Elements of Applied Psychology

Peter Spurgeon, Roy Davies, Antony Chapman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317312093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1994, Elements of Applied Psychology provided an introductory survey of the major aspects of applied psychology at the time for students of psychology as a main or ancillary subject. It was the first text to investigate the pressures created by this increased interest in applied psychology, offering insight into the factors which had influenced its patterns and direction.

The book comprises 18 chapters, covering both the well-established fields of professional psychology, such as educational, clinical/counselling and occupational/organisational psychology, and areas of developing application at the time, including applied cognitive psychology, economic and health psychology, and psychology and law.

The text will still be of value to students considering possible career areas in psychology, students on psychology courses pondering choice of specialism and those students taking psychology as a subsidiary subject in one of the areas covered. It is also consistent with the increasing link between the academic community and practitioners. It will serve to increase the understanding and exchange.

1

APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

D.R. DAVIES, P.C. SPURGEON AND A.J. CHAPMAN

INTRODUCTION

The distinction between basic or ‘pure’ psychology and applied psychology reflects the attempts of psychologists to advance their subject both as a science and as a means of promoting human welfare. Basic psychology is primarily a research activity, mainly carried out in academic institutions, which aims to accumulate reliable and meaningful behavioural data and to devise and test theoretical explanations of why people (and, where appropriate, animals) think and feel and act as they do. The results and conclusions derived from basic psychological research form the backbone of the curricula adopted by universities and colleges providing first degree courses in psychology. Applied psychology comprises several areas of professional practice, for example, clinical psychology, educational psychology and occupational/industrial psychology. It is also a research activity, although the orientation and concerns of research in applied psychology are likely to be rather different from those of research in basic psychology. As Gale indicates in Chapter 18, basic psychological research is often described as being ‘theory driven’, while applied psychological research is held to be ‘problem’ or ‘need’ driven (Middleton and Edwards, 1985). Within applied psychology a distinction has also been made between ‘applied’ and ‘applicable’ research (Belbin, 1979). The former is mainly oriented toward the accumulation of knowledge within a particular area of applied psychology; an example would be the investigation of the relative importance of the various factors affecting work satisfaction. The latter is expressly directed at the solution of a particular practical problem; for instance the development of procedures to evaluate patient care and management in a psychiatric hospital (Watts, 1984) or to reduce labour turnover among guards on underground trains (Belbin, 1979). An important development in applied psychology in recent years, especially in the United States, has been the growth of policy oriented research, which aims to produce a more effective collaboration between psychologists and other social scientists on the one hand, and elected and appointed public decision making bodies on the other (Fischoff, 1990; Gallagher, 1990). Psychologists can attempt to influence policy at a conceptual level, by turning research findings into policy issues, by suggesting ways of thinking about policy initiatives, and by creating a common language in which to discuss them. In addition to policy formulation, psychologists and social scientists can contribute to policy evaluation by devising methods to determine the effectiveness of policy initiatives which have already been implemented (see Rossi and Wright, 1984, for a review of evaluation research).

Academically, psychology became an independent discipline during the 1870s, although it was not until after the Second World War that it was able to survive and prosper as a profession outside the universities. The pioneers of psychology in Europe, especially Germany, and in North America viewed psychology as a branch of the natural sciences, concerned with the discovery of fundamental truths about experience and behaviour in human and non-human organisms. But although psychology’s principal task is generally acknowledged to be the investigation of experience and behaviour, in practice only a relatively restricted range of experiential and behavioural phenomena has been extensively examined, and only rarely have findings in different areas of psychology been related to one another. As Beloff (1973) remarked, in the preface to a review of modern psychology, “… soon as one attempts to say what psychology is about, it becomes clear that one is dealing, not with a single unified science, but with a collection of more or less affiliated disciplines, each with its own peculiar concepts and laws, its own methods and techniques’ (p. ix). Because of the range of organisms, settings and behaviours with which it is concerned, it is extremely improbable that psychology will ever become a conceptually unified discipline (Koch, 1981; Koch and Leary, 1985), and increasing specialisation is generally regarded as inevitable (Bevan, 1982), with psychologists being divided into two cultures, one primarily scientific in orientation, and the other humanistic (Kimble, 1984), a distinction made over 50 years ago (Bruner and Allport, 1940).

The emergence of scientific psychology

Until about the 1860s psychology was essentially an ‘armchair’ subject, based on philosophical argument, anecdote and ‘common sense’. The emergence of modem scientific psychology, with its emphasis on experimentation and research methodology, owes much to the enormous growth of scientific activity, the institutionalisation of science and the professionalisation of the scientist during the nineteenth century, all of which are largely attributable to the rise of the modern university, beginning in Germany in the early 1800s (Heamshaw, 1987). German universities founded in the early nineteenth century, such as the University of Berlin, were characterised by a strong commitment to academic freedom, and by the vigorous promotion of research and graduate study in a wide variety of fields. Several thousand Americans studied in Germany during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and the German university model exerted a considerable influence on the development of the numerous American colleges and universities founded during this period.

The key figure in the establishment of psychology as an independent experimental science was Wilhelm Wundt, trained in medicine, a researcher in physiology, and professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig from 1875 until his retirement in 1917 at the age of 85. Wundt’s achievement was not simply to effect a marriage betweeen physiology and philosophy, as others had done before him, but to make “the resulting offspring independent” (Leahey, 1987, p. 182). Wundt found academic advancement easier to come by in the relatively static area of philosophy, while the more dynamic and competitive field of physiology offered greater prestige. He resolved the dilemma this career choice posed by inventing a new role for himself, “that of scientific psychologist, derived at least in part from the higher-status field of physiology, but investigating the questions of philosophy” (Leahey, 1987, p. 183). Four years after arriving at Leipzig, Wundt established his Psychological Institute, which is generally acknowledged to be the first experimental psychology laboratory, although it was not officially recognised by the university until a few years later. Wundt’s laboratory was responsible for training the first generation of psychologists, many of them American (Leahey, 1987).

Once psychology had emerged as a distinct discipline, the number of qualified psychologists increased at a much faster rate in the United States than in any other country. William James had established an informal psychology laboratory at Harvard in 1875, which was officially recognised and financially supported by Harvard from 1885 onwards, thus becoming the first American psychological laboratory (Watson, 1968). James, like Wundt, a medically trained professor of philosophy, lectured in psychology from 1887 and in 1890 published his celebrated textbook, the Principles of Psychology, which charted the course American psychology was initially to follow. James shared Wundt’s belief that psychology should become a natural science, effectively a branch of biology. But whereas Wundt was indifferent, or even hostile, to the potential applications of psychology, James believed that as well as being scientific, psychology should also be practical and should make a difference to people’s lives (Leahey, 1987). He was, however, an accurate forecaster of the conflicts that might arise between psychologists as scientists and psychologists as practitioners

Most of the early American psychologists had studied with Wundt at Leipzig, although when they returned to the United States they tended to retain Wundt’s methods, but to reject his approach to psychology, sometimes described as ‘holistic’, a psychology which had no place for individual differences. The majority of American psychologists followed James in adopting first a functionalist approach to psychology, derived from Darwinism, which rejected Wundt’s emphasis on mental content in favour of an emphasis on mental function, and later a behaviourist approach, which focussed on observable behaviour rather than on mental activities. They also began to extend psychology’s influence in America’s rapidly expanding universities, and to enhance its status among the older established sciences. Their efforts were, in general, extremely successful, and by 1917, when the United States entered the First World War, 35 departments of psychology had been created in American universities, a figure not reached in Britain until the 1960s. Shortly after psychology had achieved its academic independence, therefore, the United States had established for itself a dominant poSition in world psychology, both with respect to the production of psychology graduates and the output of research. It has maintained this position ever since.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY

It is currently estimated that there are about 500000 qualified psychologists in the world, over half of whom are based in the United States (see Rosenweig, 1992). Of this total, estimates and surveys suggest that world-wide about 15% of all psychologists can be classed as academics, who are engaged in basic or applied research as a primary or secondary work activity, mainly in research institutes, colleges or universities. The remaining 85% can be classed as practitioners, who are employed in various sub-fields of applied psychology, principally school/educational psychology, occupational/industrial/organisational and clinical/counselling psychology. About half of the world’s total number of academic researchers in psychology, and about the same proportion of the total number of psychological practitioners, work in the United States. North America, and particularly the United States, has been especially receptive to potential applications of psychology, in schools, in hospitals and clinics, in correctional/penal institutions, in business and industry, and in the military. As an American clinical psychologist has observed, “Throughout our history, in the schools, in mental health settings, in the military, in the work place, American psychologists have pressed the applications of psychology as far as they will go” Peterson, 1991, p. 422). The historical account which follows thus places greater emphasis on the development of applied psychology in the United States, where applied psychology first began and where it has spread most widely, although significant advances in Britain and other industrialised countries are also outlined.

The period from the emergence of scientific psychology to the end of the First World War was characterised by a high degree of social change, not only in the United States (which was transformed from a largely rural nation to a predominantly urban one) but in other countries too, especially in Europe. Many American psychologists were influenced by the Progressive movement, a leading social and political reformist movement of the time, and set out to professionalise psychology and to make it socially useful, if not an instrument of social control. A major step in the professionalisation of American psychology was the founding of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1892 by Granville Stanley Hall, the President of Clark University, who had gained the first American doctorate in psychology under William James fourteen years earlier, and had founded the American Journal of Psychology in 1887. He had also been the first American to study with Wundt. There were thirty-one founder members of the APA, drawn from all over North America (Hilgard, 1978) and virtually all of them had, like Hall, worked with Wundt at Leipzig. Despite a long history of conflict between research/academic and practitioner members, sometimes resulting in the formation of rival organisations, by 1990 the APA had grown to a total membership of 108000, drawn from over 100 different countries (Fowler, 1991). Not only was the APA the first national organisation of psychologists to be established, the British and German equivalents were not formed until 1901 and 1904 respectively, but it was also founded at much the same time as national organisations of older established disciplines, such as the American Historical Association, the American Mathematical Society and the American Physical Society.

School/Educational Psychology

Psychology was first applied to education, partly because of the widespread progressive belief that educational reform was crucial for social reform, partly because of the enactment and enforcement of compulsory education laws in the United States and other countries during the late nineteenth century, which resulted in a huge expansion of school populations, and perhaps also because many of the pioneers of applied psychology, such as Hall and Lightner Witmer, had themselves been schoolteachers. The application of psychology to education took two forms, first the development of ‘mental tests’, and second what became known as ‘experimental pedagogy’ (Hearnshaw, 1987).

Mental Tests

In Britain during the 1880s Francis Galton initiated the measurement of individual differences by devising psychological tests to measure various abilities and, though trained as a physician, effectively became psychology’s first practitioner (Forrest, 1981). In America mental testing was subsequently developed by James McKeen Cattell, who was the first to use the term, and by his student Edward Thorndike, by Herman Ebbinghaus, William Stem and others in Germany, and by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in France. Cattell, another of the pioneers of applied psychology, was the first American to gain a doctorate from Wundt’s laboratory, in 1886, and also studied with Galton. He became the first psychologist to be elected to the US Academy of Sciences in 1900, and in 1921 organised the Psychological Corporation in order to promote the application of psychology.

The pressures of compulsory attendance resulted in many children attending school who had little or no previous experience of schooling, and for whom age was a poor predictor of where they should be placed within the educational system. Thus a major impetus to the growth of mental testing was the need to develop a method of classifying children in terms of their educational requirements. At first simple laboratory apparatus was used for this purpose, but in 1904 the French Ministry of Public Instruction decided to appoint a committee to inquire into the education of mentally retarded children. One consequence of this decision was that Binet was asked to devise a standard ‘intelligence’ test which would identify such children at an early age, so that they could receive remedial education. Various revisions of Binet and Simon’s original test were made, and refinements were added by Cyril Burt and by Stern, who suggested that test scores should be expressed in the form of an intelligence quotient or IQ, the ratio of the child’s ‘mental age’ as derived from the test score, to his or her chronological age. The Binet-Simon test, introduced to the United States by Henry Goddard, director of the Vineland Training School in New Jersey, was modified for American use by Lewis Terman, working at Stanford University in California, and the Stanford-Binet test, first produced in 1916, is still in use, albeit in revised form. As well as being used to select children for remedial education, in some countries mental tests alSo began to be used to select children for different kinds of secondary education, because tests were thought to be fairer than existing methods. In Britain, for example, mental tests were first employed for this purpose in Bradford in 1919, and Godfrey Thomson, among others, helped to refine the use of psychological tests as educational selection procedures.

Clinical Child Psychology

Following the introduction of compulsory schooling large numbers of schoolchildren were also found to be in poor health, suffering from physical or mental defects, and often presenting a variety of behavioural problems (see Fagan, 1992). In 1896 Lightner Witmer established the first psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, and began to provide diagnosis, and to a lesser extent treatment, for children experiencing problems in school, who were generally referred by teachers, pare...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Contributors
• 1. Applied Psychology: Introduction and Background
• 2. The Child as Learner
• 3. The Teacher and The Learning Environment
• 4. Counselling Psychology
• 5. The Nature of Abnormal Behaviour
• 6. Assessment and Therapy in Clinical Psychology
• 7. Clinical Neuropsychology
• 8. Recruitment and Selection
• 9. Assessment and Appraisal
• 10. Organisational Psychology
• 11. Training
• 12. Applied Cognitive Psychology
• 13. Psychology and Information Technology
• 14. Economic Psychology: An Introduction to a New Interdisciplinary Field
• 15. Environmental Psychology
• 16. Health Psychology
• 17. Psychology and Law
• 18. Futures for Applied Psychology
• Index