Too Close?

A professor of mine, a social psychologist by training, and I had a little run in the other day. I think it’s interesting, so I’m sharing it with you:

I made the assertion that cognitive neuroscience, in contrast to social psychology, was probably the biggest thrust currently in the discipline of psychology.

He objected, with an unsupported statement. Something to the effect of, “I disagree, this is really important.”

To which I said. “No, I agree completely, this is really interesting, and totally worth while, but psychology as a field is moving away from social and personality fields.”

He repeated his objection.

I said, “There have to be way more new Ph.D.’s and tenure-track jobs in cognitive/neuroscience than there are in social and personality jobs.”

He conceded the factuality of that point, with the comment that “That has to do with funding and money.”

Precisely.