Current Debates in Psychology

Current Debates in Psychology

Since its establishment as a distinct discipline, psychology has evolved and developed with each new discovery. Today, it is a diverse subject that covers a wide range of topics and deals with many areas of daily life.

Current Debates in Psychology: Meaning

Psychology strives to be inclusive by considering individual differences, gender, race, mental health, and disabilities, to name a few. Current revolutions in psychology have led to debates and disagreements in the scientific community, especially concerning the validity and reliability of older research and problems of modern-day living situations. These disagreements include the issues and debates currently being discussed in psychology today.

Contemporary Debate Topics

Contemporary psychology debates often consider society's industrialisation as one of the main factors affecting psychological health today. This is one factor that has driven the development of psychology. One example is the emergence of new approaches, such as the use of neuroscience and positive psychology.

Some of the more notable topics include:

• Ethics of neuroscience examines ethical issues in neuroscience.

  Neuroscience studies the brain using advanced imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography.

  • This subject has led psychologists to overcome some ethical problems, although some remain, leading to the emergence of new problems.

• The mother as the primary caregiver of an infant:

  • In the past, a caregiver was always assumed to be the mother/a female. However, times have since changed. Men are increasingly taking on the role of caregiver, or sometimes the role of caregiver is shared between partners. This debate is primarily about Freud and Bowlby and the impact of the absence of a mother figure on a child’s development.

• The use of conditioning techniques to control children’s behaviour:

  • This is an example of a controversial topic in psychology. Although there are advantages to controlling children’s behaviour, there are also many disadvantages. Pavlov and Skinner have shown that it is possible to control and condition animals. Is the same true for human children? Is it because the techniques work and prove helpful to the child, or is it because of something else?

• Reliability of eyewitness testimony (including children):

  • The validity and reliability of eyewitness testimony are an ongoing debate in psychology. Eyewitness testimony can be useful in arresting offenders. However, external factors such as anxiety easily influence it, which can lead to punishing the wrong person. Therefore, there is debate about whether eyewitness testimony is a reliable support for the justice system.

• Positive psychology was developed to enable the scientific study of human well-being. Humanistic psychologists (another name for positive psychologists) criticise other approaches.

  • Positive psychology is often criticised for its lack of utility because it focuses on positive emotions and traits and ignores negative ones (therefore, the approach can be considered reductionist). Overall, positive psychology is gaining traction based on research findings in many world areas.

Fig. 2 - Contemporary debate topics include the ethics of neuroscience, caregivers, and positive psychology, to name a few.

Contemporary Debates in Topics – Ethics of Neuroscience

Psychologists have created a field in psychology called neuroethics. Neuroethics aims to determine neuroscience research's ethical, legal, and societal implications.

Contemporary Debates Examples

Some of the ethical issues in neuroscience include:

• Invasiveness (psychological/physical harm): with advances in neuroimaging techniques, psychological research can be tested using less invasive methods (autopsies were very invasive but provided detailed information, whereas computed tomography scans (CT) are non-invasive and provide detailed information but present problems with radiation exposure, even if minimal).

• Developed treatments: neuroscience tends to focus on biological treatments for disorders, leading to problems if the treatments have undesirable side effects. For example, people with depression take SSRIs, which have been associated with higher suicide rates when first taken.

• Impact on society: the punishment of offenders and the way they are judged based on neuroscience research have impacted outcomes in society. One example is Raine et al. (1997).

• However, the major ethical principles of psychology remain. These ethics are standards in psychology created to ensure participants' safety and preserve ethical rights in research. These include:

  • Confidentiality: Participants’ personal information must remain confidential. Researchers typically maintain this by keeping data secure and not mentioning participant details in reports.

  • Deception/manipulation in research: Although this usually occurs in research, researchers must inform participants of the true aims and hypotheses of the research at the end of the study.

  • Right to withdraw: Participants must have the right to withdraw from the study at any point if they wish to do so.

  • Participants must not be harmed psychologically or physically.

  • Informed consent: Before deciding whether a participant wants to participate in the study, the researcher must inform the participant of participation's potential risks and benefits.

Social Policies and Application of Neuroscientific Research

Neuroscience research has been applied to practice and social policy to improve the quality and duration of life. Neuroscience has also been applied to the legal system. For example, research has been conducted to determine differences in brain activation among offenders, as in Raine et al. (1997), demonstrating the importance and usefulness of neuroscience research.

Contemporary Debates Examples

Examples of how neuroscience research is applied to contemporary society are in clinical settings, businesses, the workplace, the legal system, and in creating social policies to prevent crime or help migrants integrate into society.

Controversial Debates in Psychology

Two controversial debates in psychology are:

1. The mother as the infant’s primary caregiver.

2. The use of conditioning techniques to control children’s behaviour

Mother as an infant’s primary caregiver is a controversial debate in psychology. Research examining attachment styles between caregivers and infants assumes the mother is the caregiver.

However, women are usually employed nowadays, and partners share parental/caregiving responsibilities. According to Bowlby, the mother is indispensable for the child's healthy development. So will it harm child-rearing if the mother is no longer present? This debate is about whether assertions like Bowlby's are credible and what impact such assumptions have on women.

The use of conditioning techniques to control behaviour in children is another controversial topic in psychology. Some people argue the use of conditioning techniques to control children's behaviour has benefits, such as:

• You can use it to correct ‘bad’ behaviour and encourage good behaviour.

Others argue that it is detrimental:

• If children no longer receive rewards for good behaviour, they may not feel the need to behave that way.

Therefore, it is controversial whether this technique should be used. Many also wonder if it is not simply the child’s response to ‘bribery’ and if they are being conditioned.

Contemporary Debates in Psychology – Reliability of Eye-Witness Testimony

The reliability of eyewitness testimony is an ongoing debate in psychology. Eyewitness testimony has often been used to incarcerate people, showing how important eyewitness testimony is. If they are inaccurate, it can lead to the wrong person being punished.

Fig. 3 - Are eyewitness testimonies reliable?

Contemporary Debates in Psychology – Positive Psychology

Positive psychology was launched in 1988. The discipline is a controversial topic within psychology because psychologists created it as a reaction to disagreements about psychology’s focus on mental health and negative thoughts and behaviours.

As a new discipline in psychology has emerged, so have the questions and debates about positive psychology.