Originally published: . Volume 11, No. 7. Source pages: 2.
by Julie Nelson Reporting on police psychology in this month's issue, and the excellent work psychologists do to help police and communities build competence, causes me to think about how we can better bring these talents to others.
While President Trump's Executive Order on safe policing seems to be a good start, he framed the problem in a way that suggested he is unfamiliar with the whole array of interventions that police psychologists can offer, the multiple levels of the social system. As examples, Dr. Susan Tucker and Dr. Mkay Bonner both work at multiple levels in their communities, and their interventions are hard to understand even for trained professionals much less the lay public. Organized psychology has done very little to educate the public, so I give the President a pass. The responsibility is ours.
The recent tragic events and ensuing chaos have me brooding again about psychology's contribution, or lack of it more accurately, and what we can do to help our community's problem-solving in matters that are in our wheelhouse. #1. First, we should try and work at the highest level of abstraction that we can. Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Staying at the highest look-out point on the mountainside helps avoid a host of issues. At the very least, we could stay out of Red vs Blue politics and other subgroups, like the medical–pharmaceutical–hospital industrial complex. If the public is going to trust us, and listen to us, as Scott Lilienfeld suggests, we have to stick to science, and only science.
#2. Related to #1, we must refuse to participate in any binomial thinking and the bias it causes. One of the important things psychologists can do is to help others understand that social conflicts and problems are multivariate not univariate. Binomial thinking leads to poor problem definitions, faulty solutions, and often polarized behavior. If we can help others embrace the complexity of human behavior, we'll be a step closer to real understanding. As Poul Anderson said, "I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated."
#3. After we have confirmed that we are scientifically honest and thinking at the highest level of the system, we can create theoretically and empirically sound positions and share this information with others. Information is one of the best and least expensive system interventions.
However, communicating our message is organized psychology's biggest challenge and may be our most serious failing. We just cannot seem to lose the jargon, clutter, and psychobabble. Novelist Doris Lessing said, “It is one of the paradoxes of our time that ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks, are often presented in unreadable language.”
If we can clarify our messages, then maybe we can find ways to overcome our reluctance to step up to the public microphone. In Leading Change, John Kotter points out we must communicate much more than we think we need to––100 times or even 1000 times as much.
If we can somehow get #1 and #2 right, then communication just might empower psychology to help make things a little better.
[Julie Nelson is a licensed psychologist, journalist, organizational consultant, and publisher of the Times. She also holds other positions in the community. However, her opinions here are those of her own, and do not represent any group or association. She and the Times receive no compensation other than paid advertising. Email her at drj@drjulienelson.com, ––she welcomes feedback.]
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.