User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 18/Power/Power in Psychology

Interpretation of 'Power' in Psychology

Within Psychology, 'power' could be defined as "one’s capacity to alter another person’s condition or state of mind by providing or withholding resources—such as food, money, knowledge, and affection—or administering punishments, such as physical harm, job termination, or social ostracism." This definition is utilised when describing how humans interact with one another (how one individual may have the power to influence/affect another individual), '"relationships, contexts and cultures."

An example of power within psychology is when the topic of domestic, psychological or physical abuse is analysed, where this abuse may be due to an unequal distribution of power within a relationship.

Power structures within Psychology

This section will describe the possible inequalities within this discipline as well as how the knowledge within this discipline may have the power to affect others producing certain implications.

Gender inequality within Psychology

A report from the "Committee on Women in Psychology (CWP)" illustrated how although women outnumber men within Psychology (when looking at the figures of women that are working in the field or associated with education), women are still trying to gain "equity" in "money, status and power" when comparing to their "male colleagues" . It has also been found that there is a significant wage gap between men and women within Psychology. As women enter the workforce they experience greater debt as well as lower salaries compared to males entering the industry. Data from the 'National Science Foundation' in 2010 found that women experience an average $20,000 pay gap in starting salaries. Additonally, a common phenomenon that could be witnessed within this discipline is that it may take women a much greater time to "achieve tenure than men" and although women outnumber men "women are still underrepresented as associate professors, full professors and institutional leaders".

Diversity in the Psychology workforce

The 'American Psychological Association' found that in 2015, 86% of the workforce in psychology was white, "5% Asian, 5% Hispanic, 4% black/African American and 1% were multiracial" or from various other ethnic groups, thus demonstrating how the psychology workforce may lack diversity. This lack of diversity can have a negative effect on the way minorities deal with their psychological issues; many view psychologists as older white males and also believe that psychological treatments are tailored towards white people, which deters many minorities from visiting a psychologist to treat their illness . This bias in the mental health system adds to the other problems minorities are confronted with such as discrimination and prejudice, which can exacerbate mental health issues. However, it has been found that the workforce is becoming more and more diverse "as more racial/ethnic minorities enter the workforce" and that 34% of "early career psychologists" came from "racial/ethnic minorities".

Knowledge as power in Psychology

It could be argued that since most psychological experiments are held within the west, only a particular small and unrepresentative sample of individuals is being studied. This could be due to financial pressures within the industry where conducting psychological experiments within other parts of the world are too costly. However, the implications of this are that when these conclusions (from experiments of a specific group of people) are used in other parts of the world they may produce adverse side effects where the knowledge that is used may do more harm than good as other aspects such as culture may be ignored.

WEIRD (wealthy, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic) people are the most often the individuals in which psychology experiments are carried out. This means that only a small and unrepresentative sample is obtained by scientists and in order to get their work published, researchers may be forced to generalise and universalise. In Rwanda, post- genocide or in Sri Lanka post-tsunami where sufferers had what was labelled as PTSD were forced into one on one therapy sessions instead of handling their grief within their community- this is an example of imposing western coping strategies that may have worked on WEIRD people living in an individualistic society onto theirs, when their ways of coping were based on the union of the community they were within. The implications of this being that "without cultural understanding" western clinical treatment can do "more harm than good". Knowledge can be seen as a form of power as it has been used to "alter" one's "condition or state of mind".