Issues and Debates in Psychology

4 Key excerpts on "Issues and Debates in Psychology"

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  Perspectives On Psychology

  • Michael W. Eysenck(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  3 Major issues in psychology

  Several rather broad issues are of importance to the study of psychology: some are essentially philosophical (such as free will versus determinism); whereas others are theoretical (idiographic versus nomothetic explanations, or the value of introspection). Still others (such as nature versus nurture or consciousness) are both theoretical and philosophical. The common factor is a relevance to the nature of the psychological discipline. Much controversy has surrounded some of these issues in the past, and still does to a lesser extent; but there is now a fair measure of agreement among psychologists on their attitudes to most of the topics discussed in this chapter.

  It is probably true to say that psychology has been faced by more controversy about its basic nature than is the case with other scientific disciplines. Why should this be so?

  In part, it reflects the complexity of psychology. In physics, one piece of a metal may closely resemble another piece of the same metal, and in chemistry two instances of the same chemical element are very similar to each other. In psychology, however, each individual is unique, which greatly complicates the task of uncovering general principles that are applicable to everyone.

  Another unusual feature of psychology, of course, is the fact that its researchers belong to the same species as the one they are studying. Apart from anything else, this means psychologists (like the rest of the human race) are likely to have various preconceptions about human behaviour which colour their approach to research. The fact that psychologists have a variety of preconceptions helps to account for some of the controversies. In contrast, chemists presumably do not have strong, irrational feelings about the nature of the chemical elements with which they have to deal!

  Reductionism

  According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary,

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  Psychology in Social Context

  Issues and Debates

  • Philip John Tyson, Dai Jones, Jonathan Elcock(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  The aim of this book has been to discuss a range of Issues and Debates in Psychology in the context of how psychology has engaged with controversial social issues. We have discussed a number of such issues, focussing on those that are most associated with the ways in which psychology interacts with society. Thus we’ve considered specific issues around bias in psychology, particularly in relation to gender and “race”; issues around the ways in which psychology has dealt with abnormality, in terms of mental health; the nature–nurture debate and its influence in modern society; and the extent to which psychology has acted in service to the state. We’ve also looked at some foundational issues underlying these specifics, including the scientific status of psychology; the way in which disciplinary psychology interacts with everyday and popular forms of psychologising; the status of psychology’s constructs, particularly intelligence and personality; and ethical issues in psychological research and practice.

  There are a range of other issues that are debated in psychology, which are less immediately relevant to psychology’s engagement with society but which fundamentally affect one’s view of the nature and purpose of psychology. In this section, we consider why it’s important to be aware of the existence of issues in psychology, and of the effect they have on the conduct of psychology. We then briefly survey some of the outstanding issues that aren’t considered fully elsewhere in the book. These include, amongst others, the relationship between mind and body, the appropriateness of reductionism, free will and determinism, and idiographic versus nomothetic approaches. In considering these issues, we look at the implications of different positions for how psychology is conducted, particularly for the notion of psychology as a science.

  14.1 The Issue with Issues

  We saw in chapter 1 that there are a range of topic areas that are investigated by psychology, and there are a range of theoretical approaches that might be used to investigate those topics. The effect of these in combination is to create considerable diversity within psychology. This is a concern for some, who call for more unity in psychology (e.g. Goertzen, 2008; Ral, 2006). For others, this is an inevitable part of psychology (Richards, 2010). One reason for this continuing disunity is that psychologists differ on a range of fundamental issues (Jones, 2008d). Being aware of these issues is important to understanding the diversity of psychology. More fundamentally, though, knowledge of these issues, and of the stance towards them adopted in making any particular claim, is fundamental to evaluating theories in psychology.

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  Best Practices for Teaching Introduction to Psychology

  • Dana S. Dunn, Stephen L. Chew(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Alternatively, the instructor can divide the class into groups to debate various issues. Debating is a useful technique that can highlight some of the diverse viewpoints that exist in the field of psychology (Budesheim & Lundquist, 1999). Engaging in a debate, even a brief one, is a good way for students to identify the key issues or controversies in an area of research (e.g., gender differences in math and spatial abilities). It is helpful if the instructor provides background reading materials for preclass preparation but the responsibility of more thorough explanation and exploration is transferred to the students. Alternatively, part of the shift of responsibility can include students researching appropriate information for an assigned viewpoint. Although the instructor may need to provide some ground rules for acceptable and unacceptable debating techniques, monitor the time, and moderate questions between students, debating can be an exciting way for students to engage one another in learning without a lot of interference by the instructor.

  A fishbowl activity can also foster discussion in the classroom. Students are asked to form an inner and outer “fishbowl.” That is, one group of four or five students watches while another similar size group engages in a discussion concerning a day’s assigned readings (e.g., REM sleep and dreams). Following this discussion, students in the outer circle then discuss what they learned from the conversation, as well as what else they want to know about the topic.

  Finally, students can participate in a jigsaw project, a group-based, cooperative learning experience where each student possesses a “piece” of information necessary for creating and completing some final product (e.g., E. Aronson, Stephan, Sikes, Blaney, & Snapp, 1978). In introductory psychology, each member of a group of four students receives a section of a journal article (i.e., introduction, method, results, discussion) concerning a day’s topic (e.g., helping behavior in social psychology) to read and then share with the others. After learning from one another, each group can then designate a spokesperson to describe the article’s research to the larger class. Although this classroom activity is usually associated with elementary classrooms (e.g., J. Aronson, 2002), the basic idea is easily modified for use in secondary and postsecondary settings (for the literal use of jigsaw puzzles in introductory psychology, see Krauss, 1999). Jigsaw projects obviously benefit students by promoting active and cooperative learning in class, but there is another advantage. Instructors can tackle more complex topics because students have an opportunity to learn about an issue in three ways: individually at first when they learn about their piece of the puzzle, then cooperatively in the jigsaw group, and finally as a whole class

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  Critical Discursive Psychology

  • I. Parker(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Dominant accounts do not only enjoy their privilege over other subordinate accounts because they are more persuasive, but also because they conform to styles of argument that are acceptable to journal editors or publishers. Researchers working in the field of discourse analysis and discursive psychology have, of course, to deal with the institutional demands that are made on them, and so I want to look at some of the specific issues that have led some varieties of discursive psychology to become more ‘psychological’ than ‘critical’. There are five issues we need to take note of, issues that have become more pressing since the first edition of this book appeared.

  Everyday conversation

  Some forms of discursive psychology have shifted emphasis from explicitly crafted texts (popular fiction, scientific reports and media reports, for example) to everyday conversation, or what is sometimes referred to as ‘naturally occurring conversation’ (Antaki, 1994). The point has been well made that even the staple diet of interview material in qualitative research carried out in psychology departments is moulded by the particular shape of the interaction (Potter and Hepburn, 2005). An interviewer guides the conversation, organizing the agenda so that certain issues are topicalized and other concerns then operate as background resources for the speakers; the interviewee then orients their responses in such a way as to confirm or refuse this agenda. Detailed analysis of interviews has shown how this discursive frame positions interviewer and interviewee in such a way as to render the interaction into another specific kind of crafted text. Such analysis of enclosed interaction around the agenda of the social researcher has also been usefully applied to ‘focus groups’, and has unsettled the assumption that it is possible to use these groups to discover what participants are really thinking (Puchta and Potter, 2002).

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