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Fields in Psychology
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Clinical psychologists investigate the causes of mental and emotional dysfunction and try to determine the best ways to help.
For example, how should we understand the causes of depression (or eating disorders, or attention disorders, or phobias and panic attacks), and what are the most effective therapies?
Cognitive psychologists study the basic mental processes of perception, attention, learning, memory, problem solving, and categorization.
The concerns of this field overlap with those of artificial intelligence, philosophy, and neuroscience.
The term "cognitive science" or "cognitive neuroscience" is sometimes used to refer to these interdisciplinary interests.
How do you understand speech or see color?
Is there such a thing as unconscious perception?
Is it possible to implant false memories that are experienced as the recovery of repressed events?
Comparative psychologists attempt to understand behavior by comparing its patterns across species.
Why do animals migrate, mark their territory, mate for life or only for a season?
Do a few fundamental psychological principles apply to behavior across all species?
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Developmental psychologists study cognitive, social, and physiological development over the life span.
Do your language skills-or your skills in remembering or reasoning-go through distinct stages, or do they gradually change?
Do newly born infants see formless, chaotic confusion?
How do children learn to mask the facial expression of what they really feel?
Human Factors psychologists are trained to use their background in attention, perception, and cognition to solve real-world problems.
How should a community for older people be designed to help its residents function well?
What is the optimal design of a computer software program or work station?
How should control panels in motor vehicles or air craft be designed to minimize human error?
Industrial/organizational psychologists are trained to work in business settings, either as employees of a corporation or as consultants.
They use psychological principles to address issues ranging from absenteeism to effective brainstorming and hiring practices.
How could the organizational structure within a company be restructured to promote greater productivity and job satisfaction?
Personality psychologists attempt to understand behavior as determined partly by consistencies across time and situations.
The grand theories of personality that you might have heard of, like those of Freud or Jung, started this tradition and have shaped the course of psychiatry, psychology, and even the critique of literature and culture.
Other questions in the field of personality are more accessible to empirical investigation; for example, is introversion related to fundamental differences in our normal levels of arousal in the brain?
Physiological psychologists (or neuroscientists) try to understand how basic neuronal and brain processes correspond to thought and behavior.
This field is crucial to understanding all of psychology.
What actually happens in the brain when you see a rainbow?
Why can an injury to the left side of the head leave you speechless?
Is there a genetic basis of gender-related differences?
School psychologists assess students' abilities and interests and help to advise parents and teachers about placement or special academic programs.
They conduct counseling sessions for students and parents, as well.
Will a particular student benefit from special education?
How can the school system help children whose parents have recently divorced?
Social psychologists study the influences of social context on the thoughts and actions of the individual.
Why are some crimes witnessed by individuals who do nothing to help the victims?
How can we understand our different attitudes about members of other ethnic groups or races?
What makes some people universally attractive?
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