Success and failure in applying psychology.

Abstract

French psychologist shows through analysis of actual instances of"success" and "failure" in applying psychology that in many cases psychology is too easily and too loosely applied. However, application is much less likely to occur when adoption of research requires a change of attitudes and representations or a reformulation of the problems. Applied research in psychology keeps a heuristic value because it recognizes the uniqueness, complexity, and human plasticity features of each situation. Psychology Is Too Easily and Too Quickly AppliedFar from being regarded with suspicion or distrust, psychologists are seen as experts who have at their disposal October 1988 9 American Psychologist

The practitioner‐researcher divide in Industrial, Work and Organizational (IWO) psychology: Where are we now, and where do we go from here?

“…Several examples of Popularist Science aZict IWO psychology currently, including popularist books on emotional intelligence, unvalidated claims in respect of team-building and OD interventions, and self-produced 'validation' studies by less reputable test publishers that have been dashed into press to support recently published psychometric tests. Popularist Science, of course, can be dangerous if practice is founded upon such badly conceived, unvalidated, or plain incorrect research, since ineVectual or even harmful practical methods may result (Lévy-Leboyer, 1988). Moreover, such work illustrates only too clearly the importance of the anonymous review procedures applied by all of the reputable journals in IWO psychology to the robustness of the research base which underpins our discipline.…”

Science can explain other people’s minds, but not mine: self-other differences in beliefs about science

“…In addition to those many theories that people have about the mind and how it works, people also have certain intuitions about what science can and cannot explain about the mind (Fernandez-Duque, 2017;Gottlieb & Lombrozo, 2017;Lévy-Leboyer, 1988;Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson & Gray, 2008).…”

From crisis of evidence to a “crisis” of relevance? Incentive-based answers for social psychology’s perennial relevance worries

“…Billig (2015) likewise notes that many textbooks use the phrase to show that social psychology is self-evidently relevant to the applied world, rather than to open discussion of whether and how it is relevant as practiced. Few uses of this quotation, however, have gone on to mention the return path that Lewin specified in the same article, by which there is also nothing so theoretical as a good practice (with some exceptions, mostly from applied psychology: e.g., Labonte, Feather, & Hills, 1999;Lévy-Leboyer, 1988;Meyer, 1991).…”