In a rapidly changing health care marketplace, professional psychologists are increasingly concernedabout the public's attitude toward psychology. In two samples, one of the general population andone of college faculty, both psychology and sociology were rated as having made less importantcontributions to society and as having less expertise than biology, chemistry, medicine, and physics.The implications of these findings are considered in relation to the recent American PsychologicalAssociation public education campaign and the field's century-long concern about the public percep-tion of psychology.That psychology is not always perceived favorably by thepublic is not a new issue. Benjamin (1986) pointed out thatpsychology's public image has been of concern since the firstorganizational meeting of the American Psychological Associa-tion (APA) in 1892, and this concern continues today. Indeed,a number of surveys and observers have suggested that the publicdoes not have a clear idea of what it is psychologists do and thatthe public does not view the discipline of psychology favorably(Atkinson, 1977; Furnham, 1983; Thumin & Zebelman, 1967).Of particular interest is the finding of Raviv and Weiner (1995),who documented the strong negative reactions of Israelis towardthe involvement of psychologists in the public media during thePersian Gulf War.Most of the authors just mentioned concluded with a call forgreater efforts to educate the public about the nature of thediscipline of psychology and how it can affect their lives. Soci-ety's view of our discipline may have profound implications forthe future of psychology. There may currently be a general dis-trust in the findings of psychological research (Wood, Jones, B Benjamin, 1986). Perhaps of evenLouis H. JANDA received his PhD from Arizona State University in1972. He is an associate professor of psychology at Old DominionUniversity. His research interests are in psychological assessmentKELLI ENGLAND received her BS in 1995 from Old Dominion University,where she is currently enrolled in the MS program in psychology. Herresearch interests are in characteristics of nontraditional students.DAVID LOVEJOY received his PsyD from the Virginia Consortium Pro-gram for Clinical Psychology in 1997. He is a postdoctoral fellow atHartford Hospital and The Institute for Living. His research interestsare in neuropsychology.KATHRYN DRUBY received her PsyD degree from the Virginia ConsortiumProgram for Clinical Psychology in 1997. She is completing her resi-dency in Virginia Beach, VA. Her research interests are in cognitionsand depression.CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be addressed toLouis H. Janda, Department of Psychology, Old Dominion University,Norfolk, Virginia 23529. Electronic mail may be sent to ljanda@odu.edu.more importance to professional psychologists, managed healthcare companies appear to be using licensed clinical social work-ers and licensed professional counselors rather than doctoral-level clinical psychologists to treat their policyholders in aneffort to cut costs (Schlosser, 1995). If the public has doubtsabout the expertise of clinical psychologists, there is little reasonfor them to object to such practices.The recommendation for public awareness campaigns appearsto have been heeded by the APA, which recently began a cam-paign, expected to last several years, to communicate to thepublic the value of what psychologists do (Farberman, 1997).APA has also awarded a grant to a national radio show topromote the public's knowledge of scientific psychology(DeAngelis, 1995), and APA has initiated and funded a programto improve journalists' understanding of scientific psychology(Caveliere, 1995).