Psychological Relationship Research Articles

Beyond torture: Knowledge and power at the nexus of social science and national security

In the wake of revelations about the American Psychological Association's complicity in the military's enhanced interrogation program, some psychologists have called upon the association to sever its ties to national security agencies. But psychology's relationship to the military is no short-term fling born of the War on Terror. This article demonstrates that psychology's close relationship to national security agencies and interests has long been a visible and consequential feature of the discipline. Drawing on social scientific debates about the relationship between national security agencies and the social sciences in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this article also provides cautionary lessons for psychologists confronting the torture controversy. It concludes that an ethically robust response to this controversy requires that psychologists engage in a sustained reckoning with the powerful institutional, epistemological, and financial incentives that have bound the discipline to the military and intelligence communities since World War I.

Colonised minds and community psychology in the academy: Collaborative autoethnographic reflections.

We reflect on decolonization and in particular the process of decolonizing our own minds. We discuss the need for radical decolonization of psychology and for critique of community psychology'srelationship to both psychology and the Academy, noting ways in which community psychology itself becomes appropriated for the colonizing project of the Academy. Using collaborative autoethnography (CAE), a method that involves "collaborative poetics," which chimes with the emphasis on participatory research in community psychology and the decolonialist emphasis on rescuing repressed epistemologies, we review our own careers and identify ways in which our values have been compromised and our work assimilated into wider colonizing and oppressive practices that sustain the modern university. We conclude that community psychology can only decolonize if it is positioned in an agonistic relationship to mainstream psychology and exists as a radical, explicitly political, and ethical practice outside the Academy. The message of the decolonization and disalienation movements is that the biggest barrier to our effectiveness, and to social justice, is the fascism of our minds. Succumbing to the power and privilege embedded in the Academy and the oppressive and colonizing practices that sustain it conflicts with community psychology's purported values.

What can qualitative psychology contribute to psychological knowledge?

This article reflects on what qualitative research in psychology can contribute to the accumulation of psychological knowledge. It provides an overview of qualitative research in psychology and discusses its potential value to quantitative researchers. It also reviews the differences and similarities between qualitative and quantitative research and explains how qualitative research can be differentiated from other forms of knowing that are concerned with human experience. The article explains what makes qualitative research "research" and how to determine if something is qualitative research or another kind of meaning-making activity. It starts by defining and characterizing qualitative psychology and by identifying qualitative psychology's aims and objectives, and then goes on to examine qualitative psychology's relationship with the pursuit of knowledge and to position it within the wider field of psychological inquiry. The article identifies ways in which qualitative research contributes to psychological knowledge (including thick description, critique, and theory development) and concludes by affirming its place in a psychological research community that seeks to improve our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

But why did Vince get sick? A reply to Spears and Wetherell

This article focuses on the importance of preserving a psychological dimension in addressing the treatment of psychology's relationship to the social. The fact that someone else would not have responded in quite this way forces to posit an internal world, Vince's psychological reality that is not simply reducible to social discourses, even though it can only be understood through, and in relation to, such discourses, i.e. psychosocially. Taking the social world seriously means, in Vince's case, thinking about questions to do with structure, power relations, and discourse.

Unity within psychology, and unity between science and practice.

The unity of psychology as a science is to be found in its definition as the science of mental life, and its explanation of individual behavior in terms of mental states. This disciplinary focus will help negotiate psychology's relations with other disciplines, such as neuroscience and cognitive science. The unity within psychology between science and practice is to be found in a focus on scientific evidence as the source of the status, autonomy, and privileges of professional practitioners. Psychology should avoid the temptations of reductionism, and assert (and enjoy) its twin status as both a biological science and a social science.

Counseling Psychology in South Africa:

Counseling psychology in South Africa is undergoing significant changes, much like the country itself. The authors examine the state of counseling psychology in South Africa through discussion of both its racial history and present-day positions. The history of psychology cannot be devoid of its politicized past, and remnants of its history are found today, though much has changed. Current issues such as HIV/AIDS, educational legacies, and mistrust by the majority population now influence counseling psychology's direction and focus. Training issues become important in a country undergoing such changes, and counseling psychology's relationship to educational psychology and clinical psychology is addressed, along with its role within the indigenous community. Counseling psychology in South Africa is a microcosm for many of the struggles that U.S. counseling psychology faces. It is recommended that counseling psychologists in South Africa become more proactive to be further recognized as a useful entity and better serve community needs. Recognition can be accomplished by better alignment with medicine, forming working groups, becoming more politicized, and emphasizing the rich cultural diversity that exists in the country through training and outreach.

Hierarchy of the Sciences and Terminological Sharing of Laws among the Sciences

A variable called index of terminological sharing that measures the extent to which one science shares lawful concepts from another science was used to assess hypotheses concerning the concept of an hierarchy of sciences and psychology's terminological relationship with other sciences. (1) The values of the index will be relatively small for the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) as compared to the relatively large values for the social sciences (anthropology, sociology), and (2) the index's value for psychology will be closer to the mean value of the social sciences than to that of the natural sciences. Analysis showed only a 17% agreement between the present data and the relative ordering of the sciences assumed by the hierarchy. Hypothesis 1 was confirmed, but not Hypothesis 2. Index values for psychology were closer to those of the natural sciences than to those of the social sciences. Psychology appears to have a relatively high terminological independence concerning citation of shared lawful concepts in textbooks as compared to other sciences, but also psychology shows a large and disproportionate use of eponyms in references to shared lawful concepts. It was suggested that new quantitative-comparative measures, in addition to the present index, be developed to understand further psychology's relationships with other sciences.

Biological psychology's relationships to psychology and neuroscience.

Biological psychology's relationships to psychology and neuroscience.

Biological psychology's relationships to psychology and neuroscience.

Biological psychology's relationships to psychology and neuroscience.

A history of industrial psychology's relationship with American unions: lessons from the past and directions for the future

A history of industrial psychology's relationship with American unions: lessons from the past and directions for the future