Psychology Discussion Paper

The field of psychology has for a long time been considered a field made of many subdivisions.  One either believed in Structuralism, Gestalt or Functionalism as a discipline within psychology.  Today, the tide is turning towards a much more integrated view.  These changes have strong implications for how Introductory Psychology should be taught.

Psychology has not always had a bright future.  Just years ago it was often thought that psychology was doomed by the multitude of subdivisions and dividing schools of thought within the field.  More recently, psychology was identified as a Hub Science by Boyak et al.  The implications of this finding are astounding.  First, as Hub science Professor Cacioppo proclaims, psychology has a strong influence on many other fields within the category of sciences.  In this vein Introductory Psychology is not a divided introduction to the various fields within psychology but rather a much more integrated view of human behavior, mental processes, and ideas. If the course is taught with this integrated view in mind, nonmajors taking the class would be able to benefit more from what is taught rather than just being prepared to take a more specialized psychology course down the road that they will never take.  In addition as a Hub science, it should follow that funding at Universities across the country will rise.

Following pretty close from the idea that psychology is a hub science is the idea that teams of scientists from different backgrounds are finding more research success in groups rather than by themselves.  Because psychology is a hub science with many integrated subfields, it requires many experts in a variety of fields to provide the expertise to answer difficult questions that psychology is attempting to solve.  Even when holding for many other factors, the most cited papers were those written by teams rather than individuals.

        Lastly, the addition of neuroscience to the field of psychology is an extremely drastic change that has great implications for the field.  In essence the addition of neuroscience has created a subfield with almost every other field of psychology.  For example, social psychology must be integrated with social neuroscience and behavioral psychology with behavioral neuroscience.  This opens the door to a huge amount of new disciplines and questions to be answered by psychology.  It may even open the door to redefining what psychology is – as it is now turning more toward the study of the brain with the inclusion of the neurosciences.