Figure 1. This is a map representing 7,121 journals published in 2000. Using a particular measure of similarity, this map groups similar topics together in clusters. Large font size labels identify major areas of science. Small labels denote the disciplinary topics of nearby large clusters of journals. From, Boyack, K., Klavans, R., Borner, K. (2005). Mapping the backbone of science. Scientometrics, 64(3), 351-374.

Psychology as a Hub Science

Psychology is considered a “hub science” which means that it represents one of the major fields of science around which several specific disciplines cluster. This is illustrated in Figure 1  which represents the work done by Boyack, Klavans, & Borner (2005). They used statistics to group the major scientific topics in science journals published in the year 2000. Psychology emerged as one of the 7 hub sciences around which other scientific disciplines are clustered. This was an important finding because it demonstrates that there is no longer one or two main “sciences” in the world, as was the case in the middle ages and earlier.  As science evolved, it branched into more specific domains until we arrived at where we are today. Thinking about science in this way is also beneficial because it helps us to see the interconnection between the seemingly very different areas of science. This helps break down potential walls or “territories” around the types of science in our world. For example, although psychology emerged as a hub science, you can see that it is connected to other hub sciences like medicine and and social science because of their shared connection to the disciplines between them.  This illustrates our need to actively support all of these types of science rather than to hold one up as more essential than the others.

The Usefulness of Social Psychology

Psychology has many subdisciplines within it, that often focus on specific knowledge areas or topics like thought processes, disorders, or human developmental (Baumeister & Finkle, 2010). Social Psychology, however, takes a somewhat broader perspective and focuses on understanding how people think, feel and behave in relation to social contexts or situations. It is therefore directly applicable to many other areas of science, and nearly any area of every-day life.

Roy Baumeister an Eli Finkle (2010) expand on this in Chapter 1 of their text Advanced Social Psychology: The State of the Science.

Understanding People

Social psychologists have sometimes seen their task as understanding situations. Yet we think that understates the value of social psychology. You probably were not inspired to become a social psychologist to learn about situations. On the contrary, most people come to social psychology because they are interested in people. Social psychologists study and think endlessly about people. Experiments in social psychology test hypotheses about people. Our field has plenty to say about people. Most studies in social psychology proceed in very small steps, reporting a few experiments aimed at some narrow aspect of human functioning. Yet underlying those studies are broad assumptions about what types of creatures people really are…. When you read research findings, it is stimulating to step back occasionally and reflect on what they contribute to answering the grand question: “What sort of creatures are human beings?”

—- Baumeister. R. F.  Chapter 1 Social psychologists and thinking about people. In Advanced Social Psychology : The State of the Science, edited by Roy F. Baumeister, and Eli J. Finkel, Oxford University Press USA – OSO, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sunyjefferson-ebooks/detail.action?docID=544488. Created from sunyjefferson-ebooks on 2021-06-23 18:36:39..