25 Big Ideas That Began Here
Psychology Today is 50! A look back at 25 great ideas that were launched in these pages.
By PT Staff published July 4, 2017 - last reviewed on July 3, 2017
Over the past 50 years, psychology has moved from being an academic discipline of interest only to a relative few to one producing a steady stream of information guiding the everyday lives of many. Fromgroupthink to thePsychopathy Checklist, ideas from these pages have changed the wider culture. One thing hasn't changed in 50 years: Our favorite topic is still ourselves.
1: The Small-World Problem (May 1967)
Psychology Today blasts off with, among other articles, "The Small-World Problem," in which pioneering social psychologist Stanley Milgram explores human connectedness. Milgram's article not only directly begat John Guare's 1990 playSix Degrees of Separation, the title by which the phenomenon is now generally known (which begat the Hollywood parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon), but almost single-handedly launched network research. Milgram's finding that five intermediaries stand mathematically between any two randomly selected individuals suggests a comforting conceptual coziness that may not exist in actual psychological life. Still, the idea has only grown in importance, as researchers seek to understand the influence of the real-life and digital networks in which people are embedded. Network research since 1967 shows technology (e.g. LinkedIn) accelerating connectedness so that we are now a mere four degrees apart.
2: A Conversation with Viktor Frankl (Feb 1968)
The Viennese psychiatrist who found that even the Holocaust did not dim man's need to wrench meaning from life presciently urges Americans to adopt a "metaclinical" perspective—grounding the psychological view of patients in a philosophical one, so as to see them as more than damaged brains to be repaired. In his view of humanism, self-actualization, likehappiness, is destroyed to the extent that it is pursued directly; both are byproducts of striving for meaning.
3: Desensitization Therapy (June 1969)
The gradual exposure to what youfear, while in a state of therapist-induced deep relaxation, has become a widely successful cure for phobias. But when Joseph Wolpe introduces his behavioral technique of systematic desensitization—in which patients unlearn the real-life fears to which they have been conditioned—he is taking a big chunk out of the prevailingFreudian ideology.
4: Birth Order (Dec 1970)
Another bite out of Freudianism comes from Walter Toman's research on family constellations, indicating that siblings influence majorpersonality characteristics and determine how you interact with the world at least as much as parents do. According to Toman's duplication theory, whom you choose as spouse and friends replicates the relationship you had with the siblings who helped form you. Subsequent research has failed to confirm any influence ofbirth order on personality, but the idea remains popular.
5: Groupthink (Nov 1971)
Escalation of the unwinnable war in Vietnam, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, blindness to the possibility of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—all were the result of smart people engaging in socially conformistdecision making, a process psychologist Irving Janis dubs "groupthink" after analyzing hundreds of historical documents and meeting notes of participants. In identifying the subtleties of group processes whereby dissent is discouraged and critical thinking sacrificed, Janis describes the eternal dangers facing policymakers and leaders everywhere. Although Janis offers timeless pointers on how to avoid future fiascos (from encouraging the open airing of doubts to asking outside experts to challenge the views of key group members), many analysts later see the U.S. decision to invade Iraq as a prime consequence of groupthink.
6: Beauty: The Halo Effect (Mar 1972)
Exploding the democratic belief that appearance is superficial with little influence on people's lives, social psychologists Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Walster Hatfield report that physicalattractiveness is more important than we generally acknowledge. In pioneering studies, they demonstrate that looks shape social experience, which in turn shapesself-concept, and that their influence begins at a "startlingly early" age, in nursery school. Classmates, teachers, friends, and, eventually, dates—all attribute an array of positive personality traits to the attractive and interact with them as if they do, in fact, have those traits. The good-looking are deemed morally superior, too, and given the benefit of the doubt where others are not. The so-called "halo effect" of beauty, however, does not ensure life's biggest rewards—a happymarriage and life satisfaction.
7: Learned Helplessness (June 1973)
The understanding ofdepression takes a giant leap forward when psychologistMartin Seligman "stumbles upon" the discovery that animals exposed to a shock from which they can't escape don't even bother trying when they are later free to do so and even likely to succeed. Unable to control their environment, the animals learn that any actions they take make no difference—and that exactly parallels the symptoms exhibited by depressed individuals. Cognitivetherapy addresses much of the self-relatedpessimism that is characteristic oflearned helplessness.
8: The Unreliable Eyewitness (Dec 1974)
The malleability ofmemory makes the accounts of eyewitnesses unreliable, even though their reports carry a lot of weight with jurors. Just how malleable is memory? Elizabeth Loftus establishes that the difference between "Did you seethe broken headlight?" and "Did you seea broken headlight" could be a wrongful conviction: "Memory itself undergoes a change as a result of the type of questions asked."
9: Play Is Serious Business (Jan 1975)
The findings of primatologists, including Jane Goodall, persuade psychologists like Jerome Bruner that play is a fit, not frivolous, topic for study. Bruner's observations show that play, a vehicle for experimentation and discovery, is the principal business ofchildhood. Children actually work out complex rules for their play and learn to subordinate their impulses to them. Researchers are still trying to decode all that goes on during children's play and how it contributes to human development.
10: Adult Life Stages (Feb 1975)
Psychiatrist Roger Gould introduces the idea that adults don't simply age—they undergo psychological development, in more or less discrete phases, throughout adulthood as they take on new roles and discover "what is important in living." People become more appreciative of complexity in the world and in their own mental life and, provided they confront and think through their feelings, become more tolerant of themselves. Adults experience psychological expansion in a sequence of predictable stages, Gould finds, because they share many common challenges. Gould's work was the basis for Gail Sheehy's Passages.
11: The Social Disease Called Shyness (May 1975)
Fresh off the Stanford prison experiment, psychologist Philip Zimbardo discovers thatshyness is another, very different, kind of prison, one that holds captive up to 40 percent of Americans, by their own admission. While the shy engage in excessive self-monitoring and social evaluation, theirs is more a social problem than a personal one, Zimbardo finds, because what they "torture themselves" with are the values of a culture that overemphasizescompetition,assertiveness, and individual success. Still, most shy individuals find their situation painful and would prefer release.
12: The Universality of Facial Expressions (Sept 1975)
Symbolic gestures may differ by culture, but facial expressions ofemotion do not, finds psychologist Paul Ekman. The primary emotions of humankind are biologically based, neutrally programmed, so that evolution has endowed isolated New Guinea tribespeople with the same distinctive patterns of facial wrinkles and movements as American college students in displaying their feelings, allowing them to recognize them in others. What does differ from culture to culture are the precise rules about when to display particular emotions. With the expressions andmicroexpressions that move across faces in response to experiences providing objective evidence of psychological truth, lie detection takes a giant leap forward.
13: Reading Body Language (Oct 1977)
Just as facial muscles reveal true feelings, suites of body postures objectively reflect more complex attitudes, researchers find. And most of us are not very good at reading the language the body speaks, which can modify, amplify, and even contradict what the mouth is saying. "Nonverbal performances"—expressed in vocal tone and facial expression as well as in hand gestures and body stance—stream by quickly, but, studies show, they are indispensible for communicating with and understanding others.
14: What Makes Happy Marriages (Oct 1982)
John Gottman throws open a big window into intimate relationships by scrutinizing videotapes and simultaneous physiological measurements of nearly 500 married couples discussing their problems and discovers what distinguishes happy from unhappy marriages. The happy couples are friends, show mutual respect, and share the day's events with each other in relaxed ways. In unhappy marriages, men are bad at reading their wife's nonverbal expressions of feelings, and both partners react unusually strongly to provocative statements. Ifanger turns to bitterness, they're in trouble. Gottman not only transforms relationship research but sets in motion a deepening understanding of marriage processes still relevant today.
15: Brain Imaging (July 1983)
The age of functional brain imaging arrives with PET scanning, opening both brain and mind to unprecedented observation by displaying brain metabolism (as measured through blood flow) in real time in living individuals. It is just one of several new visualizing devices that reveal the mind in operation—where and how it processes experience and organizes behavior. Neuroimaging not only has enabled improved diagnosis and treatment of disorders, it has stimulated a tsunami of research into the complexities of emotional and cognitive processes.
16: Rx: Biofeedback (Feb 1985)
Devices that make the invisible perceptible enable behavioral training that helps people recover lost function or modify visceral responses (such as digestion) long thought to be involuntary. Psychologist Neal Miller is on the front line of using modern, sensitive measuring equipment to translate physiological activity into observable signals that allow the development of awareness and voluntary control by learning. Long-lasting relief ofmigraine and tension headache and urinary and fecal incontinence, as well asstress reduction, is now possible through a course of biobehavioral training.
17: A Conversation with Abraham Maslow (Feb 1992)
The psychologist who introduced the concepts of peak experience and self-actualization, and specified the hierarchy of needs to be fulfilled on the path to actualization, died at the peak of his influence, in 1970, but not before givingPT a major interview, published more than two decades later. "Peak experiences," he said, "come from love andsex, from aesthetic moments, from bursts ofcreativity, from moments of insight and discovery, or from fusion with nature." He had hoped to establish an empirically based "comprehensive human psychology" proving that "humans are capable of something grander than war,prejudice, and hatred."
18: The Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Feb 1994)
They're glib and they charm to get what they want, but they manipulate anddeceive. Totally withoutconscience, they cause much damage to others. Psychopaths exist in every society and always have. But psychologist Robert Hare has made it his mission to help others spot them quickly by developing a list of their key traits and behaviors that he has spent a quarter century observing as a prison psychologist and a researcher of human behavior. His Psychopathy Checklist is a diagnostic tool for trained clinicians. But from grandiose estimation of self, lack of empathy, and parasitic lifestyle to impulsivity and irresponsibility, the list of traits is clear enough to raise suspicion in any human being who encounters a person so constituted.
19: Meet the Bully (Oct 1995)
Research on children's social development converges to provide a full portrait of bullies as a special breed of children who begin their aggressive behavior at an early age. By exploiting a power imbalance—bullies tend to be bigger or older or faster than their victims—they get what they want, at least in the short term; in the long run they often wind up as losers, increasingly disliked, spinning their way to outcast status. One thing the research shows: Bullies don't pick on just anybody—they single out those who are submissive even in nonthreatening circumstances. For anyone, being bullied tends to be an indeliblehumiliation, and it leaves lifelong marks, including susceptibility to depression.
20: The Orgasm Wars (Dec 1996)
Femalesexual climax has long been a mystery to science: Why does it even exist? After all, women don't need orgasm to conceive. At last, science discovers that female orgasm has a purpose—it helps a woman select the best sperm to produce the healthiest offspring, greatly increasing the odds of infant survival. Researchers find that women have the most orgasms with men whose bodies are most symmetrical, a marker for stronggenes and immune competence. Through the studies, science subtly alters the status of women by revealing their orgasms as less an oddity than a complex and discriminating mechanism of species survival.
21: A Nation of Wimps (Dec 2004)
The rising tide of mental health problems among college students is attributed to the contemporary culture of overparenting, aka "helicopterparenting." In the 1980s, parents began sensing that the world was changing—competition was becoming global—and started pushing their children to achieve academically or athletically. To smooth the path to success, they now take the lumps and bumps out of life for their kids. Despite good intentions, raising children with no experience of difficulty weakens them from within. Outside the nest, they have no clue how to solve problems and, experiencing every disappointment as a major stressor, fracture along their psychic fault lines. The article is the first to point out how the growing mental fragility of students is changing the tenor of campus life.
22: The Peak-End Rule (Feb 2005)
Memory is a tricky thing; it does not record events exactly as they unfold. Instead, people engage in an array of energy-sparing mental shortcuts. Daniel Kahneman finds that people time-sample their experiences and encode an event according to how they feel at its peak and at its end. The so-called peak-end rule governs memory and tilts it toward emotionally intense events. How happy we are with our lives is a judgment we make based not on actual experience but on time-sampled remembered experience.
23: Protective Prejudice (Dec 2013)
Sometimes, what seems like bad social behavior may have highly adaptive origins. Avoiding the man in the wheelchair or denigrating the obese woman may be a sign of "protective prejudice." New research suggests that such actions may reflect the workings of the behavioral immune system, an innate set of reactions that originally helped us avoid the unusual, which carried the threat of infection. In a modern environment where infectious disease is no longer a constant threat, it is possible to override the sensitivity of the behavioral immune system and learn that some cues are no longer relevant.
24: Prime Time for Daydreaming (Apr 2014)
Long maligned as a useless activity, daydreaming gains scientific respectability. The self-generated (as opposed to perception-generated) thoughts that constitute daydreaming are a kind of autobiographical planning; they foster pursuit of long-termgoals.Mind-wandering is so important, it has its own inward-tuned channel in the brain, thedefault mode network. Optimal functioning is not the product ofright brain/left brain thinking; it's a balance ofexecutive function and subscription to the default mode network.
25: Saving the Brain with Food (Dec 2016)
Alzheimer's is not a disease of old age but a lifelong process that reaches a tipping point only after age 50, research indicates. Fed right, the human brain does not inevitably facememory decline. Cognitive health is a function ofdiet: Food is fuel for the processes that power brain cells, which become less efficient over time. Eating to stave off brain aging is a matter not only of what—vegetables, nuts, and berries are good—but when. Overnight fasting triggers cell-renewal mechanisms that maintain function—perhaps for the next 50 years—by restoring the brain's sensitivity to its main fuel, glucose.
PT in the 21st Century
Until 2003,PT existed only as a print publication. That year marked the introduction of theTherapy Directory, a searchable online listing of psychologists, psychiatrists, and other licensed professionals offering clinical services to the growing numbers of people looking for direct help in improving well-being. Today, nearly half of all people engaging in therapy find a mental health practitioner through theTherapy Directory.
In 2008,Psychology Todayfurther expanded, launching a community of expert bloggers that now numbers some 900 contributors, from neuroscientists to NASA astronauts (and the occasional magician-writer). The site has made its own dent on the world—if you've ever wondered whether French kids getADHD or rued the "dumbing down" of America, chances are aPT blog planted the seed. Each month, the community's work is viewed more than 30 million times by an audience around the globe. In 2067 there will be many more great hits to share—perhaps via direct brain upload.
