In your opinion, what field of psychology is the most important and why?

Question: In your opinion, what field of psychology is the most important and why?
- Keywords:
  psychology,
  subject
Asked by anon-283929 on 5 Mar 2021.
- Harry Piper answered on 5 Mar 2021:
  
  Ohhh!!! That is a tough one! Annoyingly, I’m not going to answer it! There are loads of fields within psychology, and within each field are even more ‘sub-fields’! Within the lab I am part of, we look at executive functions, and between us we have looked at a huge range of things! Things are important in different ways and you definitely can’t put a value on it!
- Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 5 Mar 2021: last edited 5 Mar 2021 1:24 pm
  
  I think interventions. Psychology is overflowing with theories – which is both great and useful. But I’d love to see more of those theories put into practical applications such as interventions.
- Alex Baxendale answered on 5 Mar 2021:
  
  This is a really good question! And super hard! There definitely isn’t a right answer here, but I’m going to say Neuropsychology, which is the study of the biology of the brain. Every other part of psychology relies on the biology of the brain – specific areas of the brain process specific information, and every idea, perception and memory is caused by neurons (special cells in the brain). There really is no escaping the biology in Psychology!
- Ellen Smith answered on 5 Mar 2021:
  
  Good question! I also don’t think I have an answer to this, I think each aspect of psychology is important. Particularly as it’s such a broad subject, different areas and the research within it will be helpful and important to different people – for example lots of researchers look at different health conditions with the aim of understanding these further to help patients.
- anon answered on 5 Mar 2021:
  
  Hi Phoebe,
  As the others have said, you can’t really pinpoint one field. But I think you can pinpoint how it’s used to determine its relative importance.
  So things like social psychology can help improve how we manage large groups of people. For example how we frame lockdown violations – showing people following the rules is a much better way than showing those breaking the rules, people want to be seen as the ‘in group’. Other positive uses of psychology can really be seen in clinical psychology with outcomes of improving mental health in both the general public and those with severe disorders like bipolar or schizophrenia.
  Then there is using psychology for bad reasons. This can be ‘simple’ things such as advertising – just think about ‘Apple’! They use psychology of wanting to be part of the in group, to show social status and in some ways mimic religions (have you ever seen them cheer the first person in?!).
  Then there are more sinister applications of psychology, like profiling and manipulating social media content to influence how we vote.
  It’s not so much about a fields internal worth, but its external application that influences its importance.
- Lisa Orchard answered on 8 Mar 2021:
  
  Hi Phoebe! Oh that’s so tricky. I don’t think there is one that is most important. I think its important to look at lots of different fields to get different perspectives and build the best picture. For instance, in my research, I am looking at the best ways we can use social media to improve breastfeeding support. I am from a cyberpsychology background, so I question how people interact and use social media. But I also need to bring in health psychology to understand how we encourage positive health behaviours, such as breastfeeding. I need to bring in social psychology to understand the importance of support groups and how social identity (e.g. being part of a breastfeeding group) may affect outcomes. I suppose what I am trying to say is that every field has it’s own selling point, and so different fields will hold importance depending on the question.

Question: In your opinion, what field of psychology is the most important and why?

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