Keith Stanovich - How to Think Straight About Psychology

1.General Psychology

2.Teaching of Psychology

3.Experimental Psychology

5.Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics

6.Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology

7.Developmental Psychology

8.Personality and Social Psychology

9.Psychological Study of Social Issues

10.Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

12.Clinical Psychology

13.Consulting Psychology

14.Industrial and Organizational Psychology

15.Educational Psychology

16.School Psychology

17.Counseling Psychology

18.Psychologists in Public Service

19.Military Psychology

20.Adult Development and Aging

21.Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology

22.Rehabilitation Psychology

23.Consumer Psychology

24.Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

25.Behavior Analysis

26.History of Psychology

27.Community Psychology

28.Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse

29.Psychotherapy

30.Psychological Hypnosis

31.State Psychological Association Affairs

32.Humanistic Psychology

33.Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

34.Population and Environmental Psychology

35.Psychology of Women

36.Psychology of Religion

37.Child and Family Policy and Practice

38.Health Psychology

39.Psychoanalysis

40.Clinical Neuropsychology

41.Psychology and Law

42.Psychologists in Independent Practice

43.Family Psychology

44.Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues

45.Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues

46.Media Psychology

47.Exercise and Sport Psychology

48.Peace Psychology

49.Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy

50.Addictions

51.Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity

52.International Psychology

53.Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

54.Pediatric Psychology

55.Pharmacotherapy

56.Trauma Psychology

Note: There is no Division 4 or 11.

Many people come to the study of psychology hoping to learn the one grand psychological theory that unifies and explains all aspects of human behavior. Such hopes are often disappointed, because psychology contains not one grand theory, but many different theories, each covering a limited aspect of behavior (Griggs, Proctor, & Bujak-Johnson, 2002). The diversity of psychology guarantees that the task of theoretical unification will be immensely difficult. Indeed, many psychologists would argue that such a unification is impossible. Others, however, are searching for greater unification within the field (Cacioppo, 2007a, 2007b; Cleeremans, 2010; Gray, 2008; Henriques, 2011; Sternberg, 2005). For example, the coherence of psychology as a discipline has increased over the last two decades due to the theoretical efforts of evolutionary psychologists. These researchers have tried to bring unification to our conceptualization of human psychological processes by viewing them as mechanisms serving critical evolutionary functions such as kinship recognition, mate selection, cooperation, social exchange, and child rearing (Buss, 2005, 2011; Cartwright, 2008; Ellis & Bjorklund, 2005; Geary, 2005, 2008). Likewise, Cacioppo (2007b) points to subfields such as social cognitive neuroscience as tying together numerous specialty areas within psychology—in this case, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and neuropsychology.

Some researchers see the diversity of psychology as reflecting an underlying strength of the discipline (Cacioppo, 2007a; Gray, 2008). For example, Cacioppo (2007a) views psychology as a so-called hub discipline—a science whose findings have unusually wide implications for other fields. He cites evidence indicating that, compared with other sciences, psychological findings have quite broad implications for other sciences.

No matter what their position on the issue of the coherence of the subject matter of psychology, all psychologists agree that theoretical unification will be an extremely difficult task. The lack of theoretical integration leads some critics of psychology to denigrate the scientific progress that psychology has made. Such criticism often arises from the mistaken notion that all true sciences must have a grand, unifying theory. It is a mistaken notion because many other sciences also lack a unifying conceptualization. Harvard psychologist William Estes (1979) has emphasized this point:

The situation in which the experimental psychologists find themselves is not novel, to be sure, nor peculiar to psychology. Physics during the early twentieth century subdivided even at the level of undergraduate teaching into separate disciplines. Thus I was introduced to that science through separate university courses in mechanics, heat, optics, acoustics, and electricity. Similarly, chemistry has branched out, evidently irreversibly, into inorganic, organic, physical, and biochemical specialties, among which there may be no more communication than among some of the current subdisciplines of psychology. In both cases, unity has reemerged only at the level of abstract mathematical theory. Medicine has similarly fragmented into specialties, but is like psychology in that there has been no appearance of a new unity. (pp. 661–662)

Once we acknowledge the implications of the social and historical factors that determine the structure of disciplines, we can recognize that it is illogical to demand that all fields be unified. Indeed, many scholars have argued that the term “psychology” implies a coherence of subject matter that is not characteristic of the discipline. As a result, a number of leading university departments in the United States have been changing their names to Department of Psychological Sciences (see Jaffe, 2011). The term “sciences” conveys two important messages of this chapter. That it is plural signals the point about the diversity of content in the discipline that we have been discussing. The term “sciences” also signals where to look for the unity in the discipline of psychology—not to its content, but instead to its methods. Here is where we can hope to find more unity of purpose among investigators. But here, in the domain of the methods that psychologists use to advance knowledge, is where we also find some of the greatest misunderstandings of the discipline.

Simply to say that psychology is concerned with human behavior does not distinguish it from other disciplines. Many other professional groups and disciplines—including economists, novelists, the law, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and literary studies—are, in part, concerned with human behavior. Psychology is not unique in this respect.

Practical applications do not establish any uniqueness for the discipline of psychology either. For example, many university students decide to major in psychology because they have the laudable goal of wanting to “help people.” But helping people is an applied part of an incredibly large number of fields, including social work, education, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, police science, human resources, and speech therapy. Similarly, the goal of training applied specialists to help people by counseling them does not demand that we have a discipline called psychology. Helping people by counseling them is an established part of many fields, including education, social work, police work, nursing, pastoral work, occupational therapy, and many others.