Psychology2016

16 CHAPTER 1

disorders. A psychiatric social worker is trained in the area of social work and usually

possesses a master ’s degree in that discipline. These professionals focus more on the

environmental conditions that can have an impact on mental disorders, such as pov-

erty, overcrowding, stress, and drug abuse. There are also licensed professional counselors

and licensed marriage and family therapists who may have a master ’s or doctoral degree

in a variety of areas and provide counseling services relative to their area of training.

to Learning Objective B.3.

You said not all psychologists do counseling. But I thought that

was all that psychologists do—what else is there?

Although many psychologists do participate in delivering therapy to people who

need help, there is a nearly equal number of psychologists who do other tasks: research-

ing, teaching, designing equipment and workplaces, and developing educational meth-

ods, for example. Also, not every psychologist is interested in the same area of human—or

animal—behavior, and most psychologists work in several different areas of interest, as

shown in Figure 1.3b.

Those psychologists who do research have two types of research to consider:

basic research versus applied research. Basic research is research for the sake of gain-

ing scientific knowledge. For example, a researcher might want to know how many

“things” a person can hold in memory at any one time. The other form of research is

applied research, which is research aimed at answering real-world, practical problems.

An applied researcher might take the information from the basic researcher ’s memory

study and use it to develop a new study method for students. Some of the subfields in

Figure 1.3b tend to do more basic research, such as experimental and cognitive psycholo-

gists, while others may focus more on applied research, such as educational, school, and

industrial/organizational psychologists.

basic research
research focused on adding informa-
tion to the scientific knowledge base.

applied research
research focused on finding practical
solutions to real-world problems.

psychiatric social worker
a social worker with some training in
therapy methods who focuses on the
environmental conditions that can
have an impact on mental disorders,
such as poverty, overcrowding, stress,
and drug abuse.

Figure 1.3 Work Settings and Subfields of Psychology
(a) There are many different work settings for psychologists. Although not obvious from the chart, many psychologists work in more than one setting. For exam-
ple, a clinical psychologist may work in a hospital setting and teach at a university or college (Michalski et al., 2011). (b) This pie chart shows the specialty areas
of psychologists who recently received their doctorates (American Psychological Association, 2014).

4%

Federal

government

6%

State and

local

government

6% General

4% Other

2% Educational

12% Developmental

6% Social and

personality

5% Industrial/

organizational

4% School

8% Experimental

and other research areas

34% Clinical

6% Cognitive

13% Counseling

9%

Private not

for profit

18%

Private

for profit

21%

Self-employed

7%

Schools and other

educational settings

35%

University

and four-year

colleges

a. Where Psychologists Work b. Subfields of Psychology

Interactive