8: Psychology
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)1) Psychology – What and Why
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior.
Psychologists study the behavior of both humans and animals. The main purpose of this research is to help us understand people and to improve the quality of human lives. Psychological research is used in a range of important areas, from public policy to driver safety. It guides court rulings with respect to racism and sexism. Psychological research helps us understand how driver behavior affects safety, which methods of educating children are most effective, how to best detect deception, and the causes of terrorism.
Using the methods and tools of science, psychologists have challenged assumptions, stereotypes, and stigma. Founded in 1936, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) has supported research and action on a wide range of social issues. Individually, there have been many psychologists whose efforts have promoted social change.
Helen Thompson Woolley (1874–1947) and Leta S. Hollingworth (1886–1939) were pioneers in research on the psychology of sex differences. Working in the early 20th century, when women’s rights were marginalized, Thompson examined the assumption that women were overemotional compared to men and found that emotion did not influence women’s decisions any more than it did men’s. Hollingworth found that menstruation did not negatively impact women’s cognitive or motor abilities. Such work combatted harmful stereotypes and showed that psychological research could contribute to social change (Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987).
In 1957, psychologist Evelyn Hooker (1907–1996) published the paper “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” reporting on her research that showed no significant differences in psychological adjustment between homosexual and heterosexual men. Her research helped to de-pathologize homosexuality and contributed to the decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973 (Garnets & Kimmel, 2003).
In psychology, greater advocacy for issues impacting the African American community were advanced by the creation of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in 1968.
Psychological science is useful for creating interventions that help people live better lives. A growing body of research is concerned with determining which therapies are the most and least effective for the treatment of psychological disorders.
In organizational psychology, a number of psychological interventions have been found by researchers to produce greater productivity and satisfaction in the workplace. Human factor engineers have greatly increased the safety and utility of the products we use. For example, the human factors psychologist Alphonse Chapanis and other researchers redesigned the cockpit controls of aircraft to make them less confusing and easier to respond to, and this led to a decrease in pilot errors and crashes.
Forensic sciences have made courtroom decisions more valid. We all know of the famous cases of imprisoned persons who have been exonerated because of DNA evidence. Equally dramatic cases hinge on psychological findings. For instance, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has conducted research demonstrating the limits and unreliability of eyewitness testimony and memory. Thus, psychological findings are having practical importance in the world outside the laboratory. Psychological science has experienced enough success to demonstrate that it works, but there remains a huge amount yet to be learned.
2) Psychology and Non-Science
Of all of the sciences, psychology is probably the one that most non-scientists feel they know the most about. Because psychology is concerned with people and why they do what they do, we are all “intuitive’ or “naive” psychologists. We rely on common sense, experience, and intuition in understanding why people do what they do. We all have an interest in asking and answering questions about our world, and in making sense of ourselves and other people.
The Problem of Intuition
The problem, however, with the way people collect and interpret data in their everyday lives is that they are not always particularly thorough. Often, when one explanation for an event seems “right,” we adopt that explanation as the truth even when other explanations are possible and potentially more accurate. For example, people may become convinced of the existence of extrasensory perception (ESP), or the predictive value of astrology, when there is no evidence for either (Gilovich, 1993). Psychologists have also found that there are a variety of cognitive and motivational biases that frequently influence our perceptions and lead us to draw erroneous conclusions (Fiske & Taylor, 2007; Hsee & Hastie, 2006).
The basic problem with “intuitive” psychology is that people don’t think scientifically. We accept explanations for events without testing them thoroughly and we make many predictable sorts of errors when we try to draw conclusions about our everyday observations. Personal observations, even if accurate, are also not representative of the general population. Anecdotal evidence – derived from personal experience and unsystematic observations (e. g., “common sense,”) – is limited by the quality and representativeness of observations, and by memory shortcomings. Well-designed research, on the other hand, relies on observations that are systematically recorded, of high quality, and representative of the population it claims to describe.
There are then various pitfalls associated with naïve (or intuitive) psychology – that is, the search for explanations about human behavior and mental processes without the benefit of scientifically gathered evidence.
The following sections outline a few important biases and errors in people’s thinking. A bias is a specific tendency, a consistent way of thinking, seeing, believing, or acting. One important source of bias is one’s personal experiences and background. If a bias is applied consistently, eventually it will lead to an error.
So with that in mind, here are a few important types of biases and errors in reasoning:
Statistical reasoning errors. There are many situations in which we try to make some judgment about the frequency or likelihood of something. For example, if we see a man running down the hall at school, we might need to judge how likely it is that he is being chased or fleeing some catastrophe. This is essentially what statisticians do, but, unlike naïve psychologists, they base their conclusions about likelihood on much more data and on the laws of probability. Statistical reasoning errors are poor judgments about likelihoods. Largely because we do not have the time or ability to calculate probabilities in our heads, we use shortcuts when trying to judge likelihood, which leads to many important errors.
Attribution errors. We also tend to make errors in the types of explanations that we come up with for people’s behavior. These are attribution errors. For example, many people are very likely to explain someone’s behavior by attributing it to internal causes—that is, something about the person’s disposition or personality. So, observing someone running through the halls yelling, we are more likely to assume that he is a rude and obnoxious person and less likely to assume that some situational factor, such as an emergency, is responsible.
Overconfidence errors. Making matters worse, we have a set of biases that lead us to think that we are correct more often than we actually are. Some of these are hindsight bias, confirmation bias, and false consensus effect:
Hindsight bias. Once an event has happened, it seems to have been inevitable, and people misremember and believe that they could have predicted the event (Fischhoff, 1982; Lilienfeld, 2012). This has been called the hindsight bias, or the “I knew it all along” bias. For example, on many autumn Monday mornings, football fans across the US engage in what is known as “Monday morning quarterbacking.” Fans complain about the interception that the quarterback for their favorite team threw: “It was obvious that the cornerback was going to blitz; why didn’t he just throw the ball out of bounds?” But the event was not inevitable, it could not have been predicted, and had the fans been questioned before the interception actually occurred, they would not have “known it all along.”
Hindsight bias also works powerfully to make people believe that much research is unnecessary. When told that researchers have made some discovery, many people’s response is “I knew that; who needed to do research to find that out?” When people find themselves thinking, “I knew that already!” as a result of the hindsight bias, they often turn out to be overconfident about their beliefs as well.
Confirmation bias. People have a tendency to notice information that confirms what they already believe. It works this way: At some point you may have picked up the belief that older men wearing hats are the worst drivers. Now every time you see an example that confirms that belief—for example, a 70-year-old man in a bowler straddling two lanes while driving 15 miles per hour under the speed limit—you make a mental note of it. “Oh, there is another old man in a hat. They should not be allowed to drive!” The flip side of confirmation bias is that we fail to notice information that disconfirms our belief. So, we might not pay attention to the 18-year old who is driving the Mustang that crossed the yellow line and narrowly avoided a truck trying to pass the older man in the hat.
The confirmation bias is very common in many different situations. For example, people suffering from insomnia may incorrectly recall that they sleep less than they actually do, in part because of the confirmation bias (Harvey and Tang, 2012). The confirmation bias is a particularly dangerous one because it often directly leads us to draw the wrong conclusion while it is simultaneously increasing our confidence in that wrong conclusion.
By the way, according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, males between 16 and 20 years old have the highest rate of involvement in automobile accidents. Females in the same age group are in second place. There were no data on older men in hats.
False consensus. False consensus is the tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people agree with us. In essence, we tend to think our point of view is more common than it actually is, failing to consider that other people might not see things the same way.
In 2003, approximately 100 General Psychology students were asked to rate their degree of support for the U.S. war with Iraq, which was then near its peak. Then we asked them to estimate how many of their fellow students gave the same rating—that is, how many agreed with them. Ninety percent of the students believed that more people agreed with them than actually did, a very strong false consensus effect (Gray, 2003). Again, this error contributes to our overconfidence and to our belief that research is not necessary. It is all too tempting to believe that we have learned the truth about the whole world by observing ourselves and our small part of the world. Research is important because it helps us find out objectively how common or uncommon our personal beliefs may be.
So between statistical errors, attribution errors, and overconfidence errors, if you see a man running down the hall, not only is there a pretty good likelihood that you will make the wrong judgment about him, there is also a pretty good likelihood that you will be nearly sure that your wrong judgment is correct.
People are bombarded with psychological information from the popular media and other non-academic sources—newspaper and magazine reports, or Facebook posts that summarize some new finding, commercial websites touting some remarkable relationship-saving communication strategy, psychological claims made by “experts” on television and YouTube, claims made by friends and acquaintances during conversations, and so on. It is important that you learn how to make sense of these claims and to evaluate them.
The basic principles of scientific thinking and time-tested research methods and statistical techniques will help you sort out the good from the bad, the sense from the nonsense.
You can use the suggestions from this section as a way to guide you when considering popular psychological information. If the popular claims that you are evaluating do not pass the tests suggested by the following seven tips, you should be very cautious. It might be time for you to take a deep breath and begin wading through the scientific literature to find more authoritative information.
Tip # 1. Be aware of your pre-conceived ideas
If you think about the confirmation bias for a minute, you might realize something important about it. If we go through life typically paying attention only to information that confirms what we already believe, it might be remarkably difficult to change our minds. Indeed, researchers have demonstrated that this is exactly what happens. It is called belief perseverance (the tendency to hold onto beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence), and it is very common. People sometimes even refuse to change their minds when their beliefs are proven completely wrong (Anderson, 2008; Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard, 1975). As you might realize, the ability to critically challenge your own beliefs is one of the most important thinking skills you can develop. The reason is simple; no one is always right.
One of the greatest dangers we face when evaluating psychological claims, then, is that we tend to be very uncritical about the information that we already believe. Many people have very little interest in and devote very little effort into proving themselves wrong (Browne & Keeley, 2009). If we happen to be wrong, though, we will never find out. If your goal is to find the truth, sometimes you have to admit that your pre-conceived ideas were wrong.
Tip #2. Who is the source?
Although an advanced degree in psychology from a reputable university is certainly not a guarantee that a claim will be correct, the lack of such a degree is a cause for caution. A person who makes psychological claims should be qualified to make those claims. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, for example, is the author of several bestselling books that dispense psychological information, as well as the host of a national call-in radio advice program. She bills herself as America’s #1 Relationship Talk Show Host. One problem: Her Ph.D. is in physiology, not psychology. (Physiology is the study of how the human body works.) It seems a bit misleading to dispense psychological information as a “Dr.” in physiology.
How about Dr. John Gray, the author of the successful Mars and Venus books? According to his website, MarsVenus.com, the original book in the series, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, has sold more than 15 million copies, and Dr. Gray is the “best-selling relationship author of all time.” John Gray does indeed have a Ph.D. in psychology, so he may appear qualified. His degree, however, is from Columbia Pacific University, a school that was ordered by the state of California in 1999 to cease operations because it had been granting Ph.D. degrees to people for very low-quality work.
Organizations can also sometimes deceive us about their true origins and purpose. Have you ever heard of the American College of Pediatricians? According to their website they are an organization of pediatricians (and other healthcare professionals). It was established in 2002 and now has members across the US and in other countries. Sounds like it might be reliable, right? But if you Google them, you might find out that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the American College of Pediatricians a hate group. You also might find out that others refer to it as a fringe group of pediatricians with an obvious ideological bias. This doesn’t mean a quick Google exercise has definitely unmasked this group as a fraud. But there’s certainly have quite a bit more to think about before you automatically accept their information.
When you are faced with the problem of trying to figure out if an individual or group is legitimate, do what fact-checkers do. Do not simply read the “About” section of a website. Do an independent investigation of the person’s (or organization’s) background, experience, or credentials. You don’t have to hire a private detective; just do a bit of a Google search. All we are trying to do is get a sense for someone’s background and whether or not they are associated with any controversies. An informal search like this will work quite well for those purposes.
Tip # 3: What is the purpose of the information?
This one might seem obvious, and sometimes it is. When the first thing you see on a website is a Buy Here or Shop Now button, you know that they want to sell you something. Sometimes it is not so obvious, though. A common persuasion technique is to disguise an attempt to persuade as simply supplying information. For example, financial advisors who work on commission often try to sell annuities or other financial products by sponsoring free educational seminars or by publishing “informational booklets” about financial products in general. Other common hidden purposes in “supplying information” include political agendas and obtaining personal information about users for marketing purposes (cough-cough, Facebook).
Tip #4. Is it based on research?
This next tip is critically important. There is only one reason you are allowed to say that something is true in psychology. And that reason is that someone did the research. Not just one someone, but lots of someones. That is what it means to be a scientific discipline. We cannot rely on casual observation or opinion, even expert opinion. We must only draw conclusions when they are warranted by careful research conducted by a number of different researchers.
And this certainly applies to the psychological information to which you are exposed on a regular basis outside of the confines of this course. Consider self-help, for example. Self-help is an enormous industry. There are many excellent self-help resources. Unfortunately, however, there are also many that are, well, not so excellent. The fact that a book has been published, for example, says only that the publisher believes that it will sell; sadly, it says nothing about the quality of the information.
How do you tell the good from the poor resources, then? The task involves several of the tips we have given in this section and more. Pay attention to the qualifications of the author. Look for signs that the author is oversimplifying (Tip #5 below) or relying on persuasion tricks (Tip #7).
Most importantly, does the resource have a good grounding in scientific research? Is there a section somewhere prominent that lists the studies cited in the resource? Are the studies from scientific psychological journals, such as The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Health Psychology? Is the underlying research described in the resource itself? Have the authors conducted any of the research themselves? If the answer to most or all of these research questions is no, we would be very cautious about accepting the claims in the resource.
Tip # 5. Beware of oversimplifications
Descriptions of psychological concepts intended for the public must simplify (for that matter, so, too, must undergraduate textbooks). If they presented the information in as much detail as one typically finds in a scientific journal, very few people would ever pay attention, even if they could understand the information (scientific journal articles are notoriously difficult to read because they are typically written for an audience of Ph.D.-level psychologists). So simplification is acceptable, often even necessary. But oversimplification is simplification that goes too far and ends up distorting or misrepresenting the original information.
An expert can usually recognize oversimplification, but how can a non-expert? It would seem that you would need to know the complicated version of the information in order to know if it is being distorted when simplified. To help you recognize oversimplification, you should get in the habit of looking for the common clues that it is occurring. For one thing, there are very few absolutes (such as none, never, always) in psychology. If someone tells you that something is always true, it is a good bet that they are oversimplifying.
Also, be very careful when people make sweeping generalizations that seemingly apply to everyone. These are called overgeneralizations, incorrectly concluding that some fact or research finding that is true of one group is also automatically true of a larger or different group.
For example, a headline on an internet site a few years ago trumpeted “This Food Makes Men Aggressive,” a statement that certainly sounds like a sweeping generalization. The article cautioned readers about the potential dangers of eating soy burgers because research had discovered a link between soy and aggression. The actual research, published in the journal Hormones and Behavior, reported that monkeys that were fed a diet high in soy isoflavones (125 mg daily) were more aggressive than monkeys fed no isoflavones (Simon et al., 2004). A typical soy burger has 7 mg of soy isoflavones (Heneman et al., 2007). So unless you are eating 18 of them per day and are as small as an average monkey, we recommend waiting before throwing away that package of soy burgers in the freezer.
We call this specific kind of oversimplification the headline effect, distorting some research results by creating a very short headline-like summary. Keep in mind, the headline effect does not happen every time someone uses a short summary; it only comes into play when that headline-like summary distorts or hides some important aspects of the larger story.
Another clue that someone may be oversimplifying is when a potential explanation is presented as a strict either/or possibility, as in other words, as resulting from one cause to the exclusion of all others. This type of oversimplification is called creating a false dichotomy or false choice. For example, the popular media might report that some new research has uncovered a genetic component for personality, implying that environment, therefore, has no influence on personality. In other words, personality is presented as the product of either nature or nurture., Psychological phenomena however appear to be a combination of biological and environmental influences. Few things in psychology have only one cause or explanation. Any report that emphasizes one explanation to the exclusion of everything else is probably oversimplifying.
Tip # 6. Beware of distortions of the research process
Controversies
Science is, by nature, uncertain. For very long periods of time, some theory or claim may be quite controversial, with large groups of psychologists standing on both sides of the issue.
When psychological claims are presented in the media, however, they often skip the disclaimer that not all psychologists agree with the claim, or that the results of a specific study only represent a snapshot: one piece of information at one point in time. An honest and complete view acknowledges that progress in psychological knowledge is more of a back-and-forth process than a straight line and that individual results must be put into the context of all of the research that preceded it (science is self-correcting over time).
More dramatically, the media can sometimes present the opinions of a very small number of scientists (sometimes as few as one) as if they represent the existence of a legitimate scientific controversy. For example, in April 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 quarantine in the United States, two urgent care doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, recorded a series of videos on YouTube that asserted (among other things), that the shelter-in-place orders had little to no effect on the spread of the coronavirus. Somehow, they and the millions of supporters of their videos seemed to think that the doctors’ conclusions were more valid than the conclusions of the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, and highly credentialed epidemiologists throughout the world.
This can be thought of as the myth of two equal sides. Although it is true that there are usually two sides to a story, it does not mean that the two sides are equally good. Two doctors who treat patients in an urgent care facility on one side do not form an equal counterweight to the entire scientific discipline of epidemiology and the most prestigious health organizations in the world. The very strong scientific consensus is that sheltering in place led to a very substantial slowing of the spread of the virus, probably saving millions of lives by largely preventing the overloading of hospitals. In this case, as sometimes happens, supporters began to treat the doctors as if they were some kind of martyrs, shunned and censored because they dared to challenge the accepted wisdom. But as science historian Michael Shermer (2002) has pointed out, you do not get to be a martyr simply by being shunned by establishment science; you must also be correct.
Spurious correlations
As has already been mentioned in this text, just because two things are associated, it does not mean that one thing caused the other one. If you want to find out if the correlation between the two things DOES actually mean one caused the other, you have the ideal research design available to you: experiments. The experimental research design allows causal conclusions precisely because the researcher manipulates one variable and measures the other variable while holding other variables constant to rule out alternative explanations.
Remember, correlation is not causation! Just because two things happen together does not mean one causes the other.
Tip #7. Beware of persuasion tricks
Do you believe that advertising does not affect you? If you said yes, well, that is exactly what they want you to believe. Seriously. In 2019, Facebook earned $70 billion from advertising (this was even after their well-publicized mishaps handling people’s private information became public). And Facebook is only one company. There is a simple reason why companies earn incredible amounts of money from advertising. It works. Let’s consider some of those techniques here.
Testimonials
A testimonial is a report on the quality or effectiveness of some treatment, book, or product by an actual user. For example, diet ads often use testimonials to demonstrate the effectiveness of their plan. It is a persuasive technique because presumably the person giving the testimonial is someone just like you, an unpaid consumer who happened to be so impressed by the performance of the product that they just could not help but thank the company. It can also be persuasive if a celebrity we like sing the praises of the product.
Some testimonials are clearly contrived. But even honest testimonials present a problem: Each testimonial is useful for describing the experiences of one single person only. The individual in question might not be all that typical or all that much like you. Buried in the small print, diet ads may tell you that the “results are not typical.” Just because one person lost 75 pounds by eating only the crusts of white bread, it does not mean that everyone, or even most people, will see similar benefits. In terms of the principles of science, a testimonial is not based on rigorous observations, and one person’s experience might not be repeatable.
The remainder of the strategies have been adapted from Robert Cialdini's book, Influence: Science and Practice (2008).
Reciprocation
Reciprocation might be a universal human norm. In other words in every (or nearly every) culture in the world people are expected to return kindness with kindness. If someone does a favor for you, you are expected to return the favor.
And this kindness to be reciprocated can take many forms. Think about the free samples that grocery stores hand out. They are not only there to allow you to discover what the food taste like. They are a small gift given to you by a pleasant person. The expectation is that you will repay this kindness with a purchase. When a company or charity sends you an unsolicited “free gift” in the mail, they expect you may return that kindness with a purchase or donation. When a website offers you valuable free information (for example, a "white paper" about investment strategies), they intend for this kindness to be repaid by becoming a client. For a large commitment like that however, reciprocation alone is often not enough. That is why they will often use some of these additional strategies.
Commitment and Consistency (Foot-in-the-Door)
People like to appear consistent. So if you get someone to make a commitment, you can use this consistency desire to gradually get them to commit more and more. This technique, commitment and consistency, is also known as the foot-in-the-door technique, as the initial goal is to get a very small commitment (that is the foot-in-the-door part). Once that is achieved, the persuader will gradually escalate the commitments asked for. For example, a canvasser knocks on the door and asks the resident to sign a petition in favor of some social cause. After a couple more commitments (for example, asking which neighbors are also likely to sign the petition), the canvasser springs the real ask: a donation to support the organization spearheading the effort.
Reject Then Retreat (Door-in-the-Face)
After a demonstration with a potential customer a vacuum cleaner salesperson announces that the price of the vacuum cleaner is $2000. The customer is aghast! That is way too much money! "Well, let me call my manager, and see what I can do," is the reply. Minutes later, the customer is offered the sale price that is going to be offered next week: $1000. But the salesperson never expected to get $2000 (of course, they wouldn't turn it down if the customer accepted the price though!). Rather it was the reject then retreat technique: come in with an outrageous opening offer that is expected to be rejected. Then, "give in" and offer what seems like a much more reasonable price. It is like the teenager asking his parents to spend the night in Chicago, knowing that his parents will say no, so he can "settle" for spending the night with his friend across town.
Social Proof
We decide what to do by looking at what others do, or did, in a similar situation. So when advertisements tell us that a particular brand of car, soft drink, or laundry soap is the best-selling brand they are using social proof. Other people bought it, so you should too.
Scarcity
The fact that an item is scarce seems to make it desirable and persuaders have found a way to manipulate this to their benefit. Now, we admit this could be completely innocent, but doesn't seem a bit odd that Apple never seems to make enough iPhones when they launch a new model (or, if you like, substitute Nintendo, Sony, Tesla, and any other of the countless companies that somehow can't seem to make enough of their products). Even simple matters like putting a limit on the number of items you are allowed to purchase or telling a consumer that “there are only 3 left!” makes the product seem scarce and increases sales.
Many of these techniques work, in part, because people often go through life on automatic pilot, so to speak. We operate on routine and habit without much thought. Ellen Langer (1992) called it mindlessness. When we are operating mindlessly, we are prone to respond to what Cialdini called trigger features, environmental cues that lead a specific response without much thought.
For example, when meeting an acquaintance in the hall who says, "Hi, how are you?" many people reply without thinking, almost reflexively, "Fine thanks, how are you?" In this case, the phrase (hi, how are you) is the trigger feature. If you think about it, you can probably recognize many such nearly automatic responses to common trigger features (for example, reaching for your phone when someone else's makes a noise, taking out your notebook when you see your professor enter the room, and so on).
There is no question that a savvy persuader can take advantage of this mindless responding to trigger features. For example, some companies produce private-label store brands that resemble name-brand products, apparently hoping that consumers will respond to the approximate appearance and pick up the look-alike.
Psychology and Science
All psychologists have one thing in common: rather than using intuition or “common sense” or anecdote, they rely on scientific methods. They use empirical methods to collect, analyze, and interpret data. They collaborate and subject their findings to peer review. Research psychologists use scientific methods to create new knowledge about the causes of behavior, and psychologist-practitioners, such as clinical, counselling, industrial-organizational, and school psychologists, use existing research to enhance the everyday life of others. The science of psychology is important for both researchers and practitioners.
Although scientific procedures do not necessarily guarantee that the answers to questions will be objective and unbiased, science is still the best method for drawing objective conclusions about the world around us. When old facts are discarded, they are replaced with new facts based on new and correct data. Although science is not perfect, the requirements of empiricism and objectivity result in a much greater chance of producing an accurate understanding of human behavior than is available through other approaches.
Levels of Explanation in Psychology
The study of psychology spans many different topics at many different levels of explanation. Lower levels of explanation are more closely tied to biological influences, such as genes, neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones, whereas the middle levels of explanation refer to the abilities and characteristics of individual people, and the highest levels of explanation relate to social groups, organizations, and cultures (Cacioppo, Berntson, Sheridan, & McClintock, 2000).
The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of explanation. For instance, the psychological disorder known as depression affects millions of people worldwide and is known to be caused by biological, social, and cultural factors. Studying and helping alleviate depression can be accomplished at low levels of explanation by investigating how chemicals in the brain influence the experience of depression. This approach has allowed psychologists to develop and prescribe drugs, such as Prozac, which may decrease depression in many individuals (Williams, Simpson, Simpson, & Nahas, 2009).
At the middle levels of explanation, psychological therapy is directed at helping individuals cope with negative life experiences that may cause depression. At the highest level, psychologists study differences in the prevalence of depression between men and women and across cultures. The occurrence of psychological disorders, including depression, is substantially higher for women than for men, and it is also higher in Western cultures, such as in Canada, the United States, and Europe, than in Eastern cultures, such as in India, China, and Japan (Chen, Wang, Poland, & Lin, 2009; Seedat et al., 2009). These sex and cultural differences provide insight into the factors that cause depression.
The study of depression in psychology helps remind us that no one level of explanation can explain everything. All levels of explanation, from biological to personal to cultural, are essential for a better understanding of human behavior.
Research Methods
There are many research methods available to psychologists in their efforts to understand, describe, and explain behavior and the cognitive and biological processes that underlie it.
Naturalistic Observation
If you want to understand how behavior occurs, one of the best ways to gain information is to simply observe the behavior in its natural context. However, people might change their behavior in unexpected ways if they know they are being observed. How do researchers obtain accurate information when people tend to hide their natural behavior? As an example, imagine that your professor asks everyone in your class to raise their hand if they always wash their hands after using the restroom. Chances are that almost everyone in the classroom will raise their hand, but do you think hand washing after every trip to the restroom is really that universal?
This is very similar to the phenomenon mentioned earlier: many individuals do not feel comfortable answering a question honestly. But if we are committed to finding out the facts about hand washing, we have other options available to us.
Suppose we send a classmate into the restroom to actually watch whether everyone washes their hands after using the restroom. Will our observer blend into the restroom environment by wearing a white lab coat, sitting with a clipboard, and staring at the sinks? We want our researcher to be inconspicuous—perhaps standing at one of the sinks pretending to put in contact lenses while secretly recording the relevant information. This type of observational study is called naturalistic observation: observing behavior in its natural setting.
It is critical that the observer be as unobtrusive and as inconspicuous as possible: when people know they are being watched, they are less likely to behave naturally. If you have any doubt about this, ask yourself how your driving behavior might differ in two situations: In the first situation, you are driving down a deserted highway during the middle of the day; in the second situation, you are being followed by a police car down the same deserted highway.
It should be pointed out that naturalistic observation is not limited to research involving humans. Indeed, some of the best-known examples of naturalistic observation involve researchers going into the field to observe various kinds of animals in their own environments. As with human studies, the researchers maintain their distance and avoid interfering with the animal subjects so as not to influence their natural behaviors. Scientists have used this technique to study social hierarchies and interactions among animals ranging from ground squirrels to gorillas. The information provided by these studies is invaluable in understanding how those animals organize socially and communicate with one another. The anthropologist Jane Goodall, for example, spent nearly five decades observing the behavior of chimpanzees in Africa
The greatest benefit of naturalistic observation is the validity, or accuracy, of information collected unobtrusively in a natural setting. Having individuals behave as they normally would in a given situation means that we have a higher degree of ecological validity, or realism, than we might achieve with other research approaches. Therefore, our ability to generalize the findings of the research to real-world situations is enhanced. If done correctly, we need not worry about people or animals modifying their behavior simply because they are being observed. Sometimes, people may assume that reality programs give us a glimpse into authentic human behavior. However, the principle of inconspicuous observation is violated as reality stars are followed by camera crews and are interviewed on camera for personal confessionals. Given that environment, we must doubt how natural and realistic their behaviors are.
The major downside of naturalistic observation is that they are often difficult to set up and control. In our restroom study, what if you stood in the restroom all day prepared to record people’s hand washing behavior and no one came in? Or, what if you have been closely observing a troop of gorillas for weeks only to find that they migrated to a new place while you were sleeping in your tent? The benefit of realistic data comes at a cost. As a researcher you have no control of when (or if) you have behavior to observe. In addition, this type of observational research often requires significant investments of time, money, and a good dose of luck.
Sometimes studies involve structured observation. In these cases, people are observed while engaging in set, specific tasks. An excellent example of structured observation comes from Strange Situation by Mary Ainsworth. The Strange Situation is a procedure used to evaluate attachment styles that exist between an infant and caregiver. In this scenario, caregivers bring their infants into a room filled with toys. The Strange Situation involves a number of phases, including a stranger coming into the room, the caregiver leaving the room, and the caregiver’s return to the room. The infant’s behavior is closely monitored at each phase, but it is the behavior of the infant upon being reunited with the caregiver that is most telling in terms of characterizing the infant’s attachment style with the caregiver.
Another potential problem in observational research is observer bias. Generally, people who act as observers are closely involved in the research project and may unconsciously skew their observations to fit their research goals or expectations. To protect against this type of bias, researchers should have clear criteria established for the types of behaviors recorded and how those behaviors should be classified. In addition, researchers often compare observations of the same event by multiple observers, in order to test inter-rater reliability: a measure of reliability that assesses the consistency of observations by different observers.
Surveys
Often, psychologists develop surveys as a means of gathering data. Surveys are lists of questions to be answered by research participants, and can be delivered as paper-and-pencil questionnaires, administered electronically, or conducted verbally. Generally, the survey itself can be completed in a short time, and the ease of administering a survey makes it easy to collect data from a large number of people.
Surveys allow researchers to gather data from larger samples than may be afforded by other research methods. A sample is a subset of individuals selected from a population, which is the overall group of individuals that the researchers are interested in. Researchers study the sample and seek to generalize their findings to the population through statistical analysis.
There are both pros and cons of a survey in comparison to case studies. By using surveys, we can collect information from a larger sample of people. A larger sample is better able to reflect the actual diversity of the population, thus allowing better generalizability. Therefore, if our sample is sufficiently large and diverse, we can assume that the data we collect from the survey can be generalized to the larger population with more certainty than the information collected through a case study. However, given the greater number of people involved, we are not able to collect the same depth of information on each person that would be collected in a case study.
Another potential weakness of surveys is that people don't always give accurate responses. They may lie, misremember, or answer questions in a way that they think makes them look good. For example, people may report drinking less alcohol than is actually the case.
Archival Research
Some researchers gain access to large amounts of data without interacting with a single research participant. Instead, they use existing records to answer various research questions. This type of research approach is known as archival research. Archival research relies on looking at past records or data sets to look for interesting patterns or relationships.
For example, a researcher might access the academic records of all individuals who enrolled in college within the past ten years and calculate how long it took them to complete their degrees, as well as course loads, grades, and extracurricular involvement. Archival research could provide important information about who is most likely to complete their education, and it could help identify important risk factors for struggling students.
A researcher doing archival research examines records, whether archived as a (a) hardcopy or (b) electronically. (credit “paper files”: modification of work by “Newtown graffiti”/Flickr; “computer”: modification of work by INPIVIC Family/Flickr)
In comparing archival research to other research methods, there are several important distinctions. For one, the researcher employing archival research never directly interacts with research participants. Therefore, the investment of time and money to collect data is considerably less with archival research. Additionally, researchers have no control over what information was originally collected. Therefore, research questions have to be tailored so they can be answered within the structure of the existing data sets. There is also no guarantee of consistency between the records from one source to another, which might make comparing and contrasting different data sets problematic.
Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Research
Sometimes we want to see how people change over time, as in studies of human development and lifespan. When we test the same group of individuals repeatedly over an extended period of time, we are conducting longitudinal research. Longitudinal research is a research design in which data-gathering is administered repeatedly over an extended period of time. For example, we may survey a group of individuals about their dietary habits at age 20, retest them a decade later at age 30, and then again at age 40.
Another approach is cross-sectional research. In cross-sectional research, a researcher compares multiple segments of the population at the same time. Using the dietary habits example above, the researcher might directly compare different groups of people by age. Instead of studying a group of people for 20 years to see how their dietary habits changed from decade to decade, the researcher would study a group of 20-year-old individuals and compare them to a group of 30-year-old individuals and a group of 40-year-old individuals. While cross-sectional research requires a shorter-term investment, it is also limited by differences that exist between the different generations (or cohorts) that have nothing to do with age per se, but rather reflect the social and cultural experiences of different generations of individuals that make them different from one another.
Often longitudinal studies are employed when researching various diseases in an effort to understand particular risk factors. Such studies often involve tens of thousands of individuals who are followed for several decades. Given the enormous number of people involved in these studies, researchers can feel confident that their findings can be generalized to the larger population.
The Cancer Prevention Study-3 (CPS-3) is one of a series of longitudinal studies sponsored by the American Cancer Society aimed at determining predictive risk factors associated with cancer. When participants enter the study, they complete a survey about their lives and family histories, providing information on factors that might cause or prevent the development of cancer. Then every few years the participants receive additional surveys to complete. In the end, hundreds of thousands of participants will be tracked over 20 years to determine which of them develop cancer and which do not.
Clearly, this type of research is important and potentially very informative. For instance, earlier longitudinal studies sponsored by the American Cancer Society provided some of the first scientific demonstrations of the now well-established links between increased rates of cancer and smoking (American Cancer Society, n.d.).
As with any research strategy, longitudinal research is not without limitations. For one, these studies require an incredible time investment by the researcher and research participants. Given that some longitudinal studies take years, if not decades, to complete, the results will not be known for a considerable period of time. In addition to the time demands, these studies also require a substantial financial investment. Many researchers are unable to commit the resources necessary to see a longitudinal project through to the end.
Research participants must also be willing to continue their participation for an extended period of time, and this can be problematic. People move, get married and take new names, get ill, and eventually die. Even without significant life changes, some people may simply choose to discontinue their participation in the project. As a result, the attrition rates, or reduction in the number of research participants due to dropouts, in longitudinal studies are quite high and increase over the course of a project. For this reason, researchers using this approach typically recruit many participants fully expecting that a substantial number will drop out before the end. As the study progresses, they continually check whether the sample still represents the larger population, and make adjustments as necessary.
Ethics
Psychology differs somewhat from the natural sciences such as chemistry in that researchers conduct studies with human research participants. Because of this there is a natural tendency to want to guard research participants against potential psychological harm. For example, it might be interesting to see how people handle ridicule but it might not be advisable to ridicule research participants. Scientific psychologists follow a specific set of guidelines for research known as a code of ethics. Following are a few highlights.
1. Informed consent. In general, people should know when they are involved in research, and understand what will happen to them during the study. They should then be given a free choice as to whether to participate.
2. Confidentiality. Information that researchers learn about individual participants should not be made public without the consent of the individual.
3. Privacy. Researchers should not make observations of people in private places such as their bedrooms without their knowledge and consent. Researchers should not seek confidential information from others, such as school authorities, without consent of the participant or his or her guardian.
4. Benefits. Researchers should consider the benefits of their proposed research and weigh these against potential risks to the participants. People who participate in psychological studies should be exposed to risk only if they fully understand these risks and only if the likely benefits clearly outweigh the risks.
5. Deception. Some researchers need to deceive participants in order to hide the true nature of the study. This is typically done to prevent participants from modifying their behavior in unnatural ways. Researchers are required to “debrief” their participants after they have completed the study. Debriefing is an opportunity to educate participants about the true nature of the study.
Unfortunately, the ethical guidelines that exist for research today were not always applied in the past. In 1932, rural, Black men from Tuskegee, Alabama, were recruited to participate in an experiment conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, with the aim of studying syphilis in Black men. In exchange for free medical care, meals, and burial insurance, 600 men agreed to participate in the study. A little more than half of the men tested positive for syphilis, and they served as the experimental group (given that the researchers could not randomly assign participants to groups, this represents a quasi-experiment). The remaining syphilis-free individuals served as the control group. However, those individuals that tested positive for syphilis were never informed that they had the disease.
While there was no treatment for syphilis when the study began, by 1947 penicillin was recognized as an effective treatment for the disease. Despite this, no penicillin was administered to the participants in this study, and the participants were not allowed to seek treatment at any other facilities if they continued in the study. Over the course of 40 years, many of the participants unknowingly spread syphilis to their wives (and subsequently their children born from their wives) and eventually died because they never received treatment for the disease. This study was discontinued in 1972 when the experiment was discovered by the national press (Tuskegee University, n.d.). The resulting outrage over the experiment led directly to the National Research Act of 1974 and the strict ethical guidelines for research on humans described in this chapter.
A participant in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study receives an injection.
Many psychologists conduct research involving animal subjects. Often, these researchers use rodents or birds as the subjects of their experiments. Because many basic processes in animals are sufficiently similar to those in humans, these animals are acceptable substitutes for research that would be considered unethical in human participants.
This does not mean that animal researchers are immune to ethical concerns. Indeed, the humane and ethical treatment of animal research subjects is a critical aspect of this type of research. Researchers must design their experiments to minimize any pain or distress experienced by animals serving as research subjects.
Whereas IRBs review research proposals that involve human participants, animal experimental proposals are reviewed by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). An IACUC consists of institutional administrators, scientists, veterinarians, and community members. This committee is charged with ensuring that all experimental proposals require the humane treatment of animal research subjects. It also conducts semi-annual inspections of all animal facilities to ensure that the research protocols are being followed. No animal research project can proceed without the committee’s approval.
Branches of Psychology
The field of psychology encompasses a wide range of sub-disciplines, each focusing on different aspects of human behavior and mental processes. This section provides an overview of various specialized areas within psychology. These sub-disciplines collectively contribute to our comprehensive understanding of human nature and behavior, and the many ways in which they influence our daily lives. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It will provide insight into the major areas of research and practice of modern-day psychologists.
Not all of these subfields have existed as long as others. The dominant influence of Western, White, and male academics in the early history of psychology meant that psychology developed with the biases inherent in those individuals, which often had negative consequences for members of society who were not White or male. Women, members of ethnic minorities in both the United States and other countries, and individuals with sexual orientations other than straight had difficulties entering the field of psychology and therefore influencing its development. They also suffered from the attitudes of white male psychologists who were not immune to the nonscientific attitudes prevalent in the society in which they developed and worked.
Until the 1960s, for example few women were able to practice psychology, so they had little influence on what was studied. In addition, the experimental subjects of psychology were mostly men, which resulted from underlying assumptions that gender had no influence on psychology and that women were not of sufficient interest to study.
An article by Naomi Weisstein, first published in 1968 (Weisstein, 1993), stimulated a feminist revolution in psychology by presenting a critique of psychology as a science. She also specifically criticized male psychologists for constructing the psychology of women entirely out of their own cultural biases and without careful experimental tests to verify any of their characterizations of women. Weisstein used, as examples, statements by prominent psychologists in the 1960s, such as this quote by Bruno Bettleheim: “We must start with the realization that, as much as women want to be good scientists or engineers, they want first and foremost to be womanly companions of men and to be mothers.” Weisstein’s critique formed the foundation for the subsequent development of a feminist psychology that attempted to be free of the influence of male cultural biases on our knowledge of the psychology of women.
Crawford & Marecek (1989) identify several feminist approaches to psychology that can be described as feminist psychology. These include re-evaluating and discovering the contributions of women to the history of psychology, studying psychological gender differences, and questioning the male bias present across the practice of the scientific approach to knowledge. As you can see from this list, not only feminist but other psychological subfields have also developed that helped make psychology a broader and more scientific discipline.
This list of sub-disciplines of psychology offers us a glimpse into the many ways to explore psychology. Whether it’s in examination of individual behaviors, societal influences, biological underpinnings, or the unique challenges of specific environments, each area contributes valuable insights. Together, they form a cohesive understanding that helps us appreciate the complexity of the human mind and behavior in various contexts.
- Abnormal Psychology: The study of mental disorders and psychopathology, delving into the causes and treatments of various psychological disorders such as mood, anxiety, and psychotic disorders.
- Anti-Racism Psychology: An emerging field, this study focuses on understanding and combating racial prejudice and discrimination.
- Biopsychology (behavioral neuroscience): The study of the biological underpinnings of behavior and mental processes, including brain structure, neurotransmitters, and the nervous system, often focusing on neural mechanisms of behavior.
- Clinical Psychology: The diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders, using therapeutic interventions to assist individuals in coping with psychological challenges and enhancing well-being.
- Cognitive Psychology: The study of mental processes such as perception, memory, biases and problem-solving, and language, that aims to understand how people think, reason, and make decisions.
- Community Psychology: The study of the influences that foster positive community change and those that break down communities. This field addresses social justice, poverty, and mental health issues through collaborative strategies for empowerment and social transformation.
- Comparative Psychology: The study of the behavior and cognitive processes of non-human animals.
- Consumer Psychology: The study of consumer behavior and decision-making processes, which explores the ways in which factors like advertising, branding, and consumer satisfaction influence marketplace choices.
- Counselling Psychology: The study of the ways in which therapies support individuals, families, and groups facing personal and emotional challenges, that focuses on improving mental health and well-being.
- Critical Psychology: The study of the role of power, privilege, and oppression in psychology, which aims to challenge and change oppressive systems both within psychology and in broader society.
- Cross-Cultural Psychology: The comparison of the psychological phenomena across cultures, which aims to identify universal and culture-specific behaviors, and focuses on the ways in which cultural variations influence social behavior and decision-making.
- Cultural Psychology: The study of the ways in which cultural beliefs, values, and practices shape thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, which examines the impact of culture on perception, cognition, and social interaction.
- Cyberpsychology: The study of the impact of emerging technology, including virtual reality and social media, on human behavior and mental processes.
- Developmental Psychology: The study of changes and development across the lifespan, including cognitive and moral development, socialization, and ageing.
- Educational Psychology: The study of the psychological processes involved in learning and education, which examines learning theories and the ways in which individuals acquire new behaviors and skills.
- Engineering Psychology: The application of psychological principles to enhance the design of technology, equipment, and interfaces for optimal human performance and safety.
- Environmental Psychology: The study of the relationship between individuals and their physical environments, which studies the ways in which different settings affect human behavior and well-being.
- Feminist Psychology: The study of gender, sexism (sex-based discrimination), and patriarchy and their effects on human development and experiences. This discipline includes advocating for gender equity.
- Forensic Psychology: The application of psychological principles to legal and criminal justice systems, which provides expert testimony on psychological factors in legal cases.
- Gerontology (Psychology of Aging): The study of the psychological and social aspects of ageing, which explores topics like successful ageing and memory changes.
- Group Dynamics: The study of how individuals behave in groups and how group processes affect individual behavior, which examines group cohesion, leadership, and conflict resolution.
- Health Psychology: The study of the psychological factors influencing physical health and well-being, which focuses on stress, behavior change, and the mind-body connection.
- Human Factors Psychology: The application of psychological principles to designing user-friendly and safe products and systems, considering human abilities and limitations in design and engineering.
- Indigenous Psychology: The study of the unique psychological perspectives, practices, and traditions of indigenous communities, which studies their psychological experiences and well-being.
- Industrial-Organizational Psychology: The application of psychological principles in the workplace, which addresses employee motivation, job satisfaction, and organizational behavior.
- Media Psychology: the study of the impact of media (e.g., TV, gaming, radio, virtual and augmented reality, etc.) on human behavior and cognition, including the effects of media violence on aggression.
- Military Psychology: The study of the mental health and well-being of military personnel and veterans, addressing issues like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and combat stress reactions.
- Motivation and Emotion Psychology: The study of the factors driving behavior and influencing emotional experiences, which studies motivation theories and emotional regulation.
- Multicultural Psychology: The study of the behavior of individuals in different cultural settings and the ways in which cultural factors influence mental health.
- Music Psychology: The study of the psychological processes involved in music perception and production, and the impact of music on emotions and cognition.
- Neuropsychology: The study of the relationship between brain function and behavior, which assesses cognitive deficits resulting from brain injuries or neurological conditions.
- Personality Psychology: The study of individual differences in personality traits, behaviors, and characteristics, which explores various personality theories and assessment methods.
- Political Psychology: The study of the psychological factors influencing political beliefs, behaviors, and decision-making, which examines political attitudes and voting behavior.
- Positive Psychology: The study of the situations and experiences that promote human strengths, well-being, and happiness, which researches resilience and well-being interventions.
- Psycholinguistics: The study of the development and mechanics of learning and producing language.
- Psychometrics: The development of psychological tests and measurement tools, which ensure that assessments are reliable and valid.
- Rehabilitation Psychology: The application of psychological principles and research evidence to support individuals with disabilities or chronic health conditions, which help them to adapt and improve their quality of life.
- Religious Psychology: The study of the impact of religion and spirituality on mental health and well-being, which explores faith, and religious identity and practices.
- School (Educational) Psychology: The application of psychological principles and research evidence to support students’ mental health, academic success, and well-being within educational settings, which focuses on interventions for academic and behavioral challenges.
- Sensation and Perception Psychology: The study of how sensory organs receive and interpret environmental information, which focuses on vision, hearing, and touch perception.
- Social Psychology: The study of how social interactions and group dynamics influence individual behavior and attitudes, which explores topics like prejudice, conformity, and social influence.
- Space Psychology: The study of how astronauts and cosmonauts are psychologically affected by long-duration missions in space travel and environments. This discipline examines factors like isolation, confinement, microgravity, risk, and the effects of a unique and challenging environment on mental health, behavior, and cognitive functioning.
- Sport and Exercise Psychology: The application of psychological and research evidence to support athletes and individuals to enhance performance, motivation, and well-being in sports and physical activity.
- Traffic Psychology: The study of drivers’ behaviors and road safety, which works on interventions to promote safe driving and reduce traffic-related accidents.
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