike wrote in 1911:
"There can be no moral warrant for studying man's nature unless the study
will enable us to control his acts." From 1910–1913 the American
Psychological Association went through a sea change of opinion, away from mentalism and towards "behavioralism." In 1913 John
B. Watson coined the term behaviorism for this school of thought. Watson's
famous Little Albert experiment in
1920 was at first thought to demonstrate that repeated use of upsetting loud
noises could instill phobias (aversions
to other stimuli) in an infant human, although such a conclusion was
likely an exaggeration. Karl Lashley, a
close collaborator with Watson, examined biological manifestations of learning
in the brain.
Clark L. Hull, Edwin
Guthrie, and others did much to help behaviorism
become a widely used paradigm. A new method of "instrumental" or
"operant" conditioning added the
concepts of reinforcement and punishment to the model of behavior change. Radical
behaviorists avoided discussing the inner
workings of the mind, especially the unconscious mind, which they considered
impossible to assess scientifically. Operant conditioning was first
described by Miller and Kanorski and popularized in the U.S. by B.F.
Skinner, who emerged as a leading intellectual of
the behaviorist movement.
Noam Chomsky published
an influential critique of radical behaviorism on the grounds that behaviorist
principles could not adequately explain the complex mental process of language
acquisition and language use. The review,
which was scathing, did much to reduce the status of behaviorism within
psychology. Martin Seligman and
his colleagues discovered that they could condition "learned
helplessness" in dogs, a state that was not
predicted by the behaviorist approach to psychology. Edward C.
Tolman advanced a hybrid "cognitive
behavioral" model, most notably with his 1948 publication discussing
the cognitive maps used by rats to
guess at the location of food at the end of a maze. Skinner's behaviorism
did not die, in part because it generated successful practical applications.
The Association for
Behavior Analysis International was founded in
1974 and by 2003 had members from 42 countries. The field has gained a foothold
in Latin America and Japan. Applied behavior analysis is the term used for the application of the
principles of operant conditioning to change socially significant behavior (it
supersedes the term behavior modification).
Cognitive
Cognitive psychology involves the study of mental processes, including perception, attention,
language comprehension and production, memory, and problem solving. Researchers in the field of
cognitive psychology are sometimes called cognitivists. They rely on an information processing model of mental functioning. Cognitivist research
is informed by functionalism and
experimental psychology.
Starting in the 1950s, the
experimental techniques developed by Wundt, James, Ebbinghaus, and others
re-emerged as experimental psychology became increasingly cognitivist and,
eventually, constituted a part of the wider, interdisciplinary cognitive science. Some called this development the cognitive
revolution because it rejected the
anti-mentalist dogma of behaviorism as well as the strictures of
psychoanalysis.
Albert Bandura helped
along the transition in psychology from behaviorism to cognitive psychology.
Bandura and other social learning theorists advanced
the idea of vicarious learning. In other words, they advanced the view that a
child can learn by observing his or her social environment and not necessarily
from having been reinforced for enacting a behavior, although they did not rule
out the influence of reinforcement on learning a behavior.
Technological advances also
renewed interest in mental states and mental representations. English
neuroscientist Charles
Sherrington and Canadian psychologist Donald
O. Hebb used experimental methods to link
psychological phenomena to the structure and function of the brain. The rise of
computer science, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence underlined the value
of comparing information processing in humans and machines.
A popular and representative
topic in this area is cognitive bias, or irrational
thought. Psychologists (and economists) have classified and described a sizeable
catalogue of biases which recur frequently in
human thought. The availability heuristic,
for example, is the tendency to overestimate the importance of something which
happens to come readily to mind.
Elements of behaviorism and
cognitive psychology were synthesized to form cognitive behavioral
therapy, a form of psychotherapy modified from
techniques developed by American psychologist Albert Ellis and American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck.
On a broader level, cognitive
science is an interdisciplinary enterprise involving cognitive psychologists,
cognitive neuroscientists, linguists, and researchers in artificial
intelligence, human–computer interaction, and computational
neuroscience. The discipline of cognitive science
covers cognitive psychology as well as philosophy of mind, computer science,
and neuroscience. Computer simulations are sometimes used to model
phenomena of interest.
Social
Social psychology is concerned with how behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and the social environment influence human interactions. Social psychologists study such topics as the influence of others on an individual's behavior (e.g. conformity, persuasion) and the formation of beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes about other people. Social cognition fuses elements of social and cognitive psychology for the purpose of understanding how people process, remember, or distort social information. The study of group dynamics involves research on the nature of leadership, organizational communication, and related phenomena. In recent years, many social psychologists have become increasingly interested in implicit measures, mediational models, and the interaction of person and social factors in accounting for behavior. Some concepts that sociologists have applied to the study of psychiatric disorders, concepts such as the social role, sick role, social class, life events, culture, migration, and total institution, have influenced social psychologists.
Psychoanalytic
Psychoanalytic theory is not
monolithic. Other well known psychoanalytic thinkers who, to a greater or
lesser degree, diverged with Freud include Alfred Adler, Carl
Jung, Erik Erikson, Melanie Klein, D.W.
Winnicott, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, John
Bowlby, Freud's daughter Anna Freud, and Harry Stack Sullivan. These individuals ensured that psychoanalysis would
evolve into diverse schools of thought. Among these schools are ego
psychology, object relations, and interpersonal, Lacanian, and relational psychoanalysis.
Psychologists such as Hans Eysenck and philosophers including Karl Popper sharply criticized psychoanalysis. Popper argued
that psychoanalysis had been misrepresented as a scientific
discipline, whereas Eysenck advanced the view that psychoanalytic tenets
had been contradicted by experimental data.
By the end of 20th century, psychology departments in American
universities mostly marginalized Freudian
theory, dismissing it as a "desiccated and dead" historical artifact. Researchers
such as António Damásio, Oliver
Sacks, and Joseph LeDoux, and individuals in the emerging field of neuro-psychoanalysis, however, have defended some of Freud's ideas on
scientific grounds.
Existential-humanistic theories
Later, positive psychology opened up humanistic themes to scientific study.
Positive psychology is the study of factors which contribute to human happiness
and well-being, focusing more on people who are currently healthy. In
2010, Clinical Psychological Review published a special issue
devoted to positive psychological interventions, such as gratitude
journaling and the physical expression of
gratitude. It is, however, far from clear that positive psychology is effective
in making people happier. Positive psychological interventions have been
limited in scope, but their effects are thought to be somewhat better
than placebo effects. The
evidence, however, is far from clear that interventions based on positive
psychology increase human happiness or resilience.
The American
Association for Humanistic Psychology, formed in 1963, declared:
Humanistic
psychology is primarily an orientation toward the whole of psychology rather
than a distinct area or school. It stands for respect for the worth of persons,
respect for differences of approach, open-mindedness as to acceptable methods,
and interest in exploration of new aspects of human behavior. As a "third
force" in contemporary psychology, it is concerned with topics having
little place in existing theories and systems: e.g., love, creativity, self,
growth, organism, basic need-gratification, self-actualization, higher values,
being, becoming, spontaneity, play, humor, affection, naturalness, warmth,
ego-transcendence, objectivity, autonomy, responsibility, meaning, fair-play,
transcendental experience, peak experience, courage, and related concepts.
Existential psychology
emphasizes the need to understand a client's total orientation towards the
world. Existential psychology is opposed to reductionism, behaviorism, and
other methods that objectify the individual. In the 1950s and 1960s,
influenced by philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Martin
Heidegger, psychoanalytically trained American
psychologist Rollo May helped to
develop existential psychology. Existential psychotherapy, which follows from existential psychology, is a
therapeutic approach that is based on the idea that a person's inner conflict
arises from that individual's confrontation with the givens of existence. Swiss
psychoanalyst Ludwig Binswanger and
American psychologist George Kelly may
also be said to belong to the existential school. Existential
psychologists tend to differ from more "humanistic" psychologists in
the former's relatively neutral view of human nature and relatively positive
assessment of anxiety. Existential psychologists emphasized the humanistic
themes of death, free will, and meaning, suggesting that meaning can be shaped
by myths and narratives; meaning can be deepened by the acceptance of free
will, which is requisite to living an authentic life, albeit often with anxiety with regard to
death.
Austrian existential
psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl drew evidence of meaning's therapeutic power from
reflections upon his own internment. He
created a variation of existential psychotherapy called logotherapy, a type of existentialist analysis that focuses on a will to meaning (in
one's life), as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure.
Themes
Personality
Personality psychology is
concerned with enduring patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. Theories of
personality vary across different psychological schools of thought. Each theory
carries different assumptions about such features as the role of the unconscious
and the importance of childhood experience. According to Freud, personality is
based on the dynamic interactions of the id, ego, and super-ego. By contrast, trait theorists have developed taxonomies of personality constructs
in describing personality in terms of key traits. Trait theorists have often
employed statistical data-reduction methods, such as factor
analysis. Although the number of proposed traits
has varied widely, Hans Eysenck's early
biologically-based model suggests at least three major trait constructs are
necessary to describe human personality, extraversion–introversion, neuroticism-stability,
and psychoticism-normality. Raymond
Cattell empirically derived a theory of 16
personality factors at the primary-factor
level and up to eight broader second-stratum factors. Since the 1980s,
the Big Five (openness to
experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism)
emerged as an important trait theory of personality. Dimensional models of
personality are receiving increasing support, and a version of dimensional
assessment has been included in the DSM-V.
However, despite a plethora of research into the various versions of the
"Big Five" personality dimensions, it appears necessary to move on
from static conceptualizations of personality structure to a more dynamic
orientation, acknowledging that personality constructs are subject to learning
and change over the lifespan.
An early example of personality
assessment was the Woodworth
Personal Data Sheet, constructed during World War
I. The popular, although psychometrically inadequate, Myers–Briggs
Type Indicator was developed to assess
individuals' "personality types" according to the personality
theories of Carl Jung. The Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI),
despite its name, is more a dimensional measure of psychopathology than a
personality measure. California Psychological Inventory contains 20 personality scales (e.g., independence,
tolerance). The International Personality Item Pool, which is in the public domain, has become a source of
scales that can be used personality assessment.
Unconscious mind
Study of the unconscious mind,
a part of the psyche outside the individual's awareness but that is believed to
influence conscious thought and behavior, was a hallmark of early psychology.
In one of the first psychology experiments conducted in the United
States, C.S.
Peirce and Joseph Jastrow found in 1884 that research subjects could choose
the minutely heavier of two weights even if consciously uncertain of the
difference. Freud popularized the concept of the unconscious mind,
particularly when he referred to an uncensored intrusion of unconscious thought
into one's speech (a Freudian slip) or
to his efforts to interpret dreams. His
1901 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life catalogues hundreds of everyday events that Freud
explains in terms of unconscious influence. Pierre Janet advanced the idea of a subconscious mind, which
could contain autonomous mental elements unavailable to the direct scrutiny of
the subject.
The concept of unconscious
processes has remained important in psychology. Cognitive psychologists have
used a "filter" model of attention, according to which much
information processing takes place below the threshold of consciousness, and
only certain stimuli, limited by their nature and number, make their way
through the filter. Much research has shown that subconscious priming of
certain ideas can covertly influence thoughts and behavior. Because
of the unreliability of self-reporting, a major hurdle in this type of research
involves demonstrating that a subject's conscious mind has not perceived a
target stimulus. For this reason, some psychologists prefer to distinguish
between implicit and explicit memory.
In another approach, one can also describe a subliminal stimulus as meeting an objective but not
a subjective threshold.
The automaticity model of John Bargh and others involves the ideas of automaticity and
unconscious processing in our understanding of social behavior, although there has been dispute with regard to
replication. Some experimental data suggest that the brain
begins to consider taking actions before the
mind becomes aware of them. The influence of unconscious forces on
people's choices bears on the philosophical question of free will. John
Bargh, Daniel Wegner, and Ellen
Langer describe free will as an
illusion.
Motivation
Some psychologists study
motivation or the subject of why people or lower animals initiate a behavior at
a particular time. It also involves the study of why humans and lower animals
continue or terminate a behavior. Psychologists such as William James initially
used the term motivation to refer to intention, in a sense
similar to the concept of will in European philosophy.
With the steady rise of Darwinian and Freudian thinking, instinct also came to
be seen as a primary source of motivation. According to drive theory, the forces of instinct combine into a single source of
energy which exerts a constant influence. Psychoanalysis, like biology,
regarded these forces as demands originating in the nervous system.
Psychoanalysts believed that these forces, especially the sexual instincts,
could become entangled and transmuted within the psyche. Classical
psychoanalysis conceives of a struggle between the pleasure principle and
the reality principle, roughly
corresponding to id and ego. Later, in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle, Freud introduced the concept of
the death drive, a compulsion
towards aggression, destruction, and psychic repetition of
traumatic events. Meanwhile, behaviorist
researchers used simple dichotomous models (pleasure/pain, reward/punishment)
and well-established principles such as the idea that a thirsty creature will
take pleasure in drinking. Clark Hull formalized
the latter idea with his drive reduction model.
Hunger, thirst, fear, sexual
desire, and thermoregulation constitute fundamental motivations in
animals. Humans seem to exhibit a more complex set of motivations—though
theoretically these could be explained as resulting from desires for belonging,
positive self-image, self-consistency, truth, love, and control.
Motivation can be modulated or
manipulated in many different ways. Researchers have found that eating, for example, depends not only on the organism's
fundamental need for homeostasis—an
important factor causing the experience of hunger—but also on circadian
rhythms, food availability, food palatability, and cost. Abstract motivations
are also malleable, as evidenced by such phenomena as goal contagion:
the adoption of goals, sometimes unconsciously, based on inferences about the
goals of others. Vohs and Baumeister suggest
that contrary to the need-desire-fulfilment cycle of animal instincts, human
motivations sometimes obey a "getting begets wanting" rule: the more
you get a reward such as self-esteem, love, drugs, or money, the more you want
it. They suggest that this principle can even apply to food, drink, sex, and
sleep.
Development
Developmental psychologists who
study children use a number of research methods. For example, they make
observations of children in natural settings such as preschools and engage
them in experimental tasks. Such tasks often resemble specially designed
games and activities that are both enjoyable for the child and scientifically
useful. Developmental researchers have even devised clever methods to study the
mental processes of infants. In
addition to studying children, developmental psychologists also study aging and
processes throughout the life span, including old age. These psychologists
draw on the full range of psychological theories to inform their research.
Genes and environment
All researched psychological
traits are influenced by both genes and environment, to varying degrees. These two sources of influence
are often confounded in observational research of individuals and families. An
example of this confounding can be shown in the transmission of depression from a depressed mother to her offspring. A theory
based on environmental transmission would hold that an offspring, by virtue of
his or her having a problematic rearing environment managed by a depressed
mother, is at risk for developing depression. On the other hand, a hereditarian
theory would hold that depression risk in an offspring is influenced to some
extent by genes passed to the child from the mother. Genes and environment in
these simple transmission models are completely confounded. A depressed mother
may both carry genes that contribute to depression in her offspring and also
create a rearing environment that increases the risk of depression in her
child.
Behavioral genetics researchers
have employed methodologies that help to disentangle this confound and
understand the nature and origins of individual differences in behavior. Traditionally
the research has involved twin studies and adoption
studies, two designs where genetic and
environmental influences can be partially un-confounded. More recently,
gene-focused research has contributed to understanding genetic contributions to
the development of psychological traits.
The availability of microarray molecular genetic or genome
sequencing technologies allows researchers to
measure participant DNA variation directly, and test whether individual genetic
variants within genes are associated with psychological traits and psychopathology through methods including genome-wide
association studies. One goal of such research is
similar to that in positional cloning and
its success in Huntington's: once a
causal gene is discovered biological research can be conducted to understand
how that gene influences the phenotype. One major result of genetic association
studies is the general finding that psychological traits and psychopathology,
as well as complex medical diseases, are highly polygenic, where a large number (on the order of hundreds to
thousands) of genetic variants, each of small effect, contribute to individual
differences in the behavioral trait or propensity to the disorder. Active
research continues to work toward understanding the genetic and environmental
bases of behavior and their interaction.
Applications
Psychology encompasses many
subfields and includes different approaches to the study of mental processes
and behavior.
Psychological testing
Psychological testing has
ancient origins, dating as far back as 2200 BC, in the examinations for the
Chinese civil service. Written exams began during
the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 200). By 1370, the Chinese system required a
stratified series of tests, involving essay writing and knowledge of diverse
topics. The system was ended in 1906. In Europe, mental assessment took a
different approach, with theories of physiognomy—judgment of character based on the face—described by
Aristotle in 4th century BC Greece. Physiognomy remained current through the
Enlightenment, and added the doctrine of phrenology: a study of mind and
intelligence based on simple assessment of neuroanatomy.
When experimental psychology
came to Britain, Francis Galton was a leading practitioner. By virtue of his
procedures for measuring reaction time and sensation, he is considered an
inventor of modern mental testing (also known as psychometrics). James
McKeen Cattell, a student of Wundt and Galton, brought the idea of
psychological testing to the United States, and in fact coined the term
"mental test". In 1901, Cattell's student Clark Wissler published discouraging results, suggesting that
mental testing of Columbia and Barnard students failed to predict academic
performance. In response to 1904 orders from the Minister of
Public Instruction, French psychologists Alfred
Binet and Théodore Simon developed and elaborated a new test of intelligence
in 1905–1911. They used a range of questions diverse in their nature and
difficulty. Binet and Simon introduced the concept of mental age and referred to the lowest scorers on their test
as idiots. Henry H.
Goddard put the Binet-Simon scale to work and
introduced classifications of mental level such as imbecile and feebleminded.
In 1916 (after Binet's death), Stanford professor Lewis M. Terman modified the Binet-Simon scale (renamed the Stanford–Binet
scale) and introduced the intelligence
quotient as a score report. Based on his
test findings, and reflecting the racism common to that era, Terman concluded
that mental retardation "represents the level of intelligence which is
very, very common among Spanish-Indians and Mexican families of the Southwest
and also among negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial."
Following the Army Alpha and
Army Beta tests, which was developed by the comparative psychologist Robert Yerkes in 1917 and then used in World War 1 by industrial
and organizational psychologists for large-scale employee testing and selection
of military personnel. Mental testing also became popular in the U.S., where it
was applied to schoolchildren. The federally created National Intelligence Test
was administered to 7 million children in the 1920s. In 1926, the College
Entrance Examination Board created the Scholastic
Aptitude Test to standardize college
admissions. The results of intelligence tests were used to argue for
segregated schools and economic functions, including the preferential training
of Black Americans for manual labor. These practices were criticized by Black
intellectuals such a Horace Mann Bond and Allison
Davis. Eugenicists used mental testing to
justify and organize compulsory sterilization of individuals classified as
mentally retarded. In the United States, tens of thousands of men and
women were sterilized. Setting a precedent that has never been overturned, the
U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of this practice in the 1927
case Buck v. Bell.
Today mental testing is a
routine phenomenon for people of all ages in Western societies. Modern
testing aspires to criteria including standardization of procedure, consistency of
results, output of an interpretable score,
statistical norms describing population outcomes, and, ideally, effective
prediction of behavior and life outcomes
outside of testing situations. Developments in psychometrics include work
on test and scale reliability and validity. Developments in item-response theory, structural equation modeling, and bifactor analysis have helped in
strengthening test and scale construction.
Mental health care
The provision of psychological
health services is generally called clinical psychology in the U.S. Sometimes,
however, members of the school psychology and counseling psychology professions
engage in practices that resemble that of clinical psychologists. Clinical
psychologists typically include people who have graduated from doctoral
programs in clinical psychology. In Canada, some of the members of the
abovementioned groups usually fall within the larger category of professional
psychology. In Canada and the U.S., practitioners
get bachelor's degrees and doctorates; doctoral students in clinical psychology
usually spend one year in a predoctoral internship and one year in postdoctoral
internship. In Mexico and most other Latin American and European countries,
psychologists do not get bachelor's and doctoral degrees; instead, they take a
three-year professional course following high school. Clinical psychology
is at present the largest specialization within psychology. It includes
the study and application of psychology for the purpose of understanding,
preventing, and relieving psychological distress, dysfunction, and/or mental
illness. Clinical psychologists also try to promote
subjective well-being and personal growth. Central to the practice of clinical
psychology are psychological assessment and psychotherapy although clinical
psychologists may also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic
testimony, and program development and administration.
Credit for the first psychology
clinic in the United States typically goes to Lightner Witmer, who established his practice in Philadelphia in 1896.
Another modern psychotherapist was Morton Prince, an early advocate for the establishment of psychology
as a clinical and academic discipline. In the first part of the twentieth
century, most mental health care in the United States was performed by
psychiatrists, who are medical doctors. Psychology entered the field with its
refinements of mental testing, which promised to improve the diagnosis of
mental problems. For their part, some psychiatrists became interested in
using psychoanalysis and other
forms of psychodynamic psychotherapy to
understand and treat the mentally ill.
Psychotherapy as conducted by
psychiatrists blurred the distinction between psychiatry and psychology, and
this trend continued with the rise of community mental health facilities. Some in the clinical psychology community adopted behavioral
therapy, a thoroughly non-psychodynamic model that
used behaviorist learning theory to change the actions of patients. A key
aspect of behavior therapy is empirical evaluation of the treatment's
effectiveness. In the 1970s, cognitive-behavior therapy emerged with the work of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck.
Although there are similarities between behavior therapy and cognitive-behavior
therapy, cognitive-behavior therapy required the application of cognitive
constructs. Since the 1970s, the popularity of cognitive-behavior therapy among
clinical psychologists increased. A key practice in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral
therapy is exposing patients to things they fear, based on the premise that
their responses (fear, panic, anxiety) can be deconditioned.
Mental health care today
involves psychologists and social workers in
increasing numbers. In 1977, National Institute of Mental Health director Bertram
Brown described this shift as a source of
"intense competition and role confusion." Graduate programs
issuing doctorates in clinical psychology emerged in the 1950s and underwent
rapid increase through the 1980s. The PhD degree is intended to train
practitioners who could also conduct scientific research. The PsyD degree is
more exclusively designed to train practitioners.
Some clinical psychologists
focus on the clinical management of patients with brain injury. This
subspecialty is known as clinical neuropsychology. In
many countries, clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.
The emerging field of disaster psychology involves
professionals who respond to large-scale traumatic events.
The work performed by clinical
psychologists tends to be influenced by various therapeutic approaches, all of
which involve a formal relationship between professional and client (usually an
individual, couple, family, or small group). Typically, these approaches
encourage new ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving. Four major theoretical
perspectives are psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, existential–humanistic,
and systems or family therapy. There has been a growing movement to integrate
the various therapeutic approaches, especially with an increased understanding
of issues regarding culture, gender, spirituality, and sexual orientation. With
the advent of more robust research findings regarding psychotherapy, there is
evidence that most of the major therapies have equal effectiveness, with the key
common element being a strong therapeutic alliance. Because
of this, more training programs and psychologists are now adopting an eclectic
therapeutic orientation.
Diagnosis in clinical
psychology usually follows the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM). The study of mental illnesses is
called abnormal
psychology.
Education
School psychology combines
principles from educational psychology and clinical psychology to understand
and treat students with learning disabilities; to foster the intellectual
growth of gifted students; to facilitate prosocial
behaviors in adolescents; and otherwise to
promote safe, supportive, and effective learning environments. School
psychologists are trained in educational and behavioral assessment, intervention,
prevention, and consultation, and many have extensive training in research.
Work
Industrial and organizational
(I/O) psychology involves research and practices that apply psychological
theories and principles to organizations and individuals' work-lives. In
the field's beginnings, industrialists brought the nascent field of psychology
to bear on the study of scientific management techniques
for improving workplace efficiency. The field was at first called economic
psychology or business psychology; later, industrial
psychology, employment psychology, or psychotechnology. An
influential early study examined workers at Western Electric's Hawthorne plant
in Cicero, Illinois from 1924–1932. Western Electric experimented on factory
workers to assess their responses to changes in illumination, breaks, food, and
wages. The researchers came to focus on workers' responses to observation
itself, and the term Hawthorne effect is
now used to describe the fact that people work harder when they think they're
being watched. Although the Hawthorne research can be found in psychology
textbooks, the research and its findings, however, were weak at best.
The name industrial and
organizational psychology emerged in the 1960s. In 1973, it became enshrined in
the name of the Society
for Industrial and Organizational Psychology,
Division 14 of the American Psychological Association. One goal of the
discipline is to optimize human potential in the workplace. Personnel
psychology is a subfield of I/O psychology. Personnel psychologists apply the
methods and principles of psychology in selecting and evaluating workers.
Another subfield, organizational psychology,
examines the effects of work environments and management styles on worker
motivation, job satisfaction, and productivity. Most I/O psychologists
work outside of academia, for private and public organizations and as
consultants. A psychology consultant working in business today might
expect to provide executives with information and ideas about their industry,
their target markets, and the organization of their company.
Organizational behavior (OB) is
an allied field involved in the study of human behavior within
organizations. One way to differentiate I/O psychology from OB is to note
that I/O psychologists train in university psychology departments and OB
specialists, in business schools.
Military and intelligence
One role for psychologists in
the military has been to evaluate and counsel soldiers and other personnel. In
the U.S., this function began during World War I, when Robert Yerkes
established the School of Military Psychology at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia. The school provided psychological
training for military staff. Today, U.S Army psychologists perform
psychological screening, clinical psychotherapy, suicide prevention, and treatment for post-traumatic stress, as well as
provide prevention-related services, for example, smoking cessation.
Psychologists may also work on
a diverse set of campaigns known broadly as psychological warfare.
Psychological warfare chiefly involves the use of propaganda to influence enemy
soldiers and civilians. This so-called black propaganda is designed to seem as
if it originates from a source other than the Army. The CIA's MKULTRA program
involved more individualized efforts at mind control, involving techniques such as hypnosis, torture, and
covert involuntary administration of LSD. The
U.S. military used the name Psychological Operations (PSYOP) until 2010, when these activities were
reclassified as Military Information Support Operations (MISO), part of Information
Operations (IO). Psychologists have
sometimes been involved in assisting the interrogation and torture of suspects,
staining the records of the psychologists involved.
Health, well-being, and social change
Medical facilities increasingly
employ psychologists to perform various roles. One aspect of health psychology
is the psychoeducation of patients: instructing them in how to follow a
medical regimen. Health psychologists can also educate doctors and conduct
research on patient compliance. Psychologists in the field of public health
use a wide variety of interventions to influence human behavior. These range
from public relations campaigns and outreach to governmental laws and policies.
Psychologists study the composite influence of all these different tools in an
effort to influence whole populations of
people.
An example of the contribution
of psychologists to social change involves the research of Kenneth and Mamie
Clark. These two African American psychologists
studied segregation's adverse psychological impact on Black children. Their
research findings played a role in the desegregation case Brown
v. Board of Education (1954).
Industrial and organizational
psychology has been concerned with occupational health and well-being for well over a hundred years. The concern with employee
health and well-being began during World War I when Charles Myers in the U.K.
began studying worker fatigue and other aspects of well-being, discussed
in his 1920 I-O psychology textbook. During the early part of the
twentieth century industrial psychologist Lillian Moller Gilbreth was also a pioneer into research on workplace
efficiency, worker health and wellbeing and worker safety such as improved
lighting and regular breaks. In the U.S.A during the mid-twentieth
century Arthur Kornhauser became a
pioneer in the study of occupational mental health. He examined the impact on
productivity of hiring mentally unstable workers. Kornhauser also examined
the link between industrial working conditions and mental health as well as the
spillover into a worker's personal life of having an unsatisfying job.
More recently, I-O
psychologists have found that staying vigorous during working hours is
associated with better work-related behaviour and subjective well-being as well
as more effective functioning in the family domain. Trait vigor and
recovery experiences after work were related to vigor at work. Job
satisfaction has also been found to be associated with life satisfaction, happiness, well-being and positive affect, and the
absence of negative affect. Other
research indicates that among older workers activities such as volunteering and
participating in social clubs was related to a decrease in depressive symptoms
over the next two years. Research on job changing indicates that mobility
between, but not within, organizations is associated with burnout.
Occupational health psychology
(OHP) is a branch of psychology that is very much interdisciplinary. OHP
is concerned with the health and safety of workers. OHP addresses topic
areas such as the impact of occupational stressors on physical and mental
health, workplace mistreatment, work-family balance, the impact of involuntary
unemployment on physical and mental health,
safety/accidents, and interventions designed to improve/protect worker
health. OHP grew out of health psychology and industrial and organizational
psychology. OHP has also been informed by disciplines outside psychology,
including occupational medicine, industrial
engineering, sociology, and economics. Today
most OHP training is conducted as part of an industrial and organizational
psychology doctoral program, at least
in North America.
Research
methods
Quantitative psychological research lends itself to the statistical testing of
hypotheses. Although the field makes abundant use of randomized and controlled
experiments in laboratory settings, such research can only assess a limited
range of short-term phenomena. Some psychologists rely on less rigorously
controlled, but more ecologically valid, field
experiments as well. Other research psychologists
rely on statistical methods to glean knowledge from population data. The
statistical methods research psychologists employ include the Pearson
product–moment correlation coefficient, the analysis
of variance, multiple linear regression, logistic regression, structural
equation modeling, and hierarchical
linear modeling. The measurement and operationalization of important constructs is an essential part of these research designs.
Although this type of
psychological research is much less abundant than quantitative research, some
psychologists conduct qualitative research. This
type of research can involve interviews, questionnaires, and first-hand
observation. While hypothesis testing is rare, virtually impossible, in
qualitative research, qualitative studies can be helpful in theory and
hypothesis generation, interpreting seemingly contradictory quantitative
findings, and understanding why some interventions fail and others succeed.
Controlled experiments
A quasi-experiment refers to a situation in which there are rival
conditions under study but random assignment to the different conditions is not
possible. Investigators must work with preexisting groups of people.
Researchers can use common sense to consider how much the nonrandom assignment
threatens the study's validity. For
example, in research on the best way to affect reading achievement in the first
three grades of school, school administrators may not permit educational
psychologists to randomly assign children to phonics and whole language
classrooms, in which case the psychologists must work with preexisting
classroom assignments. Psychologists will compare the achievement of children
attending phonics and whole language classes and, perhaps, statistically adjust
for any initial differences in reading level.
Experimental researchers
typically use a statistical
hypothesis testing model which involves making
predictions before conducting the experiment, then assessing how well the data
collected are consistent with the predictions. These predictions are likely to
originate from one or more abstract scientific hypotheses about how the phenomenon under study actually
works.
Other types of studies
Observational studies are
commonly conducted in psychology. In cross-sectional observational studies, psychologists collect data
at a single point in time. The goal of many cross-sectional studies is the
assess the extent factors are correlated with each other. By contrast, in longitudinal
studies psychologists collect data on the same
sample at two or more points in time. Sometimes the purpose of longitudinal
research is to study trends across time such as the stability of traits or
age-related changes in behavior. Because some studies involve endpoints that
psychologists cannot ethically study from an experimental standpoint, such as identifying
the causes of depression, they conduct longitudinal studies a large group of
depression-free people, periodically assessing what is happening in the
individuals' lives. In this way psychologists have an opportunity to test
causal hypotheses regarding conditions that commonly arise in people's lives
that put them at risk for depression. Problems that affect longitudinal studies
include selective attrition, the type
of problem in which bias is introduced when a certain type of research
participant disproportionately leaves a study.
Exploratory data analysis refers to a variety of practices that researchers
use to reduce a great many variables to a small number overarching factors.
In Peirce's three modes of inference,
exploratory data analysis corresponds to abduction. Meta-analysis is
the technique research psychologists use to integrate results from many studies
of the same variables and arriving at a grand average of the findings.
Direct brain observation/manipulaiton
Newer functional
neuroimaging techniques include functional
magnetic resonance imaging and positron
emission tomography, both of which track the flow
of blood through the brain. These technologies provide more localized
information about activity in the brain and create representations of the brain
with widespread appeal. They also provide insight which avoids the classic
problems of subjective self-reporting. It remains challenging to draw hard
conclusions about where in the brain specific thoughts originate—or even how
usefully such localization corresponds with reality. However, neuroimaging has
delivered unmistakable results showing the existence of correlations between
mind and brain. Some of these draw on a systemic neural network model rather than a localized function model.
Psychiatric interventions such
as transcranial
magnetic stimulation and drugs also provide
information about brain–mind interactions. Psychopharmacology is the study of drug-induced mental effects.
Computer simulation
Animal studies
Animal experiments aid in
investigating many aspects of human psychology, including perception, emotion,
learning, memory, and thought, to name a few. In the 1890s, Russian
physiologist Ivan Pavlov famously used dogs to demonstrate classical
conditioning. Non-human primates, cats, dogs, pigeons, and rats and other
rodents are often used in psychological experiments. Ideally, controlled
experiments introduce only one independent variable at a time, in order to
ascertain its unique effects upon dependent variables. These conditions are
approximated best in laboratory settings. In contrast, human environments and
genetic backgrounds vary so widely, and depend upon so many factors, that it is
difficult to control important variables for
human subjects. There are pitfalls, however, in generalizing findings from
animal studies to humans through animal models.
Comparative psychology refers
to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human
animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive
significance, and development of behavior. Research in this area explores the
behavior of many species, from insects to primates. It is closely related to
other disciplines that study animal behavior such as ethology. Research in comparative psychology sometimes
appears to shed light on human behavior, but some attempts to connect the two
have been quite controversial, for example the Sociobiology of E.O. Wilson. Animal
models are often used to study neural processes related to human behavior, e.g.
in cognitive neuroscience.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is often
designed to answer questions about the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of
individuals. Qualitative research involving first-hand observation can help
describe events as they occur, with the goal of capturing the richness of
everyday behavior and with the hope of discovering and understanding phenomena
that might have been missed if only more cursory examinations are made.
Qualitative psychological research methods include interviews, first-hand observation,
and participant observation. Creswell (2003) identified five main possibilities
for qualitative research, including narrative, phenomenology, ethnography, case study,
and grounded theory. Qualitative
researchers sometimes aim to enrich our understanding of symbols,
subjective experiences, or social structures. Sometimes hermeneutic and critical aims can give rise to quantitative
research, as in Erich Fromm's
application of psychological and sociological theories, in his book Escape
from Freedom, to understanding why many
ordinary Germans supported Hitler.
Just as Jane Goodall studied chimpanzee social and family life by
careful observation of chimpanzee behavior in the field, psychologists
conduct naturalistic observation of
ongoing human social, professional, and family life. Sometimes the participants
are aware they are being observed, and other times the participants do not know
they are being observed. Strict ethical guidelines must be followed when covert
observation is being carried out.
Program Evaluation
Program Evaluation involves
the systematic collection, analysis, and application of information to answer
questions about projects, policies and programs, particularly about their
effectiveness. In both the public and private sectors, stakeholders often
want to know the extent which the programs they are funding, implementing,
voting for, receiving, or objecting to are producing the intended effects.
While program evaluation first focuses on effectiveness, important considerations
often include how much the program costs per participant, how the program could
be improved, whether the program is worthwhile, whether there are better
alternatives, if there are unintended outcomes, and whether the program goals
are appropriate and useful.
Contemporary
issues in methodology and practice
Metascience
Metascience involves the
application of scientific methodology to study science itself. The field
of metascience has revealed problems in psychological research.
Some psychological research has suffered from bias, problematic reproducibility, and misuse of statistics. These findings have led to calls for reform from
within and from outside the scientific community.
Confirmation bias
In 1959, statistician Theodore
Sterling examined the results of psychological studies and discovered that 97%
of them supported their initial hypotheses, implying possible publication bias. Similarly, Fanelli (2010) found that 91.5% of
psychiatry/psychology studies confirmed the effects they were looking for, and
concluded that the odds of this happening (a positive result) was around five
times higher than in fields such as space science or geosciences.
Fanelli argued that this is because researchers in "softer" sciences
have fewer constraints to their conscious and unconscious biases.
Replication
A replication crisis in psychology has emerged. Many notable findings in
the field have not been replicated. Some researchers were even accused of
publishing fraudulent results. Systematic efforts, including efforts by
the Reproducibility Project of
the Center for Open Science, to assess
the extent of the problem found that as many as two-thirds of highly publicized
findings in psychology failed to be replicated. Reproducibility has
generally been stronger in cognitive psychology (in studies and journals) than
social psychology and subfields of differential psychology.Other subfields of psychology have also been implicated
in the replication crisis, including clinical psychology, developmental
psychology, and a field closely related to psychology, educational
research.
Focus on the replication crisis
has led to other renewed efforts in the discipline to re-test important
findings. In response to concerns about publication bias and data dredging (conducting a large number of statistical tests on
a great many variables but restricting reporting to the results that were
statistically significant), 295 psychology and medical journals have
adopted result-blind peer review where
studies are accepted not on the basis of their findings and after the studies
are completed, but before the studies are conducted and upon the basis of the
methodological rigor of their experimental designs and the theoretical
justifications for their proposed statistical analysis before data collection
or analysis is conducted. In addition, large-scale collaborations among
researchers working in multiple labs in different countries have taken place.
The collaborators regularly make their data openly available for different
researchers to assess. Allen et al. estimated that 61 percent of
result-blind studies have yielded null results, in contrast to an estimated 5 to 20 percent in
traditional research.
Misuse of statistics
Some critics view statistical
hypothesis testing as misplaced. Psychologist
and statistician Jacob Cohen wrote
in 1994 that psychologists routinely confuse statistical significance with
practical importance, enthusiastically reporting great certainty in unimportant
facts. Some psychologists have responded with an increased use of effect
size statistics, rather than sole reliance
on p-values.
WEIRD bias
In 2008, Arnett pointed out
that most articles in American Psychological Association journals were about
U.S. populations when U.S. citizens are only 5% of the world's population. He
complained that psychologists had no basis for assuming psychological processes
to be universal and generalizing research findings to the rest of the global
population. In 2010, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan reported a bias in
conducting psychology studies with participants from "WEIRD"
("Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic")
societies. Henrich et al. found that "96% of psychological samples
come from countries with only 12% of the world’s population" (p. 63). The
article gave examples of results that differ significantly between people from
WEIRD and tribal cultures, including the Müller-Lyer illusion. Arnett (2008), Altmaier, and Hall (2008) and
Morgan-Consoli et al. (2018) view the Western bias in research and theory as a
serious problem considering psychologists are increasingly applying
psychological principles developed in WEIRD regions in their research, clinical
work, and consultation with populations around the world. In 2018, Rad,
Martingano, and Ginges showed that nearly a decade after Henrich et al.'s
paper, over 80% of the samples used in studies published in the journal Psychological
Science employed WEIRD samples. Moreover,
their analysis showed that several studies did not fully disclose the origin of
their samples; the authors offered a set of recommendations to editors and
reviewers to reduce WEIRD bias.
Unscientific mental health training
Some observers perceive a gap
between scientific theory and its application—in particular, the application of
unsupported or unsound clinical practices.Critics say there has been an
increase in the number of mental health training programs that do not instill
scientific competence. Practices such as "facilitated
communication for infantile autism";
memory-recovery techniques including body work; and other therapies, such as rebirthing and reparenting,
may be dubious or even dangerous, despite their popularity. These
practices, however, are outside the mainstream practices taught in clinical
psychology doctoral programs.
Ethics
Ethical standards in the
discipline have changed over time. Some famous past studies are today
considered unethical and in violation of established codes (the Canadian Code of Conduct for Research
Involving Humans, and the Belmont Report).
The American Psychological Association has advanced a set of ethical principles
and a code of conduct for the profession.
The most important contemporary
standards include informed and voluntary consent. After World War II, the Nuremberg Code was established because of Nazi abuses of
experimental subjects. Later, most countries (and scientific journals) adopted
the Declaration of Helsinki. In the
U.S., the National Institutes of Health established
the Institutional Review Board in
1966, and in 1974 adopted the National Research Act (HR 7724). All of these measures encouraged
researchers to obtain informed consent from human participants in experimental
studies. A number of influential but ethically dubious studies led to the
establishment of this rule; such studies included the MIT-Harvard
Fernald School radioisotope studies, the Thalidomide
tragedy, the Willowbrook hepatitis
study, and Stanley Milgram's studies of
obedience to authority.
Humans
Universities have ethics
committees dedicated to protecting the rights (e.g., voluntary nature of the
research, privacy) and well-being (e.g., minimizing distress) of research
participants. University ethics committees evaluate proposed research to ensure
that researchers protect the rights and well-being of participants; an
investigator's research project cannot be conducted unless approved by such an
ethics committee.
The ethics code of the American
Psychological Association originated in 1951 as "Ethical Standards of
Psychologists". This code has guided the formation of licensing laws in
most American states. It has changed multiple times over the decades since its adoption.
In 1989, the APA revised its policies on advertising and referral fees to
negotiate the end of an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. The 1992
incarnation was the first to distinguish between "aspirational"
ethical standards and "enforceable" ones. Members of the public have
a five-year window to file ethics complaints about APA members with the APA
ethics committee; members of the APA have a three-year window.
Some of the ethical issues
considered most important are the requirement to practice only within the area
of competence, to maintain confidentiality with the patients, and to avoid
sexual relations with them. Another important principle is informed consent, the idea that a patient or research subject must
understand and freely choose a procedure they are undergoing. Some of the
most common complaints against clinical psychologists include sexual
misconduct.
Other animals
Research on other animals is
also governed by university ethics committees. Research on nonhuman animals
cannot proceed without permission of the ethics committee of the researcher's
home institution. Current ethical guidelines state that using non-human animals
for scientific purposes is only acceptable when the harm (physical or
psychological) done to animals is outweighed by the benefits of the
research. Keeping this in mind, psychologists can use certain research
techniques on animals that could not be used on humans.
·
Comparative psychologist Harry Harlow drew
moral condemnation for isolation experiments on rhesus macaque monkeys at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison in the 1970s. The aim
of the research was to produce an animal model of clinical depression. Harlow
also devised what he called a "rape rack", to which the female
isolates were tied in normal monkey mating posture. In 1974, American
literary critic Wayne C. Booth wrote
that, "Harry Harlow and his colleagues go on torturing their nonhuman
primates decade after decade, invariably proving what we all knew in
advance—that social creatures can be destroyed by destroying their social
ties." He writes that Harlow made no mention of the criticism of the
morality of his work.
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