Talk:Psychology

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is it really that the name of a person desribes behavious of that person —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.128.5 (talk) 11:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely; that's why my parents decided to call me the Wonderful Wizard of Wikipedia! Seriously, though, I'm not quite sure about the meaning and relevance of what you're asking. Could you give us an example? Cosmic Latte (talk) 10:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In some cultures, the name of a person indeed seems to be correlated with his behavior, if this is what you mean. Twipley (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Beginning

This is a good article, but I have a problem with the way it starts:

Psychology is an academic and applied discipline which involves the scientific study of human or animal mental functions and behaviors. In addition or opposition to employing scientific methods, psychologists often rely upon symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, albeit less frequently than other social sciences such as sociology.

A professional theorist or practitioner of psychology is called a psychologist. Psychologists study such phenomena as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, personality, behavior and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also consider the unconscious mind. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the underlying physiological and neurological processes.

Indeed, the term "psychologist" only gets defined in its second occurrence... Therefore, it seems to me that the second sentence of the first paragraph would perhaps best be placed a little lower than it currently is? Twipley (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I found that the easiest thing to do would be sort of the flip-side of what you said: I moved the first sentence of the second paragraph a little higher. If it still could be improved, please feel free to make further suggestions or changes. Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The entry paragraph state that psychologists are "social scientists". I think this may in some cases be true, but isn't necessarily so. Not too few psychologists see themselves as general or nature scientists, as they do not always study social phenomena. In addition, the social sciences do often take a qualitative approach to their fields of investigation, while at least here in Germany a lot of psychologists prefer a quantitative approach not unlike biologists or physicists. I feel the entry paragraph should make this clearer; psychology isn't part of the "social sciences" field with disciplines such as history or sociology, at least not fully. While both do study human beings, they do so with different focusses. In this respect, psychology has more in common with biology or medicine than with the social sciences. --91.32.5.13 (talk) 23:28, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with this and support your addition to the intro. Psychology straddles the social and natural sciences. In Canada, for example, some psychologists (i/o, social, personality, developmental) are funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council while others (e.g., cognitive, behavioural neuroscience) are funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. It's not always clear what research should be funded by which. justinfr (talk/contribs) 15:29, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Too many listed subfields?

I am a bit concerned that the list of subfields in this article is getting too long. Some of the listed subfields are extremely small (community, comparative, critical, global, media, occupational health, etc.) and I am concerned that we are approaching WP:Undue by listing all of them here. There are dozens of subfields of psychology, and I feel like there should be a separate all-inclusive list somewhere other than the main psychology article, lest readers become overwhelmed. For reference, here is a list (US only, so not globally representative, but probably close) of psychology subfields along with the number of doctoral degrees awarded in those fields (link) taken from the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates. (The link goes to a screen capture -- the original data are available here if you register.) -Nick^talk 17:59, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I think that most of the "Subfields" section should be copy-pasted into a new article called Subfields of psychology or something similar; and for the Psychology article, I would--with one exception--stick to the list that you provided. The one exception is critical psychology, which I'd move from Subfields to Psychology#Criticism. While this may be a small branch of psychology as a whole, it's a significant source of criticism, largely because the criticism comes from within psychology itself. Otherwise, I'm in full agreement with your suggestion. Cosmic Latte (talk) 15:21, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I also agree. I think we should use the list given in the link or some other clear standard as a guide for what should be in this article. --Jcbutler (talk) 17:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm also in full agreement with Nick and Jcbutler. We need to adopt some objective standard, even if it isn't fully representative worldwide. I do not think we should make an exception for an editor's pet subfield (for Cosmic Latte this is apparently critical psychology; mine might be community psychology, which is after all a division of APA) if it doesn't meet the objective criteria. A "new article called Subfields of psychology or something similar" needs to be created and linked from this main article. -DoctorW 23:43, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

"Exception" might not have been the best choice of words on my part. Maybe "addition" or "supplement" would have been better. I agree that CP, like many of the listed subfields, probably is not prominent enough as a subfield to remain in the subfields section. I just think that the key ideas could be integrated into the criticism section, simply because "criticism" happens to be a valid and extant article section--and because, since this section has to draw its material from somewhere, it might as well draw from mainstream reflexivity, more so than from "outside" critics with limited "hands-on" experience. In other words, CP might have due weight as criticism, in the criticism section, even if it's undue in the subfields part. So, perhaps what I should have suggested is that, in addition to moving the undue material out of subfields, we could incorporate snippets of it into a section where it would fit more properly (and prominently). Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

In any case, I've gone ahead and copied the full section to a new article, Subfields of psychology, and have trimmed and adjusted Psychology#Subfields in accordance with Schwnj's link. As for my proposed addition/supplement, perhaps I could try that out sometime and see what the rest of you think. But for the meantime, the consensus seems clearly to be in favour of a WP:SPINOUT, so I've gone ahead and spun most of the section out. Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Subfields on other page should be mentioned here

I think that this page's introduction to the section on subfields should find a very brief way to allude to the richer set of topics (including community, critical, etc.) that appear on the subfields page (perhaps using a small-font right-justified table?). Plus, I think that such a listing should also be very briefly contextualized by conveying to the reader that there is no one fixed way of defining what counts as a subfield. Ultimately, even the other (subfields) page may need to establish criteria for what constitutes notability for a subfield, although clearly more relaxed criteria can be used on the other page than on this page. On the dedicated subfields page, I would suggest that the most useful solution may ultimately involve a variety of ways that a subfield could qualify as sufficiently notable, while still keeping a limit. Health Researcher (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I have added psychology of religion/spirituality as another listed subfield on the subfields page. I think the existence of this R/S subfield also deserves a mention on the present (Psychology) page, although I am inclined to agree it does not merit its own subsection on this page, now that the number of subfields has been trimmed. But it strikes me as needlessly uninformative to fail to even mention on this page a subfield with such a long history in modern psychology, and that addresses a topic of such deep and abiding importance to large majorities of people in the US and many other societies. Health Researcher (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Term in which bad/draconian choice is given, followed by interviewer's desired choice

I seem to recall that their is a term, or at least psychology papers on how an interviewer can skew a poll by first giving a bad/draconian choice, followed by the choice desired by the interviewer. What article would that be? Thank you. Okip (formerly Ikip) 13:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

That probably would be loaded question. Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

hi Does a person studying psychology has a split personalise ...or two personalise thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.8.253 (talk) 18:19, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

A person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) might be said to have "multiple personalities". Even worse, someone with Orthodox Behaviorism Disorder (OBD) may be convinced that they (being entirely the product of their environment) have no intrinsic "personality" at all! Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

Quote from the criticism section: "Critics say there has been an increase in the number of mental health training programs that do not instill scientific competence.[47] One skeptic asserts that 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.[48] In 1984, Allen Neuringer had made a similar point[vague] regarding the experimental analysis of behavior.[49]"

I don't understand this criticism. Why is psychology as defined in the article being criticized for pseudo-scientific treatments? Is psychology as an academic field responsible for all sorts of "mental health training programs" that must exist? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.34.83.114 (talk) 10:58, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

At a more general level the issues concern which practices are (or are not) empirically supported and to what extent (e.g. psychoanalysis[1] and EMDR[2]). The APA has put together an evidence-based practice task force to make recommendations concerning evidence-based practice in psychology, it has recommended a similar model to that used in medicine.[3]. "But these research-to-practice endeavours have also generated considerable controversy focusing primarily on two areas. First, the actual amount of research evidence, particularly derived from RCTs [randomised control studies], is considerably greater for certain psychological treatments compared with others (see Roth & Fonagy, 1996). Second, irrespective of any such imbalance, there are differing views as to the interpretation of the research (e.g., the effectiveness of treatments versus the effectiveness of the common factors - Asay & Lambert, 1999; Norcross, 2002)."[4] There has been a reluctance to adopt EBP because it normally requires that clinicians give up their existing practices and would have to adopt the most researched practices such as CBT or IPT. (Seligman, 1998 as cited in [5]). Rather than dealing with the issue in the criticism section perhaps there should a section on "Evidence-based practice" or training and professional standards in this or another article where the debate could be covered in more depth. The issue has also comes up in discussions about professional ethics. ----Action potential ^{discuss contribs} 05:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes to subfields / intro

I moved this text from the subsection on School psychology: "Currently, school psychology is the only field in which a professional can be called a "psychologist" without a doctoral degree, with the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) recognizing the Specialist degree as the entry level. This is a matter of controversy as the APA does not recognize anything below a doctorate as the entry level for a psychologist. Specialist-level school psychologists, who typically receive three years of graduate training, function almost exclusively within school systems, while those at the doctoral-level are found in a number of other settings as well, including universities, hospitals, clinics, and private practice."

• If someone wants to keep this, can you please find a source and make it less US-centric. ----Action potential ^{discuss contribs} 11:15, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I cut the Consulting and Counseling psychology from the sub-discipline section. I thought that those could be handled under the Organisational and Clinical psychology respectively. I've also removed the quantitative subfield because this can really be handled in the research methods section. ----Action potential ^{discuss contribs} 15:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I cut the following text from the introduction because it was given undue weight where it was introduced. The cited source has a low citation count on google scholar and on web of science.

• ", as well as wider historical dimensions such as the attainment of greatness in fields such as politics, music, art, and literature. Simonton, D.K. 1994. Greatness: Who Makes History and Why. New York: The Guilford Press."

---

Action potential ^{discuss contribs} 02:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Funny topic about basic problems about in human mind

When at first time I notice a basic problems in human mind, I get impressed. Years ago, with one of my friends discussing purpose of live. My friend told me that all life is for one wife and her needs. When I was hear this, I laugh loudly. But at near time I find that human mind things on basic things: for example: money, food or sex. My things about this situation is negative: because human must have a purpose or purposes. So money, food or sex must be a secondary problem I thing. If human find purpose(s) then will thing different about life. And may be it makes difference between other people.

Ayhi (netiq69@gmail.com) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.181.99.13 (talk) 18:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Scientific

The Psych deals with person as person: in both his spiritual (behavior) and phisiological (Mental Functions) dimensions. How can Psychology be cosidered a science when it deals also with that which is not scientific: i.e. behaviour ? (I.e. I understand it to be scientific only in its relation to studying mental functions (the neurological, aspect, the brain etc.) while Iw would leave the study of behavior to a different paradigm) Thanks. Alan347 (talk) 19:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

i'm not so sure of this.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.32.63.39 (talk) 13:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The scientific method can be used as long as you are able to measure/quantify what you're studying. Behaviour can be measured, meaning that the scientific method can be applied to it. Zorander22 (talk) 15:43, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Misuse of sources

A request for comments has been filed concerning the conduct of Jagged 85 (talk · contribs). Jagged 85 is one of the main contributors to Wikipedia (over 67,000 edits, he's ranked 198 in the number of edits), and practically all of his edits have to do with Islamic science, technology and philosophy. This editor has persistently misused sources here over several years. This editor's contributions are always well provided with citations, but examination of these sources often reveals either a blatant misrepresentation of those sources or a selective interpretation, going beyond any reasonable interpretation of the authors' intent. I searched the page history, and found 2 edits by Jagged 85 in July 2007 and 4 more edits in January 2008. Tobby72 (talk) 22:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

That's an old and archived RfC. The point is still valid though, and his contribs need to be doublechecked. Tobby72 (talk) 21:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the alert. There is only one reference to Ibn Al-Haytham in psychinfo, it says: "Persian scholar Ibn al-Haytham ('Alhazen') has rightly been credited with many advances in optics and vision science, but recent spurious claims that he is the 'founder of psychophysics' rest upon unsupported assertions, a conflation of psychophysics with the wider discipline of psychology, and semantic arguments over what it is to 'found' a school of thought." Aaen-Stockdale, Craig "Last but not least: Ibn Al-Haytham and psychophysics." Perception, Vol 37(4), 2008, 636-638. doi:10.1068/p5940 --122.108.139.250 (talk) 09:22, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

How should be cover Ibn Al-Haytham's contribution to optics. Do we need to cover the recent controversy over whether or not he "founded" psychophysics and contributed to psychology more generally? I should have checked this earlier. How should we cover ethe contribution of Islamic physicians to psychology? This is the text that was removed pending a check: [6] ----Action potential ^{discuss contribs} 09:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I also personally found claims about the contributions of Islamic scholars by certain Wikipedia editors to be overblown, and, upon checking facts and sources, to be an extreme stretch to say the least. It really looked like an agenda taking precedence over accuracy and quality in the article. There are literally hundreds of figures in the history of science and philosophy for whom a good argument could be made as to their important influence in psychology. We need to exclude the vast majority and include only those who are indeed most centrally important for such a general article as this. -DoctorW 22:32, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Just to mention that there is a comment at Talk:Visual perception#Misusing of refs by Famousdog (talk · contribs) that he once provided a reference to show that Ibn al-Haytham did not found psychophysics.

All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 23:37, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Psychiatry

I wonder if Psychiatry should be linked or discussed in the article somewhere. It may be covered in the subarticle Clinical_psychology#Psychiatry. --129.94.83.94 (talk) 11:24, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Employment statistics

This article [7] gives a good overview of the employment of psychologists in the USA. 152,000 psychologists are employed in clinical, counseling, and school positions, 2300 are employed in industrial-organisational, and 15,900 in "all-other" positions. It would be great to include the typical educational requirements, job prospects, and average wages for the various options in applied psychology. I think the current article could cover this in general. ----Action potential ^talk_contribs 02:51, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

This is an article about psychology, not about psychologists. So I will move your section to psychologist. Lova Falk talk 08:13, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Forgetting curve

A typical representation of the forgetting curve

I removed the forgetting curve and put it here so it can easily be put back in - if necessary. Lova Falk talk 10:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Gestalt psychology and history

I have two questions. The first concerns the accuracy of the following sentence in the Gestalt psychology section: "This approach to psychology began in Germany and Austria during the late 19th century in response to the molecular approach of structuralism."

1. Is Titchener's structuralism similar enough to the structuralism of de Sassure's or Lévi-Strass's that it should to be lumped with those two? De Sassure and Lévi-Strauss (and Piaget) are often thought of when one speaks of structuralism. I am not sure Titchener's introspectionist psychology belongs with the structuralism of de Sassure or Lévi-Strass. Titchener is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article on structuralism, although that article needs work. I think Titchener's structuralism is qualitatively different.

2. I noticed an internal link to structuralism under the history section, when Wundt is mentioned. Is it accurate to call Wundt a structuralist (although Titchener among others trained at Leipzig)? I don't think so.

Perhaps some of the contributors who are more knowledgeable about these historical questions can respond, and do the editing if called for. Thanks.Iss246 (talk) 14:19, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Pseudoscience?

Shouldn't psychology be labelled a pseudoscience rather than a science? 85.210.35.84 (talk) 16:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I can't tell if you are trolling or being serious, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt here, but will keep it brief. The answer to your question is no. Psychology is a basic and applied behavioral science. It is a mainstream scientific discipline studied at most if not all of the major world universities. Psychologists are often some of the strongest critics of pseudo-scientific thinking. There were incorrect and even bizarre ideas claimed early in the discipline's history, but that is the case in the history of nearly all sciences. A scientific discipline can be recognized by whether or not incorrect ideas are retained or scrapped when they are challenged by evidence. Psychology has unequivocally sided with the latter. Osubuckeyeguy (talk) 22:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

The article appears to mention no universally accepted psychological facts or laws and refers to six quite distinct "schools". This is quite different from the situation in most sciences where there is a consensus over the main body of facts and laws and disagreement only over details. Isn't this closer to the situation in astrology and alternative medicine than that in astronomy and biology? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.43.37 (talk) 04:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

See psychophysics for examples of scaling laws. See string theory for counter-examples to your claims about scientific consensus. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 15:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Schools of psychology were simply different ways of thinking about what the "mind" is (a topic too abstract for any science to achieve consensus). You'll notice they are a part of the History section. The actual scientific findings of psychology are too numerous to mention in one place, which is why there is a list of sub-fields of psychology. Within those articles are hundreds of examples of consistently and scientifically observed psychological principles and effects. Keep in mind that unlike biology, chemistry and physics, psychology's primary interests involve the thoughts feelings and behaviors of humans, which are wildly inconsistent.-Nick^talk 17:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

In fact, since the comparison was made between psychology and physics, I went and looked at that page. I don't see a list of universally accepted facts of physics there either. For those of that know at least some physics, I do see pointers towards, and mention of, accepted physical facts, such as E = mc2 (in the box at the top), lightning is an electric current, etc (actually, many of the best examples are in the figure captions). Similarly, when those who know at least some psychology look at the main text of the psychology article, they will see things like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the stages of memory, etc. These are generally agreed upon principles within their domains of psychology. The complaint about domains is no more relevant here than it is in physics: In the same way that physics can be broken down into many sub-fields, with distinct areas of investigation and distinct methods, psychology can (and should) also be broken down into distinct sub-fields, with distinct areas of investigation and methods. In the case of psychology, these sub-fields are also generally tied to different historical antecedents, so Schwnj's comments above are correct. And, as in physics, the links between certain concepts within different subfields are still unclear. Certain phenomena like wave/particle duality (not to pretend for a second that *that's* completely settled!) within physics fit within quantum mechanics, but are also believed to be linked to cosmological phenomena at the largest levels. However, there is no grand unified theory (GUT) and so the findings are not entirely integrated. Similarly, questions of self-fulfillment and personality are appropriate to discuss within certain time-scales and certain frameworks of the individual's mental life. Other things, like how people remember and forget are appropriate within a cognitive framework. Psychologists believe in some way that the two are related (for example, cognitive dissonance, wherein someone's memory is retrospectively colored by the choices they've made), but we are similarly far from a single psychological GUT. In the Kuhn/Popper vein, the key thing is experimental methods that permit falsifiability, and cumulative knowledge base. In this respect, psychology is no less a science than other fields. This is one place where psychology has made great progress in the past 50 years; the quantification of behavior. However, the complexity of the phenomena in question makes it substantially more difficult to run a single experiment that will completely and utterly falsify a particular theory. Despite these challenges, psychology, through the use of repeated experimentation, replication and linkages with other domains (like neuroscience and genetics) has built a large body of agreed upon facts, a larger body of agreed upon phenomena with more controversial interpretations, and an even larger set of research questions. Given that Popper and Kuhn were writing more than 40 years ago, their opinions of psychology at the time do not necessarily reflect the current state of psychology today - bearing in mind that psychology has been around as a topic of investigation for about 120 years, maybe 150 years max, this means that a substantial proportion of the history of psychology has occurred after these classic philosophers of science wrote anything about psychology. Edhubbard (talk) 17:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

One of my lecturers (in history and philosophy of science: distinguishing science from pseudoscience) made the argument that psychology exhibits characteristics of pseudoscience. One the the examples he used was EMDR and cited Popper's and Bunge's criterion for distinguishing science from pseudoscience. Critically, EMDR adherents (typically psychologists) use ad hoc maneuvers to avoid refutation and continue to practice it despite its failure in empirical testing.[8] "From this Popperian [3] perspective, Herbert et al. (2000) have accused Francine Shapiro and other EMDR advocates of practicing pseudoscience. According to these critics, EMDR mavens do not behave like real scientists, who, according to Popperian dogma, derive bold conjectures from their theories and then relentlessly seek theoretical refutation by exposing these conjectures to risky empirical tests." According to McNally, EMDR (and many other what he calls "wacky therapies") continues to be advocated and used by those with Ph.Ds in clinical psychology despite lack of empirical validation. If EMDR remains popular with clinical psychologists (in clinical training and practice) and clinical psychology is a paradigmatic subfield of psychology. Then, some parts of psychology exhibits characteristics of pseudoscience. This is based on the premise the psychology is defined by what psychologists do. After setting up this argument the lecturer admitted that the term pseudoscience in clinical psychology is inflammatory and hotly debated (see Richard NcNally's article: [9]). Returning the to EMDR example, just because pseudoscience is often practiced in clinical psychology and promoted by those with Ph.Ds in clinical psychology does not necessarily make psychology a pseudoscience. The term pseudoscience is thrown around in debate over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to dismiss opponent theories. It really does not add much to the debate there. Similarly, calling psychology or one of its subfields or theories pseudoscientific adds little to the debate. Its little more than emotive name-calling. NcNally argues that rather than dismissing a theory or practice as pseudoscience (or an individual theorist as pseudoscientist), we should ask its adherents, How do you know it works? What is the empirical evidence for it? ----Action potential ^talk_contribs 08:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)