Is Psychology Headed in the Right Direction? Yes,No,and Maybe

Yes: An Unprecedented Alliance Between Psychology and Social Issues

When I was in graduate school, at the height of social activism, there was much talk of “giving psychology to the people”—making psychology relevant to people’s lives, making it something people could actually benefit from. As the age of social activism faded, talk about giving psychology to the people became muted and the field returned to business as usual. We resumed talking chiefly to each other. However, as we said in the day, my “consciousness was raised,” and I could not go back. Through the years, my students and I have always tried to aim our research toward issues that matter for people’s achievements and well-being, such as motivation and learning, stereotyping and prejudice, willpower, aggression, and conflict resolution. And for some years now, in addition to my scholarly articles, I have written for the public. I have tried to share the fruits of our psychological research.

Much to my delight, the passion for addressing social issues through psychological research has burgeoned in recent years. This, in my view, is one of the most important ways that our field is headed in the right direction. It’s not that our colleagues have suddenly lost their zest for basic research; it’s more that they are turning their scientific prowess to topics that bear on social concerns. After all, at base, many social issues are psychological issues or have important psychological components (Walton & Dweck, 2009).

Social issues are psychological issues. This idea was brought home clearly in the recent election: almost all the pundits and pollsters misread the psychology of the voters. For many of the voters, it wasn’t about who was more qualified to become president; it was about which candidate seemed to understand the pain, fear, and anger of a vast number of people, which candidate recognized that the current system wasn’t working for these people, and which appeared to offer them a chance to have a say, to matter. For years to come, we will be debating—and researching—the psychology of this election.

Looking at the field as a whole, it is remarkable what we have contributed in recent years.

Research in cognitive psychology has shed important light on processes involved in learning and intellectual functioning, including the workings and training of executive function (Diamond & Lee, 2011; Rueda, Rothbart, McCandliss, Saccomanno, & Posner, 2005), the workings and training of metacognition (Metcalfe, 2009), and optimal ways of studying and learning (e.g., Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013). In tandem with this, research from social and developmental psychology has illuminated key principles of motivation and self-regulation, including work on intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2012), implemen-tation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999), mind-sets (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Dweck, 2000), regulatory focus (Higgins, 1998), and self-control (Duckworth & Gross, 2014; Mischel et al., 2011). In addition to this, there have been more general theories of motivation that have implications for real-world actions (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Kruglanski et al., 2002; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Work in social psychology has also powerfully shown how laboring under a stereotype can affect people’s performance, including the work on stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995) and sense of belonging (Good, Rattan, & Dweck, 2012; Walton & Cohen, 2011). All of this research is aimed at solving the pressing problem of low achievement and achievement gaps in our country—of preventing the tragedy of unfulfilled potential.

Social psychology has more generally shed light on the causes and impact of stereotyping and discrimination (e.g., Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006), on intergroup relations and how to improve them (Halperin, Russell, Trzesniewski, Gross, & Dweck, 2011; Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton, & Tropp, 2008), on issues of justice (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003), and on protecting the environment (Cialdini, 2003). At the intersection of social psychology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience (not to mention, economics) sits decision science, which is contributing insights into how to nudge people toward such things as healthier eating (Rozin et al., 2011), better retirement plans (Ersner-Hershfield, Garton, Ballard, Samanez-Larkin, & Knutson, 2009), and greater contributions to society (e.g., organ donation; Johnson & Goldstein, 2003). Developmental psychologist have contributed many key findings, including how to enhance parent-child interactions, particularly in populations at risk for insecure attachment or lowered achievement (Bugental & Happaney, 2004; Landry, Smith, & Swank, 2006) and how to raise the odds for children at risk for aggression and delinquency (Bierman et al., 2004). These research efforts, too, are aimed at optimizing outcomes for all groups and at creating a safer world in the future. What is also heartening is that these efforts are increasingly being turned into scalable interventions (see, e.g., Paunesku et al., 2015).

Clinical psychology has always addressed social issues, namely mental illness, but what is so exciting is that re-searchers from almost every area of psychology are now bringing their expertise to bear on mental illness. To cite just two examples, social and developmental psychologists have lent their expertise to the understanding of mental illness and its causes (see, e.g., Miu & Yeager, 2015, for prevention of the increase in depression in adolescence) and cognitive neuroscientists are developing computational models that can aid in understanding and diagnosing mental illness (see, e.g., Wiecki, Poland, & Frank, 2015, for a demonstration of computational psychiatry).

It is also gratifying to see our efforts appreciated on a broader scale. It is now commonplace to see our colleagues contributing op-eds to top newspapers and having their work showcased in the media. More important, our new emphasis has earned our field a seat at decision-making tables around the world, advising world leaders, economic councils, and ministries of health and education.

Looking at all this, I think we can be very proud of what our field is contributing to society. Looking at all this, how can students not want to devote their lives to using psychological research to address issues of pressing personal and social relevance?

No: Do Students Want to Spend Their Lives in Our Field?

Despite all these exciting developments, I believe our field is working less well when it comes to preparing and enticing our students to take their place in the field.

First, I have talked to many graduate students across the country and, for many of them, graduate school seems to be an anxiety mill from early on. Unlike the old days, graduate school is no longer a time to simply immerse yourself in the field, read, think, and talk for a couple of years, as you come up with new ideas and perspectives. We need to remember that is the time in a scientist’s life when, as a newcomer, you can have fresh insights on a field, question the established theories and paradigms, and offer truly field-changing ideas. Instead, with the press to publish early and often we may be implicitly encouraging our students to dive into the status quo and start churning out publications.

I remember when it was considered to be in bad taste to over-publish as a graduate student. It was taken as a sign of not being sufficiently thoughtful. And I still ask on a regular basis: Does the field really benefit from the deluge of papers every year? Wouldn’t the field benefit from more reflection?

Students tell me that the “replication crisis” is also frightening many of them. We all want to do high-quality, reproducible research, and we should all be grateful to those who have pointed the way toward better science. However, many students are concerned about the form that the crisis sometimes takes; they are concerned that they are entering a field that eats rather than nurtures its own. Shouldn’t the “crisis” be a time of mutual education? Shouldn’t students feel that there is a whole field out there ready to support them in doing high quality, reproducible research?

We also have to ask ourselves whether the enormous pressure to publish set the stage for the replication crisis. Shouldn’t the crisis be a wake-up call that what we’ve been valuing (quantity perhaps over quality) has been misguided?

The future of our field depends on our students thinking, as we do, that becoming a psychological researcher is one of the most exciting careers there is. You can ask deep and important questions and find answers that matter to people. Over your career, you can continue to probe new phenomena of great interest to you and, throughout, you can forge deeply satisfying collaborations with the students and colleagues within your area and across areas and disciplines. We need to find ways to convey our excitement to students and we need to create environments—in our departments and in our field—in which they continually experience that excitement themselves.

Maybe: Are We One Field or Separate Fields?

I believe the field of psychology is at a pivotal moment: Are we one interdisciplinary field, or are we several independent fields that for historical reasons happened to fall under the same umbrella? The most obvious concern is that neuroscience, cognitive science, and computational modeling will drift away from social, personality, and social-developmental psychology to form two rather separate fields. If this happens, so much would be lost on both sides. Social-personality psychologists think deeply about many things that are essential to human functioning, including motivation, values, emotion, social perception, and self-perception. Neuroscience without grounding in a rich understanding of these psychological processes could jeopardize much of its potential depth. The social-personality side, too, would lose a great deal from a separation, even more so as time goes on and the neuroscience methods and the inferences they license become more and more sophisticated.

The different areas of psychology seem to have a sturdy alliance in terms of the study of such things as decision making and self-control/delay of gratification (e.g., Tom, Fox, Trepel, & Poldrack, 2007), but, happily, much important new work is also emerging at the interface between neuroscience and emotion regulation (Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, 2012), value computation in social contexts (Zaki, Schirmer, & Mitchell, 2011), and person perception (Mitchell, Macrae, & Banaji, 2006; see also Zaki & Ochsner, 2009, who call for neuroscience to address naturalistic social cognition). Some have undertaken the courageous task of mapping the ways in which cultural values, meanings, and social conventions become embodied in underlying brain processes (Kitayama & Park, 2010), and others have taken on the daunting task of using computational modeling to capture social processes and their development, such as infants’ inferences about others’ social goals and moral status (Hamlin, Ullman, Tenenbaum, Goodman, & Baker, 2013).

Such research shows the great benefits of keeping psychology together—how much we can learn by training interdisciplinary scholars and pooling our expertise across areas. I, personally, have unbounded enthusiasm for all areas of psychology and delight in seeing and studying potential connections. After all, people are not carved up into sections that obey the boundaries the field has created. Only by integrating the areas will we ever have a complete view of how people work and how to optimize their functioning.

In summary, I have applauded the trend for psychology to address important social issues, I have suggested how we might make our field more appealing to budding young scholars, and I have called for us to become and remain a more united field, sharing our theories and methods across areas to provide a fuller picture of human psychology.