• Question: will psychology evolve over time?

    Asked by anon-204422 to Sally, Lucy, Louise, James, David, Dan on 2 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sally Tilt

      Sally Tilt answered on 2 Mar 2019:

      For sure.

      I see that you’d like to be a forensic scientist – as you know the way that forensic science has changed enormously over time, for example, the introduction of DNA testing. More research helps to improve the accuracy of what we know – psychology works in the same way.

      In my area of work in forensic psychology, 100 years ago, people studying criminal behaviour suggested that people became criminals because they were lacking intelligence or morals. Forensic psychology has evolved and our understanding of criminal behaviour is more sophisticated – we know that a person’s early experiences as children, the development of their personality, their environment and the people they spend time with etc. can all play a part.

      I often try to guess what forensic psychologists in the future will look back on and raise their eyebrows about forensic psychology today.

    • Photo: Dan Taylor

      Dan Taylor answered on 2 Mar 2019:

      Science is based on the idea that we can observe and understand reality as it is. As technology advances we will be able to gain a deeper understanding of things like the brain and genetics. This will help theories of behaviour to develop. Any science that refuses to evolve is one the will be left behind!

    • Photo: Lucy Maddox

      Lucy Maddox answered on 2 Mar 2019:

      Yes! I certainly hope so! I think one of the great things about science is we are constantly testing out ideas and often proving them wrong, which means we need to find another idea! It’s pretty exciting.

      In terms of treatment this is also hugely important. For example, not so many years ago being gay was treated as being mentally ill – now we don’t think this at all – thank goodness – but there are probably things that we think now that in 50 years time we will look back at and think are really bad. It’s really important for psychology to be critical of itself and to evolve.

    • Photo: Louise Rodgers

      Louise Rodgers answered on 3 Mar 2019:

      Psychology is undergoing what some have described as a ‘replication crisis’ recently https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/11/30/its-getting-increasingly-difficult-for-replication-crisis-sceptics-to-explain-away-failed-replications/ and when the dust settles, maybe some evidence for theories in psychology will be looked at differently.

      Other, newer, areas of psychology that may grow in future are cyberpsychology, climate psychology and I’ve recently written a blog piece about neurosexism. Maybe there are areas of psychology that will evolve when you are a psychologist, which nobody has even thought of yet!

    • Photo: David Chadwick

      David Chadwick answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Of course it will. Every discipline evolves with time as people learn more, gain more experience, and build on what has already been learnt. I am sure you have heard the saying “Standing on the shoulder’s of giants”. This is as true for psychology as for any other discipline.

    • Photo: James Munro

      James Munro answered on 10 Mar 2019:

      The way I see it, psychology as a science is a bit like alchemy was before chemistry. Alchemy introduced people to the ideas of changing some metals and materials into other things – but they didn’t really understand how those things were made up of molecules, and how chemical reactions worked. They didn’t have the understanding, the methods or the equipment to do it properly. Once they did, chemistry took over.

      Psychology is still really new compared to other sciences – only 150 years or so since Wilhelm Wundt set up the first psychology lab. So we are still kind of working it out. Louise mentioned the replicability crisis – what this means is that most of the classic studies that psychologists have used as examples – don’t work anymore. Add to that, that most psychology is done on western, educated, white people, and that most participants are female… well… we are ignoring too many problems. For lots of reasons, we know that psychology in the past was a bit rough around the edges, and we need to do things better now.

      Things like doing studies more than once to make sure the findings are reliable, or looking more and more closely at the brain to compare human behaviour with their brain activity – are important. We need to move to the “chemistry” version of psychology, and get away from “alchemy”.

      Just my opinion of course 🙂

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