Abstract
Undergraduate psychology majors need a broad base of knowledge in order to be viewed as competent graduates. In addition to acquiring basic knowledge, the American Psychological Association (APA) has guidelines for applied knowledge as well. In order to ensure a broad base of knowledge, teachers therefore need to know what the important psychological concepts are not only in both basic and applied areas of psychology. We examined key concepts across five applied areas of psychology and identified 30 key concepts that occur in two or more applied areas of psychology. It is evident from our findings that there is notable intersection between applied psychology and basic psychological science but also important applied concepts that stand alone from basic psychology. We discuss how these findings are directly relevant to APA’s undergraduate learning goal of psychological literacy.
Keywords
In their undergraduate learning goals guidelines, the American Psychological Association (APA, 2013) has unequivocally indicated that “students who graduate with a baccalaureate degree should be able to demonstrate psychological literacy” (p. 4). The notion of having undergraduates evidence psychological literacy skills is neither new (e.g., Jensen, 1933; Thornton & Thornton, 1942) nor limited to particular courses (McGovern et al., 2010). Moreover, as students gain knowledge through their varied coursework (e.g., Perlman & McCann, 1999) and experiences (e.g., Perlman & McCann, 2005), an important outcome is to be able to use this fund of information to understand the world outside the classroom. Indeed, APA (2013) notes that students should be able to demonstrate psychological literacy in multiple ways. Psychological literacy is particularly relevant as the field seeks ways to apply psychological knowledge beyond its basic science roots (e.g., Ackerman, 2007; Donaldson, Berger, & Pezdek, 2006; Homa et al., 2013) and as science as a whole expands efforts to engage in translational research applying basic science to the treatment of clinical problems (National Advisory Mental Health Council Behavioral Science Workgroup, 2000).
Perhaps due to the idea that the field of psychology experiences fragmentation (e.g., Boneau, 1992; Brock, 2011; Goertzen, 2008, 2011; Machado, Lourenco, & Silva, 2000; Mandler, 2011), the debate about what fund of information psychology students should know is more than a century old (e.g., Marvin, 1906; Sanford, 1906). Despite this debate, Boneau (1990) sought to define the fund of knowledge which constitutes the concept of psychological literacy when he derived 1,000 basic concepts that psychologically literate undergraduates should know. Since Boneau’s (1990) efforts, other researchers have sought to identify what students should know regarding introductory psychology (e.g., Griggs & Mitchell, 2002; Landrum, 1993; Quereshi, 1993) as well as in the core areas of research methods and statistics (Giesbrecht, Sell, Scialfa, Sandals, & Ehlers, 1997; Landrum, 2005). The aim of these researchers is to find a core set of ideas that are most important for students’ understanding of psychology.
On a practical level, psychology teachers can benefit from knowing what researchers find when examining key concepts in psychology for two interrelated reasons. First, teachers often rely on textbooks to help impart information to students. However, teachers do not spend all of their time in the classroom focusing on everything in a given chapter but rather teachers focus on the more important concepts they wish students to learn or concepts that they consider more challenging for students. Indeed, this “less is more” principle follows what leading teaching researchers (e.g., McGovern, Furumoto, Halpern, Kimble, & McKeachie, 1991) noted as the goal of teaching which is “to help students develop a conceptual framework that embraces relevant facts and concepts rather than isolated bits of knowledge” (p. 601). Second, despite research efforts at identifying core concepts, it is important to note that textbook authors can vary in what they perceive as important concepts to present to students. Indeed, Zechmeister and Zechmeister (2000) cogently note that introductory textbook authors vary considerably in what topics they choose to present to students as an overview of what is important in psychology. In fact, less than 3% of the key concepts they examined from 10 introductory psychology textbooks shared overlap across all texts.
Documenting key concepts also may be necessary because not only do textbook authors vary content, instructors vary content as well. For example, Homa and colleagues (2013) found that there was substantial variability in content coverage in a national sample of introductory psychology courses. Specifically, Homa et al. found that although instructors spent the most course time covering physiology and cognition, most disciplines (with the exception of developmentalists) were then more likely to spend more time on course information that was related to their specialty training. Given that variability has been documented in introductory psychology textbooks and course instructor content focus, it is plausible that this type of variability occurs in other courses in psychology department curricula. Therefore, the idea of what constitutes key concepts of psychological literacy likely varies by subdisciplinary topic as well as by who is presenting the information. Thus, the identification of key concepts in more applied areas (i.e., health psychology, psychology of gender, I/O psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and psychology and law) can help to inform what constitutes psychological literacy in these areas and provide instructors with a common framework for what students should learn.
The applied courses we are examining comprise the curricular offerings of at least 50% of baccalaureate psychology programs (Norcross et al., 2016). Psychology majors typically are required to take courses across a range of areas to fulfill degree requirements (Perlman & McCann, 1999), including an array of courses to satisfy the 10 basic areas of psychology (i.e., abnormal, behavior, biological, cognitive, developmental, history and systems, methods and statistics, perception, personality, and social; Boneau, 1990). However, departmental course offerings are not static (see Norcross et al., 2016; Perlman & McCann, 1999). Indeed, in the last 25 years, we have witnessed attention directed toward psychology education in more applied areas such as cross-cultural psychology (e.g., Hill, 2000), health psychology (Brack, Kesitilwe, & Ware, 2010), and the psychology of gender (Ocampo et al., 2003). Despite the value of courses in these and other more applied courses, considerably less empirical data are available regarding what psychological concepts students should know in these areas. This article addresses this gap in our knowledge of the key concepts students should know in these areas of psychology.
Given the emphasis on the application of psychological knowledge, it is important that we empirically document what comprises that knowledge. Although the distinction between what Boneau and others described as “basic” concepts and our search for more “applied” concepts involves arbitrary labels (basic and applied), it is a useful approach that can help determine key concepts that can inform psychological literacy in the areas of health psychology, psychology and law, industrial and organizational psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and the psychology of gender.
Current Project Goals
Our goal with this project was to address the following three questions. First, what do psychologists trained in the areas of health psychology, psychology of gender, I/O psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and psychology and law view as the most important concepts for undergraduate students to know? The answer to this question will establish key concepts in these areas of psychology which can inform teaching practice. Second, to what extent do key concepts in these more applied areas of psychology overlap with Boneau’s (1990) identification of core concepts in the basic areas of psychology? To the extent that convergence exists across our current efforts and Boneau’s list, this convergence may indicate conceptually relevant key concepts for undergraduate’s psychological literacy. Third, which key concepts demonstrate overlap across these more applied areas of psychology? The answer to this question will provide a contextual understanding of the relative importance of the concepts to applying psychology beyond its basic science roots.
Method
Selection of Concepts From Texts
We obtained a convenience sample of four to six undergraduate textbooks in each applied area from the local representative of the textbook publishers. 1 In general, the big three college textbook publishers (i.e., Cengage, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill) offer eight or fewer newest edition texts for each of the areas examined (ranging from four to eight texts). For a given applied area, we examined its texts in order to identify every unique important concept which was included in at least one of the texts. This procedure was repeated for each area. First, we identified key concepts from each textbook by reviewing concepts included either in the glossary or highlighted in each chapter. Next, we compared lists of concepts generated from each textbook within a given applied area and created a mutually exclusive list of those concepts occurring in textbooks in a given area. This process resulted in the following number of total unique concepts for each area: health psychology (n = 238), psychology and law (n = 216), industrial and organizational psychology (n = 259), cross-cultural psychology (n = 108), and psychology of gender (n = 211).
Identification of Key Concepts
With this corpus identified, we adapted Boneau’s (1990) methodology to have teachers rate these concepts. This allowed for a cross comparison of our findings with Boneau’s work. Although Boneau used textbook authors as his respondent population, we changed the respondent population by surveying the opinions of teachers and providing them the complete list of concepts for their given area. However, we maintained Boneau’s instructions and response format.
We recruited a convenience sample of psychology teachers by e-mail. We recruited participants from listservs comprised of members of APA’s Division 38—health psychology (n = 40), Division 41—psychology and law (n = 28), Division 14—industrial and organizational psychology (n = 45), Division 52—international psychology (n = 17), and Division 35—psychology of women (n = 38). We posted an initial e-mail request with an attached Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved informed consent and the survey. We posted two follow-up requests for participation 4- and 8-weeks after the initial request. The current sample size (N = 168) was comparable to Boneau’s (1990) psychological literacy study in which 159 participants responded to his original survey. Respondents reported an average of 14.9 years teaching experience (SD = 11.6 years, first quartile = 4 years, third quartile = 25 years).
In the survey instructions, we asked respondents to “rate a list of concepts generated from introductory textbooks in the [specific] area.” The response format taken from Boneau’s (1990, p. 892) survey was as follows:
5. (very important)—All psychology baccalaureates should be able to make knowledgeable statements about this term, 4. (important)—All psychology baccalaureates should, at a minimum, recognize this term, 3. (somewhat specialized)—But all psychology doctorates should be able to make knowledgeable statements about this term (and, of course, all above), 2. (specialized)—But all psychology doctorates should, at a minimum, recognize this term, and 1. (overly specialized)—This is too specialized for general information even at the doctoral level.
Results
Key Concepts
To answer our first question regarding the key concepts in applied fields, we generated the top 100 rated concepts for each area due to ties at the 100th rank, some areas included more than 100 concepts. Our analyses reported below are based on the approximately 500 concepts rated most highly by teachers. However, due to journal page limitations, we present the ratings for the top 20 concepts for each of the applied areas in Table 1. 2
Top 20 Applied Psychology Key Concepts From Each Area.
Note. From Boneau’s (1990) original list: Abn = abnormal, Beh = behavior/learning, Bio = biological, Cog = cognitive, Dev = developmental, H&S = history and systems, M&S = methods and statistics, Prc = perception, Prs = personality, and Soc = social.
Convergence Between Applied and Basic Concepts
Amount of convergence
To answer our second research question regarding concept overlap, we began by identifying key concepts in applied psychology areas that also were key concepts in Boneau’s (1990) basic areas of psychology. Boneau identified 100 key concepts in each of the 10 basic areas. He identified key concepts for each area list independent of the other area lists, resulting in key concepts that are not mutually exclusive across lists. Therefore, when we compare applied area lists to basic area lists, frequencies of convergence are larger than actual percentages due to this mutuality artifact. Analyzing convergence between applied and basic key concepts can highlight the importance of those key concepts. Therefore, we present in the third column of Table 1 the applied concepts that share convergence with Boneau’s (1990) basic concepts and the basic areas from which Boneau’s concepts originated. Of more than 500 concepts aggregated across the five applied areas, we identified 311 key concepts that did not appear on Boneau’s (1990) basic lists. In other words, 61% of these concepts are unique to applied areas.
Source of convergence
To complete the answer to our second question regarding concept overlap, we identified where the concept overlap occurs. In Table 2, we present the source of convergence between applied concepts in this study and basic concepts from Boneau (1990). Health psychology shared approximately 50% of its concepts with Boneau’s basic area lists. Industrial and organizational psychology and psychology and law shared approximately 40% of their concepts with Boneau’s lists. Cross-cultural psychology and psychology of gender each shared approximately 30% of their concepts with Boneau’s lists. The basic area of psychology that was the most frequent source for key applied concepts was methods and statistics (n = 52 key concepts). Other basic areas that accounted for large contributions to applied area lists were social, developmental, personality, and abnormal, with each contributing more than 25 key concepts. These results suggest that applied areas of psychology rely on basic areas of psychology yet also contribute unique concepts beyond basic areas of psychology.
Frequency and Source of Basic Area Key Concepts Identified as Applied Area Key Concepts.
Note. Adjusted totals calculated by counting only once key concepts that appeared on multiple basic lists, based on top 100 key concepts from each area.
Which Key Concepts Overlap
Overlap among applied lists
To answer our third question regarding applied concept overlap, we began by identifying key concepts that occurred on two or more of the five applied area lists. A total of 30 concepts met this criterion. Stress and attributions were each present on four lists, whereas independent variable, personality, control group, randomization, correlation coefficient, validity, stress-related disorders, and self-efficacy were each present on three lists. Stereotypes, mental illness, dependent variable, classical and operant conditioning, socialization, operational definitions, hormones, confounding, discrimination, reliability, power (not statistical), achievement motivation, learned helplessness, depression, leadership, trauma, modeling, locus of control, and generalization occurred on two lists. The overlap of these concepts across applied areas suggests that there are core concepts that are important to understanding applied psychology irrespective of the specific applied area. A complete examination of these overlaps and their ratings is presented in Table 3.
Top Applied Key Terms Occurring on Multiple Lists (Frequency
Overlap with basic concepts
To complete the answer to our third question regarding applied concept overlap, we identified a total of 11 key concepts that occurred on two or more of the five applied area lists as being concordant with key basic concepts on Boneau’s “top 100” list. These key concepts were attributions, independent variable, personality, control group, correlation coefficient, mental illness, dependent variable, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, socialization, and depression. In addition, of those key concepts that were present in multiple applied areas, 60% did not appear on Boneau’s top 100 basic psychology list. This finding suggests that there is a unique corpus of applied concepts that are shared across multiple applied areas but not shared with the top basic psychology concepts. In an ancillary analysis, we examined the degree to which these concordant terms mapped onto Zechmeister and Zechmeister’s (2000) analysis of their work with the works of Boneau (1990), Landrum (1993), and Quereshi (1993). We found that personality, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and mental illness/mood disorders were shared across lists.
Discussion
Analyses of the compendium of applied psychology concepts illustrate important convergence with, and divergence from, previous research on psychological concepts. Previous researchers have generally examined basic areas but given the increased focus on applications of psychological principles we focused on applied areas instead. We identified approximately 100 key concepts in applied areas of psychology (health psychology, psychology and law, industrial and organizational psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and the psychology of gender) with which psychologically literate undergraduates should be familiar.
Convergence With Psychological Science
We found that the basic area of methods and statistics supplied the largest percentage of key concepts to applied areas. This finding is concordant not only with Perlman and McCann’s (1999) data that show the prominent role of methods and statistics courses in psychology department curricula but also with Boneau’s (1990) findings that methods and statistics key concepts evidenced the largest percentage of the most highly rated top 100 concepts. In an ancillary analysis, we found that 65% of the applied textbooks used in our study included a chapter addressing research methods. This is not surprising considering that one of the earliest free standing psychology departments in the country at the University of Pennsylvania had a methodological course at its core (McGovern & Brewer, 2003, p. 468). Our findings thus underscore the critical importance accorded to understanding methods and statistics for undergraduate psychology majors, even with respect to applied areas.
This emphasis on a foundation of scientific methods, despite large variations in course focus across the areas of health, law, industry, culture, and gender, suggests that it is our scientific methods that bridge our ideas (Goertzen, 2008, 2011; Machado & Silva, 2007; Mandler, 2011; Rogers, 1973) and lend unity to our field (Boneau, 1992; Machado, Lourenco, & Silva, 2000). Thus, the consensus that scientific concepts are important, even in applied courses, suggests heavily that psychology is at its core a scientific discipline.
In fact, psychology is defined as the “scientific study of the behavior of individuals and their mental processes” (APA, 2015; emphasis added). APA seeks psychologically literate baccalaureates, so the nearly 100,000 students who graduate with undergraduate degrees in psychology each year (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014) would benefit from every opportunity to embrace what Sanford (1906) noted more than a century ago. Namely, that regardless of the topic area in which coursework is occurring, all students should have the opportunity to engage in “class and individual experiments” to facilitate the learning of material (p. 60). Indeed, our data suggest that methodological and statistical concepts, and by extension the ability to use them, are an important key to the discipline and to the production of psychologically literate graduates.
Divergence From Psychological Science
Although the largest percentage of key applied concepts came from basic psychological science, there is some important divergence which demonstrates that applied psychological science has a set of core concepts unrelated to statistics and research methods. In fact, of those key concepts that were present in multiple applied areas, 61% did not appear on Boneau’s top 100 basic psychology list. Thus, applied psychology not only can stand alone from basic psychology, applied psychology has a corpus of concepts that separates it from the corpus of basic psychological concepts.
Two important findings arise from an examination of those concepts that do not involve basic science. First, there is some core understanding of human thought, feelings, and behavior that is important across basic and applied areas. For example, attributions, classical and operant conditioning, depression, and socialization all appear in two or more applied areas, whereas only classical conditioning, depression, and socialization all appear in two or more basic areas.
This suggests that the application of basic principles is necessary for a thorough understanding of some applied areas. Second, applied psychology courses do have unique terminology that is not key to basic psychology but is shared across many areas of applied psychology. For example, stress, power, leadership, and achievement motivation are shared across at least two, and sometimes up to four, applied disciplines. Yet none of these terms made the top 100 on Boneau’s list of basic terms. Thus, applied psychology is more than just the application of key basic concepts.
It is also important to note a discrepancy between two approaches to judging the importance of applied concepts. In addition to the direct ratings that our teaching experts provided, an indirect rating of importance could be generated by counting the number of applied areas in which a concept appeared. The term attributions appears in four of the five areas we covered, yet it was rated relatively low compared to the average ratings in Table 3. Attributions is one of only two terms (generalization is the other) that appear on two or more applied lists but fails to reach a rating of 4.00. In fact, attributions is well below the average rating of 4.45 for the list in Table 3. Given that attributions is included in 80% of the areas we sampled, it is clearly important to textbook authors. This discrepancy demonstrates the importance of compiling a compendium of applied psychology concepts. Authors may provide concepts that most teachers do not feel are important, and teachers may desire to cover concepts that are not provided. The lists we have provided will help teachers (and authors) to decide what concepts are important and if not reduce fragmentation, at least provide insight into what our teaching decisions entail.
Limitations
One of the important limitations to this study is that it relied on rater judgments of the importance of psychology concepts. However, our raters were psychologists who noted their professional interests with a given specialty area in psychology (as evidenced by their affiliation with the APA listserv in that area). Additionally, these psychologists had considerable teaching and research experience in these areas and therefore might also have offered a broader perspective on what students should know beyond the classroom. Our study also may have been hampered by what an astute reviewer noted, namely, that even Boneau (1990) had reservations about his rating scale: “Admittedly, the criteria constitute a strangely concocted dimension…” (p. 892).” However, in as much as experienced teachers have indicated the relative importance of these concepts, the concepts may provide other teachers with ideas that warrant coverage.
In addition, our study is potentially limited by the small sample size; we conducted analyses on responses of 168 survey participants. However, our sample size is comparable to the original sample size (N = 159) used in Boneau’s (1990) psychological literacy study. Despite the comparability of samples, our results need to be viewed with caution as they may not be representative of what all psychologists view as important applied concepts. Note that the same sample size issue applies to basic concepts identified by other researchers over the last 25 years (Landrum, 2005, N = 190; Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2000, N = 191). Our results therefore do reflect a similar knowledge based on a sample of well-informed psychologists. Similarly, given that Boneau’s work is more than 25 years old, it may or may not be that his basic concepts are still viewed as core concepts. However, to the extent that teachers identified nearly 40% of concepts that overlapped with Boneau’s work, this suggests his work is still meaningful in this regard.
Teaching Implications
The goal of research that has examined core concepts in psychology has been to help clarify what psychologists should have their students learn. In research that has examined core concepts in psychology across more than 100 years (e.g., Giesbrecht et al., 1997; Griggs & Mitchell, 2002; Jensen, 1933; Landrum, 1993, 2005; Quereshi, 1993; Sanford, 1906; Thornton & Thornton, 1942), authors routinely state the need for providing guidance to the field. Indeed, as Thornton and Thornton (1942) aptly state in their opening sentence, “A problem that frequently bothers teachers is the problem of determining what is worth teaching” (p. 39). This is perhaps why McGovern, Furumoto, Halpern, Kimble, and McKeachie (1991) noted that the goal of teaching is “to help students develop a conceptual framework that embraces relevant facts and concepts rather than isolated bits of knowledge” (p. 601). Our findings can help to clarify some of the key concepts that might comprise such a framework, thus guiding instructors, irrespective of their specialties, with key concepts that can be covered in these courses.
Conclusion
What we have attempted to do in this article is to provide more than a simple list of concepts. To move beyond simple documentation, we examined how these key applied concepts related to key basic concepts. What this analysis indicated is interesting patterns of both convergence and divergence with basic psychological science.
We have identified key concepts with which undergraduate psychology majors should be familiar. The results of this project may help educators who are developing or teaching courses in the areas we have investigated. It is clear given the field’s history of attempting to define what psychologically literate students should know, our work is not the last word in this ongoing discussion (see Baker, 2015). However, our work adds to the field’s understanding (e.g., APA, 2013; Butler & Halpern, 2012; Cranney, Morris, Krochmakik, & Botwood, 2012; McGovern et al., 1991) of what important concepts should inform the framework of psychological literacy our students should develop. Given the emphasis on the application of psychological knowledge, it is important that we empirically document what comprises that knowledge. With these lists in hand, we encourage teachers to take a critical look at what comprises the applied psychological knowledge that they provide to their students.
Some scholars have voiced concerns about the fragmentation of the field of psychology (e.g., Boneau, 1992; Goertzen, 2008, 2011; Machado & Silva, 2007; Mandler, 2011), which suggests the need for a compendium of core psychological concepts to provide focus for the field. This is not to imply that the important applied concepts documented here are the only important concepts. Rather, this list provides a starting point for those teachers who want to help their students become more psychologically literate. Becoming psychologically literate requires coursework that increases social responsibility (APA, 2013). Applied psychology courses help to meet APA’s social responsibility goal.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.