TRANSFERENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND ITS IMPACT ON MEXICO

Abstract

The impact of the transfer of the psychological knowledge from the developed countries to Mexico, is briefly described. It is clear that scientific psychological methodology and contents were introduced to Mexico at the end of the 19th Century. The impetus to the National Educational System was primarily derived from psychometric methods and secondarily from modern conceptions of education. The professional psychological practice in Mexico today is practically indistinguishable from its exercise in the developed nations as far as client services are concerned. On the other hand, there is relatively scarce and often inept use of professional or applied research techniques to the social problems of groups or to the evaluation of programs. The impact on pure and applied research, none the less, has been extensive and a relatively large number of people are doing research in several areas of psychology, particularly cross‐cultural, neuro‐psychological, the experimental analysis of behavior, action and interdisciplinary research in social and educational psychology.Priorities are: (1) Systematic teaching at the graduate level of the statistical and computational methodology of psychology in the context of research design and evaluation; (2) The operationalization or transferring to every day language of the concepts and techniques of psychology for use of the general public; (3) The better staffing of many, particularly the private schools of professional psychology.