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Psychological Testing and Assessment
One of
psychology’s major achievements has been the development and the
extensive reliance on objective, quantifiable means of assessing human
talents, abilities,
strengths, and weaknesses. In the 100 years since Alfred Binet first
measured intellectual performance, systematic assessment has replaced
the subjective, often biased judgments of
teachers, employers, clinicians, and others in positions of authority
by objective, valid, reliable, quanti-fiable, and normed tests (Binet,
1911; Binet & Simon, 1915).
t is hard to imagine a test-free world.
Modern testing stretches from assessments of intelligence,
achievement, personality, and pathology to domains of vocational and
values assessment, personnel selection, and more. Vocational interest
measures are the backbone of guidance
counseling and career advising. The largest single application of
classified testing in the world is the Armed Services Vocational
Aptitude Battery that is given to as many as 2 million enlisted
personnel annually. Personnel selection testing has over 90 years of
validity research and proven utility.
We are
more familiar with the SAT and GRE standardized testing, currently
being revised in response to various critiques, but they are still the
yardstick for admission to many colleges and universities (Sternberg,
2000).
Workplace job skills assessment and training involves huge numbers of
workers and managers in many countries around the world (DuBois,
1970). Little wonder, then, that such
pervasive use of assessments has spawned a multibillion dollar
industry. (Because I am serving here in this article in the capacity
as cheerleader for our discipline, I will not raise questions about
the political misuse or overuse of testing nor indeed be critical of
some of the other contributions that follow; see Cronbach, 1975.)
Positive Reinforcement The earlier emphasis in schools and in child
rearing on punishment for errors and inappropriate behavior has been
gradually displaced by a fundamentally divergent focus on the utility
of positive reinforcement for correct, appropriate responding (Straus
& Kantor, 1994). Punishing the “undesirable person” has been replaced
by punishing only “undesirable behavioral acts.” Time-outs for
negative behaviour have proven remarkably effective as a behavior-modification
strategy (Wolfe, Risley, & Mees, 1965). It has become so
effective that it has become a favorite technique for managing child
behavior by parents in the United States.
“Half
the parents and teachers in the United States use this nonviolent
practice and call it ‘time-out,’ which makes it a social intervention
unmatched in modern psychology,” according to the
American Academy of Pediatrics’ (1998) publication.
Animal
training has benefited enormously from procedures of shaping complex
behavioral repertoires and the use of conditioned reinforcers (such as
clickers’ soundings paired with food rewards). An unexpected value of
such training, as reported by animal caregivers, is that they enhance
the mental health of many animal species through the stimulation
provided by learning new behaviors (San Francisco Chronicle, 2003).
Skinner and his behaviourist colleagues deserve the credit for this
transformation in how we think about and go about changing behavior by
means of response-contingent reinforcement. Their contributions have
moved out of animal laboratories into schools, sports, clinics, and
hospitals (see Axelrod & Apsche, 1983; Druckman & Bjork, 1991; Kazdin,
1994; Skinner, 1974).
Psychological Therapies
The
mission of our psychological practitioners of relieving the suffering
of those with various forms of mental illness by means of
appropriately delivered types of psychological therapy has proven
successful. Since Freud’s (1896/1923, 1900/1965) early cases
documenting the efficacy of “talk therapy” for neurotic disorders,
psychotherapy has taken many forms. Cognitive behavior modification,
systematic desensitization, and exposure therapies have proven
especially effective in treating phobias, anxiety disorders, and panic
attacks, thanks to the application of Pavlovian principles of
classical conditioning (Pavlov, 1897/1902, 1897/1927),
first developed by Joseph Wolpe (1958).
Even clinical depression is
best treated with a combination of psychotherapy and medication, and
psychotherapy has been shown to be as effective as the drugs alone (Hollon,
Thase, & Markowitz, 2002). At a more general level,
psychology has helped to demystify “madness,” to bring humanity into
the treatment of those with emotional and behavioral disorders, and to
give people hope that such disorders can be changed (Beck, 1976). Our
practitioners and clinical theorists have also developed a range of
treatments designed especially for couples, families, groups, for
those in rehabilitation from drugs or physical disabilities, as well
as for many specific types of problems such as,
addictions, divorce, or shyness.
Self-Directed Change
The
shelves of most bookstores in the United States are now as likely to
be filled with “self-help” books as they are with cooking and dieting
books. Although many of them can be dismissed as bad forms of “pop
psych” that offer guidance and salvation without any solid empirical
footing to back their claims, others provide a valuable service to the
general public. At best, they empower people to engage in
self-directed change processes for optimal personal adjustment (see
Maas, 1998; Myers, 1993; Zimbardo, 1977).
In
part, their success comes from providing wise advice and counsel based
on a combination of extensive expert experience and relevant research
packaged in narratives that ordinary people find personally
meaningful.
Dynamic Development Across the Life Span
Earlier conceptions of children as small adults, as property, and
later as valuable property were changed in part by the theories and
research of developmental psychologists (see McCoy,
1988; Pappas, 1983). In recent times, the emerging status of “the
child as person” has afforded children legal rights, due process, and
self-determination, along with the recognition that they should be
regarded as competent persons worthy of considerable freedom
(Horowitz, 1984).
Psychology has been a human service profession whose knowledge base
has been translated into support for a positive ideology of children
(Hart, 1991). The human
organism is continually changing, ever modifying itself to engage its
environments more effectively, from birth through old age. This
fundamental conception has made evident that babies need stimulation
of many kinds for optimal development, just as do their grandparents.
There is now widespread psychological recognition that infants do
experience pain; learning often depends on critical agerelated
developmental periods; nature and nurture typically
interact in synergistic ways to influence our intelligence and many
attributes; mental growth follows orderly progressions, as does
language acquisition and production; and that the elderly do not lose
their mental agility and competence if they continue to exercise their
cognitive skills throughout life (see Baltes & Staudinger 2000; Bee,
1994; Erikson, 1963; Piaget, 1954; Pinker, 1994; Plomin & Mc-Clearn,
1993; Scarr, 1998). These are but a few of the fundamental
contributions of psychology to the way our society now thinks about
human development over the course of a lifetime because of decades of
research by our developmentalist colleagues.
Philip G. Zimbardo
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