• Question: would you say that research in psychology is more important or helping people with research is more important?

    Asked by anon-304373 on 7 Dec 2021.
    • Photo: Madeleine Steeds

      Madeleine Steeds answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      I don’t think they are necessarily exclusive. A lot of research helps people because of the nature of the job. I do think there should be more research for the sake of understanding the world because sometimes things are cool just because they are cool. But it is important that research is helpful. It should never be harmful.

    • Photo: Emily McDougal

      Emily McDougal answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      I think it would be hard to separate psychology practice from research. The work that clinical, educational or forensic psychologists do comes from what we have learned from research, and new research is always improving this. The benefits of psychological research are not always obvious or direct, but are needed as a first step towards better understanding a phenomenon and will impact people or society in the long term.

    • Photo: Alex Baxendale

      Alex Baxendale answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      It’s a really tough question to answer as the research is useless without it being used, whilst using research is useless without having the evidence. I’m more likely to say that the research itself is more important as you would not be able to help people without it – you would end up just doing whatever you thought felt right when trying to help people without knowing if it actually did help.
      It’s definitely a delicate balance between the two!

    • Photo: Clare Wood

      Clare Wood answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      Research is literally an academic exercise if it isnt applied to a situation where it can be helpful. The tricky bit is how you translate research findings into practical resources and strategies that can help people, but the potential is always there – just too often under exploited.

    • Photo: Natalie Butcher

      Natalie Butcher answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      Really interesting question! I pretty much echo what others have already said. In my job I am responsible for making sure the psychology researchers at my university think about how their research might have an impact beyond academia, and I support them to make it happen. For example I worked with a colleague who has developed a new tool to for self-managing long term conditions based on her research. The tool is now used by a number of organisations to support their clients. I love seeing the research findings being used to help people.

      However, sometimes research doesn’t have an immediate or obvious application but over time it becomes applied / of use. For example, face recognition research has told us for decades that we process faces holistically (as a whole) but it was only relatively recently that a group of psychology researchers discovered that this is why traditional photo-fits used by the police don’t ever really look like the suspect (because old systems focus on feature by feature rather than the face as a whole). So the new systems they have developed (evo-fit) have their foundations in research done decades ago which wasn’t immediately applied. So, it’s important to remember that some research can take time before it has a use to help people.

    • Photo: Xun He

      Xun He answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      They are both important. And very often we do not have to choose one single option. Sometimes it is necessary to prioritise our workload in research, but in the end, all research is about helping people and helping people’s understanding about our behaviour. There will be no science if there is no people. As a sidenote, that is why I do research and also engage the general public like having this chat right now.

    • Photo: Natali Bozhilova

      Natali Bozhilova answered on 15 Nov 2021:

      Helping people with research is the most important aspect of psychology. Otherwise, research is pointless 🙂

    • Photo: James Bartlett

      James Bartlett answered on 15 Nov 2021:

      Excellent question but its a combination of the two. You need both researchers and practicing psychologists. Sometimes people complete both sides but its important practice is informed by research, and research has the ability to inform practice. For example, I’m not involved in practicing psychology, so I would rely on a psychologist to provide insight into working with patients or a specific condition. I would then hope they take on my advice to perform the most informative research and perform the appropriate data analysis.

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