Psychology

Educational psychologists deal with all sorts of individual problems, such as dyslexia, various sorts of disabilities, school phobia, and so on. Like clinical psychologists, they often use tests in diagnosis—but are perhaps less often concerned with treatment, which may rather involve remedial teachers, social workers, and nurses or doctors.

Educational problems may arise from many causes. Some may have physical origins, such as poor hearing, and there may be cognitive deficits such as low intelligence, medical disorders, or social factors such as stress or deprivation in the home. Educational psychology is also applied to the whole range of ability: those at the upper “gifted” end also need special consideration to meet their needs, or they risk becoming frustrated or isolated.

More generally, educational psychologists may advise on educational programmes, methods of selection and examination, and so on, or conduct research into methods of teaching and learning.

Psychologists in industry serve many roles. They may work on hiring staff through testing and interviewing, on developing training courses, and on maintaining good employee relations and communications. They may function as management consultants, advising on structures and procedures within an organization, or they may be involved with ergonomics (the design of machines and workplaces to make them more suitable for people).

A rather different sort of application of industrial psychology is consumer research. This may be for marketing purposes or involve sampling attitudes and opinions, often for the mass media or for political parties or the government. Consumer research is by no means an exclusively psychological activity but psychologists are often engaged in it.

Psychology is applied in many other areas and new specialisms are constantly developing; some of these are counselling psychology, forensic and criminal psychology, and sports psychology.