Scientific Developments in Psychology with Implications for Social Change

Abstract

Social Change JOSEPH W. NAGGE Kansas State Teachers College, Emporia It has been written somewhere that psychology has a short history but a long past. This is a pithy way of saying that people have had a pressing interest in the study of their own psychological reactions and those of other people long before a respectable fund of scientific knowledge was available for their guidance. Primitive man felt a need for more knowledge of the mainsprings of psychological reaction in other people because he had to deal with those other people in his everyday living and his success or failure in promoting successful personal relationships with other people was closely associated with his own personal happiness. He soon discovered that many of his problems resolved themselves into those of personal relations with other people. In the past seventy-five years, which period encompasses the history of experimental psychology, most of the work accomplished has been aimed at putting the psychological house in order, mapping out the fields of psychology, developing methods of procedure and doing the basic housekeeping tasks before attacking the problems of applied psychology the solution of which was of such importance before the practical problems of everyday life could be worked upon. Much of the early work fell into the category of There was little done in that period in the field of applied psychology because applied psychology involved a discussion of and value was a category of philosophy from which psychology like the other sciences had struggled for emancipation for so many centuries. With accumulated knowledge and with the assurance of a discipline approaching maturity, psychology is now fully ready to plunge into the fields in which 'value' is a category. This involves asking the question, what is the utility of the results of this psychological experiment? An undue emphasis upon value in science can be a danger to the growth of pure science. Fernberger has aptly stated in a recent article in the American Psychologist that pure science might tend to be neglected and we might thus kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Knowingly or not, all science tends to change its patterns to meet human needs. Pressing problems in psychiatry, in industry, in