Dictionary Definition
psychological adj
1 mental or emotional as opposed to physical in
nature; "give psychological support"; "psychological warfare"
2 of or relating to or determined by psychology;
"psychological theories"
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Adjective
- Of or pertaining to psychology.
Extensive Definition
Psychology (from Greek: ψυχή, psychē, "soul", "self" or "mind"; and λόγος,
logos, "speech" lit. "to
talk about the psyche") is an academic and applied
discipline involving the scientific study of mental
processes and behavior (Psychology studies
human behavior, not mental processes, Cognitive Psychology studies
mental processes, but psychology in general studies human
behavior). There is some tension between scientific psychology
(with its program of empirical research) and applied psychology
(dealing with a number of areas).
Psychologists attempt to explain the mind and
brain in the context of real life. In contrast neurologists utilize a
physiological approach. Psychologists study such phenomena as
perception, cognition, emotion, personality,
behavior, and interpersonal
relationships. Psychology also refers to the application of
such knowledge to
various spheres of human
activity including issues related to daily
life—e.g. family,
education,
and work—and the treatment
of mental
health problems.
In addition to dissecting the brain's fundamental
mental functions and processes, psychology also attempts to
understand the role these functions play in social behavior and in
social dynamics, while incorporating the underlying physiological
and neurological
processes into its conceptions of mental functioning. Psychology
includes many sub-fields of study and application concerned with
such areas as human
development, sports,
health,
industry, media,
law,
and transpersonal
psychology.
History
The study of psychology in a philosophical
context dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt,
Greece,
China and
India.
Psychology began adopting a more clinical
and experimental
Beginning of scientific psychology
Though the use of psychological experimentation dates back to
Alhazen's
Book
of Optics in 1021, psychology as an
independent experimental field of study began in 1879, when Wilhelm
Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to
psychological research at Leipzig
University in Germany, for which
Wundt is known as the "father of psychology". 1879 is thus
sometimes regarded as the "birthdate" of psychology. The American
philosopher Kiran Reddy
published his seminal book, Principles
of Psychology, in 1890, while laying the foundations for many
of the questions that psychologists would focus
on for years to come. Other important early contributors to the
field include Hermann
Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), a pioneer in the experimental study of
memory at the University
of Berlin; and the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov
(1849-1936), who investigated the learning process now referred
to as classical
conditioning.
Meanwhile, during the 1890s, the Austrian physician
Sigmund
Freud, who was trained as a neurologist and had no formal
training in experimental psychology, had developed a method of
psychotherapy
known as psychoanalysis. Freud's
understanding of the mind was largely based on interpretive
methods, introspection and clinical
observations, and was focused in particular on resolving
unconscious conflict, mental distress and psychopathology. Freud's
theories became very well-known, largely because they tackled
subjects such as sexuality,
repression,
and the unconscious mind as general aspects of psychological
development. These were largely considered taboo subjects at the time, and
Freud provided a catalyst for them to be openly discussed in polite
society. But Karl Popper
argued that Freud's psychoanalytic theories were presented in
untestable form.
Due to their subjective nature, Freud's theories are of limited
(mostly historical) interest to modern academic psychology
departments. Followers of Freud who accept the basic ideas of
psychoanalysis but alter it in some way are called neo-Freudians.
Rise of behaviorism
Partly in reaction to the subjective and
introspective nature of Freudian psychodynamics, and its
focus on the recollection of childhood experiences, during the
early decades of the 20th
century, behaviorism gained
popularity as a guiding psychological theory. Founded by John B.
Watson and embraced and extended by Edward
Thorndike, Clark L.
Hull, Edward C.
Tolman, and later B.F.
Skinner, behaviorism was grounded in animal experimentation in
the laboratory. Behaviorists shared the view that the subject
matter of psychology should be operationalized with standardized
procedures which led psychology to focus on behavior, not the mind
or consciousness. They doubted the validity of introspection for
studying internal mental states such as feelings, sensations, beliefs, desires, and other
unobservables. Watson argued that psychology "is a purely objective
experimental branch of natural science," that "introspection forms
no essential part of its methods", and that "the behaviorist
recognizes no dividing line between man and brute." Skinner
rejected hypothesis testing as a productive method of research,
considering it to be too conducive to speculative theories that
would promote useless research and stifle good research.
Behaviorism reigned as the dominant paradigm in
psychology throughout the first half of the 20th century. However,
the modern field of psychology is largely dominated by cognitive
psychology. Linguist Noam Chomsky
helped spark the cognitive
revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's
Verbal
Behavior, in which he challenged the behaviorist approach to
the study of behavior and language dominant in the 1950s. Chomsky
was highly critical of what he considered arbitrary notions of
'stimulus', 'response' and 'reinforcement' which Skinner borrowed
from animal experiments in the laboratory. Chomsky argued that
Skinner's notions could only be applied to complex human behavior,
such as language acquisition, in a vague and superficial manner.
Chomsky emphasized that research and analysis must not ignore the
contribution of the child in the acquisition of language and
proposed that humans are born with an natural ability to
acquire language. Work most associated with psychologist
Albert
Bandura, who initiated and studied social
learning theory, showed that children could learn aggression
from a role model through observational
learning, without any change in overt behavior, and so must be
accounted for by internal processes.
Existential-humanist movement
Humanistic psychology was developed in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis, arising largely from existential philosophy and writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Søren Kierkegaard. By using phenomenology, intersubjectivity and first-person categories, the humanistic approach seeks to get a glimpse of the whole person and not just the fragmented parts of the personality or cognitive functioning. Humanism focuses on uniquely human issues and fundamental issues of life, such as self-identity, death, aloneness, freedom, and meaning. Some of the founding theorists behind this school of thought were Abraham Maslow who formulated a hierarchy of human needs, Carl Rogers who created and developed Client-centered therapy, and Fritz Perls who helped create and develop Gestalt therapy. It became so influential as to be called the "third force" within psychology (preceded by behaviorism and psychoanalysis).Cognitivism
The rise of computer technology also promoted the metaphor of mental function as information processing. This, combined with a scientific approach to studying the mind, as well as a belief in internal mental states, led to the rise of cognitivism as a popular model of the mind.Cognitive psychology is radically different from
previous psychological perspectives in two key ways.
- It accepts the use of the scientific method, and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation, unlike symbol-driven approaches such as Freudian psychodynamics.
- It explicitly acknowledges the existence of internal mental states (such as belief, desire and motivation) unlike behaviorism.
Links between brain and nervous
system function were also becoming understood, partly due to
the experimental work of people such as Charles
Sherrington and Donald
Hebb, and partly due to studies of people with brain injury
(see cognitive
neuropsychology). With the development of technologies for
accurately measuring brain function, neuropsychology and
cognitive
neuroscience have become some of the most active areas in
contemporary psychology. With the increasing involvement of other
disciplines (such as philosophy, computer
science and neuroscience) in the quest
to understand the mind, the umbrella discipline of cognitive
science has been created as a means of focusing such efforts in
a constructive way.
Principles
Mind and brain
Psychology describes and attempts to explain consciousness, behavior, and social interaction. Empirical psychology is primarily devoted to describing human experience and behavior as it actually occurs. Since the 1980s, psychology has begun to examine the relationship between consciousness and the brain or nervous system. It is still not clear how these interact: does consciousness determine brain states or do brain states determine consciousness - or are both going on in various ways? Or, is consciousness some sort of complicated 'illusion' that bears no direct relationship to neural processes? Perhaps to understand this, it is necessary to define "consciousness" and "brain state". An understanding of brain function is increasingly being included in psychological theory and practice, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience.Schools of thought
Various schools of thought have argued for a particular model to be used as a guiding theory by which all, or the majority, of human behavior can be explained. The popularity of these has waxed and waned over time. Some psychologists may think of themselves as adherents to a particular school of thought and reject the others, although most consider each as an approach to understanding the mind, and not necessarily as mutually exclusive theories. On the basis of Tinbergen's four questions a framework of reference or "periodic table" of all fields of psychological research can be established (including anthropological research and humanities).Subfields
Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that comprise psychology, divided into fields of research psychology and fields of applied psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychological topics and list of psychology disciplines.Fields of basic research
Research psychology encompasses the study of behavior for use in academic settings, and contains numerous areas: abnormal psychology, biological psychology, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, developmental psychology, health psychology, personality psychology, social psychology and others. Research psychology is contrasted with applied psychology.Abnormal psychology
Abnormal psychology is the study of abnormal behavior in order to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning. Abnormal psychology studies the nature of psychopathology and its causes, and this knowledge is applied in clinical psychology to treat a patient with psychological disorders.In the study of abnormal behavior, it can be
difficult to define the line between which behaviors are considered
normal and which are not. In general, abnormal behaviors must be
maladaptive and cause an individual subjective discomfort (signs of
emotional distress). Generally, abnormal behaviors are classified
as:
- Abnormal as in "infrequent" in relation to the overall population.
- Abnormal as in "maladaptive". The behavior fails to promote well being, growth, and fulfillment of a person.
- Abnormal as in "deviant". The behavior is not socially acceptable.
- Abnormal as in "unjustifiable". The behavior that cannot be rationalized.
Biological psychology
Biological psychology is the scientific study of the biological bases of behavior and mental states. Because all behavior is controlled by the central nervous system, it is sensible to study how the brain functions in order to understand behavior. This is the approach taken in behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology. Neuropsychology is the branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the 'brain' relate to specific behavioral and psychological processes. Often neuropsychologists are employed as scientists to advance scientific or medical knowledge. Neuropsychology is particularly concerned with the understanding of brain injury in an attempt to work out normal psychological function.The approach of cognitive neuroscience to
studying the link between brain and behavior is to use neuroimaging
tools, such as to observe which areas of the brain are active
during a particular task.
Cognitive psychology
The nature of thought is another core interest
in psychology. Cognitive
psychology studies cognition, the mental
processes underlying behavior. It uses information
processing as a framework for understanding the mind. Perception,
learning, problem
solving, memory,
attention, language and emotion are all well researched
areas. Cognitive psychology is associated with a school of thought
known as cognitivism,
whose adherents argue for an information
processing model of mental function, informed by positivism and experimental
psychology.
Cognitive
science is a conjoined enterprise of cognitive psychologists,
neurobiologists,
workers in artificial
intelligence, logicians,
linguists, and
social scientists, and places a slightly greater emphasis on
computational theory and formalization.
Both areas can use computational
models to simulate phenomena of interest. Because mental events
cannot directly be observed, computational models provide a tool
for studying the functional organization of the mind. Such models
give cognitive psychologists a way to study the "software" of
mental processes independent of the "hardware" it runs on, be it
the brain or a computer.
Comparative psychology
Comparative
psychology refers to the study of the behavior and mental life
of animals other than
human beings. It is related to disciplines outside of psychology
that study animal behavior, such as ethology. Although the field of
psychology is primarily concerned with humans, the behavior and
mental processes of animals is also an important part
of psychological research, either as a subject in its own right
(e.g., animal
cognition and ethology), or with strong emphasis about
evolutionary links, and somewhat more controversially, as a way of
gaining an insight into human psychology by means of comparison or
via animal models of emotional and behavior systems as seen in
neuroscience of psychology (e.g., affective
neuroscience and social
neuroscience).
Developmental psychology
Mainly focusing on the development of the human
mind through the life span, developmental
psychology seeks to understand how people come to perceive,
understand, and act within the world and how these processes change
as they age. This may focus on intellectual, cognitive, neural,
social, or moral
development. Researchers who study children use a number of
unique research methods to make observations in natural settings or
to engage them in experimental tasks. Such tasks often resemble
specially designed games and activities that are both enjoyable for
the child and scientifically useful, and researchers have even
devised clever methods to study the mental processes of small
infants. In addition to studying children, developmental
psychologists also study aging and processes throughout the
life span, especially at other times of rapid change (such as
adolescence and old age). Urie
Bronfenbrenner's theory of development in context (The Ecology
of Human Development - ISBN 0-674-22456-6) is influential in this
field, as are those mentioned in "Educational psychology"
immediately below, as well as many others. Developmental
psychologists draw on the full range of theorists in scientific
psychology to inform their research.
Personality psychology
Personality
psychology studies enduring psychological patterns of behavior, thought and emotion, commonly called an
individual's personality.
Theories of personality vary between different psychological
schools. Trait
theories attempts to break personality down into a number of
traits, by use of factor
analysis. The number of traits have varied between theories.
One of the first, and smallest, models was that of Hans
Eysenck, which had three dimensions: extroversion—introversion,
neuroticism—emotional
stability, and psychoticism. Raymond
Cattell proposed a theory of 16
personality factors. The theory that has most empirical
evidence behind it today may be the "Big
Five" theory, proposed by Lewis
Goldberg, and others.
A different, but well known approach to personality is that of
Sigmund
Freud, whose structural theory of personality divided
personality into the ego,
superego, and id. He utilized the principles of thermodynamics
metaphorically to explain these three distinctive and interacting
tripartite divisions. In 1923 Freud published the ground-breaking
book: "The Ego and the Id" in which he named and identified the
functioning psychodynamics of human personality. This theory has
been used in modern psychology paradigms such as Transactional
Analysis. However, Freud's theory of personality has been
criticized by many, including many mainstream psychologists.
Quantitative psychology
Quantitative psychology involves the application of mathematical and statistical modeling in psychological research, and the development of statistical methods for analyzing and explaining behavioral data. The term Quantitative psychology is relatively new and little used (only recently have Ph.D. programs in quantitative psychology been formed), and it loosely covers the longer standing subfields psychometrics and mathematical psychology.Psychometrics
is the field of psychology concerned with the theory and technique
of psychological measurement, which includes
the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality
traits. Measurement of these unobservable phenomena is difficult, and
much of the research and accumulated knowledge in this discipline
has been developed in an attempt to properly define and quantify
such phenomena. Psychometric research typically involves two major
research tasks, namely: (i) the construction of instruments
and procedures for measurement; and (ii) the development and
refinement of theoretical approaches to measurement.
Whereas psychometrics is mainly
concerned with individual
differences and population
structure, mathematical
psychology is concerned with modeling of mental and motor
processes of the average individual. thats all Psychometrics
is more associated with educational,
personality,
and clinical
psychology. Mathematical
psychology is more closely related to psychonomics/experimental
and cognitive,
and physiological
psychology and (cognitive)
neuroscience.
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of the nature and causes of human social behavior and mental processes, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. Social Psychology aims to understand how we make sense of social situations. For example, this could involve the influence of others on an individual's behavior (e.g., conformity or persuasion), the perception and understanding of social cues, or the formation of attitudes or stereotypes about other people. Social cognition is a common approach and involves a mostly cognitive and scientific approach to understanding social behavior.Fields of applied research
Applied psychology encompasses both psychological research that is designed to help individuals overcome practical problems and the application of this research in applied settings. Much of applied psychology research is utilized in other fields, such as business management, product design, ergonomics, nutrition, law and clinical medicine. Applied psychology includes the areas of clinical psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, human factors, psychology and law, health psychology, school psychology, community psychology and others.Clinical psychology
Clinical psychology includes the study and application of psychology for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists may also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. Some clinical psychologists may focus on the clinical management of patients with brain injury—this area is known as clinical neuropsychology. In many countries clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.The work performed by clinical psychologists
tends to be done inside various therapy models, all of which
involve a formal relationship between professional and
client—usually an individual, couple, family, or small group—that
employs a set of procedures intended to form a therapeutic
alliance, explore the nature of psychological problems, and
encourage new ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving. The four
major perspectives are Psychodynamic,
Cognitive Behavioral, Existential-Humanistic,
and Systems or
Family therapy. There has been a growing movement to integrate
these various therapeutic approaches, especially with an increased
understanding of issues regarding culture, gender, spirituality,
and sexual-orientation. With the advent of more robust research
findings regarding psychotherapy, there is growing evidence that
most of the major therapies are about of equal effectiveness, with
the key common element being a strong therapeutic alliance. Because
of this, more training programs and psychologists are now adopting
an eclectic
therapeutic orientation.
Clinical psychologists do not usually prescribe
medication, although there is a growing movement for psychologists
to have limited prescribing privileges. In general, however, when
medication is warranted many psychologists will work in cooperation
with psychiatrists so that clients get all their therapeutic needs
met. Organizational Psychology was not officially added until the
1970s and since then, the field has flourished. The Society for Industrial Organizational
Psychology has approximately 3400 professional members and 1900
student members. These two numbers combine to make up only about
four percent of the members in the
American Psychological Association but the number has been
rising since 1939 when there were only one hundred professional I/O
psychologists. 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.
Research methods
Research in psychology is conducted in broad
accord with the standards of the scientific
method, encompassing both qualitative
ethological and
quantitative statistical modalities to generate and evaluate
explanatory
hypotheses with
regard to psychological phenomena. Where research
ethics and the state of development in a given research domain
permits, investigation may be pursued by experimental protocols.
Psychology tends to be eclectic, drawing on scientific knowledge
from other fields to help explain and understand psychological
phenomena.
Qualitative psychological research utilizes a broad spectrum of
observational methods, including action
research, ethography, exploratory
statistics, structured
interviews, and
participant
observation, to enable the gathering of rich information
unattainable by classical experimentation. Research in humanistic
psychology is more typically pursued by ethnographic, historical,
and historiographic
methods.
The testing
of different aspects of psychological function is a significant
area of contemporary psychology. Psychometric
and statistical
methods predominate, including various well-known standardized
tests as well as those created ad hoc as the situation or
experiment requires.
Academic psychologists may focus purely on
research and psychological theory, aiming to further psychological
understanding in a particular area, while other psychologists may
work in applied
psychology to deploy such knowledge for immediate and practical
benefit. However, these approaches are not mutually exclusive and
most psychologists will be involved in both researching and
applying psychology at some point during their career. Clinical
psychology, among many of the various disciplines of psychology,
aims at developing in practicing psychologists knowledge of and
experience with research and experimental methods which they will
continue to build up as well as employ as they treat individuals
with psychological issues or use psychology to help others.
When an area of interest requires specific
training and specialist knowledge, especially in applied areas,
psychological associations normally establish a governing body to
manage training requirements. Similarly, requirements may be laid
down for university degrees in psychology, so that students acquire
an adequate knowledge in a number of areas. Additionally, areas of
practical psychology, where psychologists offer treatment to
others, may require that psychologists be licensed by government
regulatory bodies as well.
Controlled experiments
Experimental psychological research is conducted
in a laboratory under controlled conditions. This method of
research relies on the application of the scientific
method to understand behavior. Experiments use several types of
measurements, including rate of response, reaction
time, and various psychometric
measurements. Experiments are designed to test specific hypotheses (deductive
approach) or evaluate functional relationships (inductive
approach). They are important for psychological research because
they allow researchers to establish causal relationships between
different aspects of behavior and the environment. Importantly, in
an experiment, one or more variables of interest are controlled by
the experimenter (independent variable) and another variable is
measured in response to different conditions (dependent variable).
(See also hypothesis
testing.) Experiments are one of the primary research
methodologies in many areas of psychology, particularly cognitive/psychonomics,
mathematical
psychology, psychophysiology and
biological
psychology/cognitive
neuroscience.
As an example, suppose an experimenter wanted to
answer the following question: does talking on a phone affect one's
ability to stop quickly while driving? To answer this, the
experimenter would want to show that a subject's stopping time is
different when they are talking on a phone versus when they are
not. If the experiment is properly conducted in a controlled
environment and a difference between the two conditions is found,
the experimenter would be able to show a causal relationship
between phone use and stopping time. In addition to potential
practical benefits, this type of experiment may have important
theoretical results, such as helping to explain the processes that
underlie attention in
humans.
Experiments on humans have been put under some
controls; namely informed and voluntary consent. After WWII, the
Nuremberg
Code was established, because of Nazi abuses of experimental
subjects. Later, most countries (and scientific journals) adopted
the Declaration
of Helsinki. In the US, the NIH established the
IRB in 1966.
And in 1974, adopted the National
Research Act (HR 7724). All of which cover informed consent of
human participants in experimental studies. There were a number of
influential studies which lead to the establishment of these rules,
including the MIT & Fernald
School radioisotope studies, the Thalidomide
Tragedy, Willowbrook hepatitis study, Milgram's
obedience to authority studies.
Animal studies
Computational modeling is a tool often used in mathematical psychology and cognitive psychology to simulate a particular behavior using a computer. This method has several advantages. Since modern computers process extremely quickly, many simulations can be run in a short time, allowing for a great deal of statistical power. Modeling also allows psychologists to visualize hypotheses about the functional organization of mental events that couldn't be directly observed in a human.Several different types of modeling are used to
study behavior. Connectionism
uses neural
networks to simulate the brain. Another method is symbolic
modeling, which represents many different mental objects using
variables and rules. Other types of modeling include dynamic
systems and stochastic
modeling.
Criticism and controversies
Controversy as a science
A common criticism of psychology concerns its
fuzziness as a science. Philosopher Thomas Kuhn's
1962 critique
implied psychology overall was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking the
agreement on overarching theory found in mature sciences such as
chemistry and physics. Because some areas of
psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics
have claimed that psychology is not as scientific as psychologists
assume. Methods such as introspection and psychoanalysis, used by
some psychologists, are inherently subjective. Objectivity,
validity, and rigor are key attributes in science, and some
approaches to psychology have fallen short on these criteria. On
the other hand, there is increasingly greater use of statistical
controls and increasingly sophisticated research design, analysis,
and more powerful statistical methods, as well as a decline (at
least within academic psychology departments) in the use of less
scientific methods.
Debates continue, however, such as the questioned
effectiveness of probability testing as a valid research tool. The
concern is that this statistical method may promote trivial
findings as meaningful, especially when large samples are used.
Psychologists have responded with an increased use of effect size
statistics, rather than sole reliance on the traditional p<.05
decision rule in statistical hypothesis testing.
In recent years and particularly in the U.S.,
there has been increasing debate about the nature of therapeutic
effectiveness and the relevance of empirical examination for
psychotherapy. One argument states that some therapies are based on
discredited theories and are unsupported by empirical evidence of
their effectiveness. The other side points to recent research
suggesting that all mainstream therapies are of about equal
effectiveness, while also arguing that controlled studies often do
not take into consideration real-world conditions (e.g. the high
co-morbidity rate or the experience of clinicians), that research
is heavily biased towards the methods of the cognitive behavioral
therapies (CBT), and that it typically under-represents minority
groups.
Concern about fringe clinical practices
There is also concern from researchers about a perceived gap between scientific theory and its application, in particular with the application of fringe practices. Exponents of evidence-based approaches to clinical psychology practice say that the gap is increasing, and researchers such as Beyerstein (2001) say there has been a large increase in the number of mental health training programs that do not emphasize science training. According to Lilienfeld (2002) “a wide variety of unvalidated and sometimes harmful psychotherapeutic methods, including facilitated communication for infantile autism, suggestive techniques for memory recovery (e.g., hypnotic age-regression, guided imagery, body work), energy therapies (e.g., Thought Field Therapy, Emotional Freedom Technique), and New Age therapies of seemingly endless stripes (e.g., rebirthing, reparenting, past-life regression, Primal Scream therapy, neurolinguistic programming ) have either emerged or maintained their popularity in recent decades."http://www.srmhp.org/0101/raison-detre.html Allen Neuringer made a similar point in the field of the experimental analysis of behavior in 1984. There are some differences of opinion over the actual extent of the research practitioner gap, but the consensus is on the concern about fringe or quack practices, and the legal view favours the use of empirical validation for any psychological intervention (Faigman and Monahan 2005). The emphasis on improvement of evidence based practice has been made in order to increase the general public's confidence in the health professions, and to avoid instances whereby clients forgo evidence based treatments in favour of unvalidated fringe therapies.See also
References
External links
Learning about psychology
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psychological in Maltese: Psikoloġija
psychological in Marathi: मानसशास्त्र
psychological in Malay (macrolanguage):
Psikologi
psychological in Dutch: Psychologie
psychological in Japanese: 心理学
psychological in Neapolitan: Psicologgia
psychological in Norwegian: Psykologi
psychological in Norwegian Nynorsk:
Psykologi
psychological in Narom: Psychologie
psychological in Novial: Psikologia
psychological in Occitan (post 1500):
Psicologia
psychological in Pali: चिन्तनशास्त्र
psychological in Pushto: ساپوهنه
psychological in Polish: Psychologia
psychological in Portuguese: Psicologia
psychological in Romanian: Psihologie
psychological in Quechua: Nuna yachay
psychological in Russian: Психология
psychological in Samoan: Saikolosi
psychological in Sardinian: Psicologia
psychological in Albanian: Psikologjia
psychological in Sicilian: Psicoluggìa
psychological in Simple English:
Psychology
psychological in Slovak: Psychológia
psychological in Slovenian: Psihologija
psychological in Serbian: Психологија
psychological in Serbo-Croatian:
Psihologija
psychological in Sundanese: Psikologi
psychological in Finnish: Psykologia
psychological in Swedish: Psykologi
psychological in Tagalog: Sikolohiya
psychological in Tamil: உளவியல்
psychological in Thai: จิตวิทยา
psychological in Vietnamese: Tâm lý học
psychological in Tok Pisin: Saikolosi
psychological in Turkish: Psikoloji
psychological in Ukrainian: Психологія
psychological in Urdu: نفسیات
psychological in Venetian: Sicołogia
psychological in Võro: Psükoloogia
psychological in Vlaams: Psychologie
psychological in Waray (Philippines):
Psikolohiya
psychological in Yiddish: פסיכאלאגיע
psychological in Contenese: 心理學
psychological in Dimli: Psikolociye
psychological in Zeeuws: Psyholohie
psychological in Samogitian: Psėchologėjė
psychological in Chinese: 心理学
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
cerebral, cognitive, conceptive, conceptual, endopsychic, functional, intellectual, intelligent, internal, mental, neuropsychiatric,
noetic, noological, philosophical, phrenic, psychiatric, psychic, psychical, psychobiological,
psychodynamic,
psychogenic,
psychologic,
psychoneurological,
psychopathic,
psychopathological,
psychophysical,
psychophysiological,
psychosexual,
psychosocial,
psychosomatic,
psychotic, rational, reasoning, spiritual, subconscious, subjective, subliminal, thinking, unconscious