Reimagining gender in psychology: What can critical psychology offer?

In this article, I argue that gender is a complex sociocultural construct, yet how gender is accounted for in psychological research is limited. Specifically, psychologists conflate sex with gender, rely on quantifying gender differences and, by implication, conceptualise gender as merely a participant characteristic. To illustrate, I apply this viewpoint to the topic of gender differences in tobacco use/cessation using on a feminist quality appraisal tool. I show how these three issues promote the narrow study of sex/gender differences, despite problems surrounding this inquiry, and reduce insights into the intersection of gender and behaviour. To offer a way forward for psychology, I describe how a critical psychology perspective attends to the complexities of gender and its influence on behaviour. I showcase diverse ways of attending to gender as a sociocultural construct, inviting psychologists to engage with, and reflect on, their gender analyses.     

MacLaboratory for psychology: General experimental psychology with Apple’s Macintosh

Every student at Drexel University is required, on admission, to purchase a Macintosh computer. Consequently, there is an understandable demand to effectively utilize this resource in the undergraduate curriculum. We have developed what amounts to a series of “take-home” programs that convert the Macintosh into a number of “pieces” of experimental psychology equipment. Providing each student with a personal psychology “MacLaboratory” has apparent pedagogical and practical benefits, from creative hands-on experience to ease of independent research. This paper summarizes details of the program to date, its development process, supporting materials, and our experience when every student has a personal computer.     

How international is psychology?

Psychology claims to be an international discipline. This claim has been based upon subjective estimates of attendance at international congresses, status reports from selected countries published within edited volumes, and a survey of the member countries of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) (Rosenzweig, 1992). However, to be truly international, the work of psychologists in countries around the world must be internationally disseminated. Systematic examination of international congress presentations and abstracts of published psychological literature indexed on widely available electronic databases (e.g., PsycLIT) provides a more objective means of documenting the international presence of psychology. In this article, counts by country were made of research contributions reported within PsycLIT and on the programs of International Congresses of Applied Psychology over the five years in which the congresses were held from 1982 to 1998. Analyses of these data revealed PsycLIT to be more international in scope than previously assumed—45% of its entries were by authors from outside the US. Coverage of research from developing countries was even more limited within PsycLIT (4.67%), but proportionally greater within international congresses (10%). PsycLIT entries not in the English language were found noticeably to have declined from approximately 12–14% levels in the 1980s to only about 6% in the 1990s. An index of the presence of psychology in each country, based upon presentations at IAAP congresses, memberships in international associations, and the extent of PsycLIT entries over the previous three decades, provided an objective, empirically‐based answer to the question ‘How International is Psychology?' This index indicated that psychology has a significant presence in 47 countries, a presence in another 22 countries, but minimal or no presence in 82 other countries. The meaning of these data for the discipline and ways in which psychology's worldwide presence might be strengthened and extended were discussed.     

What is folk psychology?

Eliminativism has been a major focus of discussion in the philosophy of mind for the last two decades. According to eliminativists, beliefs and other intentional states are the posits of a folk theory of mind standardly called “folk psychology”. That theory, they claim, is radically false and hence beliefs and other intentional states do not exist. We argue that the expression “folk psychology” is ambiguous in an important way. On the one hand, “folk psychology” is used by many philosophers and cognitive scientists to refer to an internally represented theory of human psychology exploited in the prediction of behavior. On the other hand, “folk psychology” is used to refer to the theory of mind implicit in our everyday talk about mental states. We then argue that sorting out the conceptual and terminological confusion surrounding “folk psychology” has major consequences for the eliminativism debate. In particular, if certain models of cognition turn out to be true, then on some readings of “folk psychology” the arguments for eliminativism collapse.     

Understanding ‘relevance’ in psychology

Since the 1970s, psychologists around the world have questioned the ‘social relevance’ of psychology in their societies. Curiously, the matter of ‘social relevance’ is under-theorized in the discipline, a state of affairs this paper attempts to correct. First, it describes how disagreements about psychology's cognitive interest – and subject matter – create an environment in which accusations of ‘social irrelevance’ can flourish. Second, it asserts that applied psychology's reliance on basic psychology for its scientific authority makes debates about ‘social relevance’ inevitable. And third, it claims that the discipline's longstanding antithesis to the social domain leaves it vulnerable to these debates – particularly in recent decades that have witnessed rapid social change. The paper reflects further on the rise of ‘market relevance’ in the global academy and its significance for psychology today.     

Clinical psychology—Art or science

This paper questions the oft-repeated statement that clinical psychology is an art by examining the main functions of clinical psychologists, i.e., diagnosis and treatment. In examining the concept of diagnosis, evidence is presented which supports the notion that a diagnostic statement has meaning only when it has a referent in the future—when it provides a prediction. A prediction (probability-statement) is determined empirically and may be stated in terms of a regression equation or in terms of a crude generalization from clinical experience. Treatment likewise is determined by tacit or expressed predictions of behavior under alternative conditions. The various conceptions of art as applied to clinical psychology are examined and the conclusion is drawn that clinical psychology is a scientific as opposed to an artistic or intuitive enterprise.Paper read at the 49th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association at Evanston, Illinois, September 3–6, 1941.This analysis may be applied with little modification to the fields of social work, psychiatry, vocational guidance, and related professions.