Which of the six perspertives in psychology makes the most sense? Do any of these six perspectives seems to have any value whatsoever?

-- Shailendra Prasad (sprasad007@govnet.gov.fj), July 08, 2003

Answers

This Forum often gets questions of this type. I must confess to finding it a little bizarre. What makes you think there are exactly six perspectives? Which six perspectives did you have in mind precisely?

Obviously, since all six of them presumably have followers, each fo them makes the most sense some group of people. There is no definitive answer. If everyone agreed on which one made most sense, there wouldn't be six, just one, right? They all must have *some* value (or no one would advocate them), but none of them answer *all* the questions we would like answered about human experience and behavior.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), July 08, 2003.

Hi Shailendra, Some of perspectives that might be listed in an introductory (or advanced) psychology book are the following: biological, behavioral, psychodynamic, cognitive, social/cultural, and evolutionary. I think many psychologists today are theoretically eclectic and depending on what they were trying to explain, would appeal to several or all of these perspectives. I can think of three reasons not to pick the best perspective and discount the rest. One is that many human phenomena are too complex to get a rich understanding of with only one perspective. The second reason is that it is too early (if there ever will be a time) in the history of psychology to completely disregard a whole perspective, particularly one that has a number of supporters. A third reason is that many perspectives slowly improve as they adjust to criticism. It is okay to end up with a favorite that fits your area of interest within psychology, but recognize that people in other areas might also have legitmate reasons for picking a different perspective to emphasize. What perspective(s)would you emphasize if your area was social psychology versus if your area was health psychology? I hope this helps. Paul

-- Paul R. Kleinginna (prklein@gsvms2.cc.gasou.edu), July 11, 2003.