Monday, April 13, 2020

Journal Entry #3 Chapter 18 Users and Misusers of Psychology

MD Amin
Psychology History and System
Professor Mark Berg
Journal Entry #3
April 13th, 2020

  Chapter eighteen was very informative about how applying psychology to aspects of life was good outcome from human kind or if it is misused. Applied psychology was becoming to be used everyday to enhance and improve human-condition on a variety of different fields. However as psychologists and psychiatrists saw how much power and influence applied psychology had, it became a powerful tool. In addition, we know that sometimes tool are used for good reasons and other times they are used for dangerous and selfish reasons. Nonetheless applied psychology today is universally integrated in all aspects of our lives.   


Educational Psychology - A positive area of applied psychology is in the educational field or educational psychology. In the education field there are a lot of students who have learning difficulties or may be handicapped in one or more ways. So therefore the use of applied psychology to create special education programs and other teaching methods to teach those students is a positive. However when it comes to testing such as the SAT's all the students are given the same exact test across the board. However some of the students were not able to afford tutors or get lessons, or even even prepare to the test as well as other might prepare. I think that, that is a misuse of psychology when it comes to testing.     

Purpose and Function of Educational Psychology | Hafiza Rabbia Shafiq  Educational psychologist argues for more freedom for teachers | BPS

The human engineering field is has also come a long way with all the new technologies and innovations that has made our lives to much easier. Even something as the car, when it comes to the steering wheel, the psychology behind it was when people wanted to go left, they should be able to turn the wheel left making the car turn left. They may seem obvious, but as the author points out there was psychological thinking behind it. At the same time we created weapons of mass destruction like nuclear weapons under the pretext of self defense, even though it may destroy all life on earth.
What is Human Factors? | Ben Michel ENP61 BlogHuman Factors Degree Programs | Psychology Degree Guide

Another aspect of applied psychology is making sure that a person is right for the job. In every single job, there are some levels of requirements and how do people make sure someone is competent ? well they usually ask indeph questions and look as past accomplishments. However for more demanding jobs like police officers or military officers they have a psychologist or psychiatrists do a test on them to see if they qualify.

  Psychological Screening for Police Officers

  Lastly, I want to talk about the criminal justice field, since I am a criminal justice major myself. I think that criminal justice psychology is very important to identify criminals and potentially save lives. This has to be done to trace criminals and see if they will commit crimes once outside of the prisons again. However, I don't like the idea of criminal psychology being misused in the criminal justice system. For example enhanced interrogation and coherence interrogation to get a false testimony or to admit to guilt. In addition, I don't believe in using the lie detector test because 64 of the times they are inaccurate. Police should use real world solid evidence is all cases that is back up by data and common sense.
 How To Become A Criminal Psychologist : Step By Step Career Guide 2020The Yale Tribune | Criminal justice – fair or flawed?

  Information - I think that applied psychology has come a long way since the birth of Psychology in Germany by Wilhelm Wundt. Applied psychology is applied in all aspects of our lives and every field that we can think about. An universal aspect is that "Sex Sells" all the marketing and commercials have some form of sexualized advertisement to get people to buy things.

Implications - However there are always trade-off, even with all the good that has come to our lives with applied psychology some people have misused it for their own selfish reasons. For example, there are still unethical experiments being done, dangerous weapons are being created everyday, and this has also caused people to loose privacy too. Now there are facial recognition cameras and technology everywhere and there is no privacy.

Conclusion - In conclusion, I think that this is just life, where there are good things ans intentions, there are also bad ones. We have to give up some things in order to obtain other things, just like freedom over security. Do we want more freedom or do we want more security because we cannot get them both as the same time. That is just how life works, but I think that Wilhelm Wundt would be very proud today, to see where his work has gone.     

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