Thanks for your comments. I'm really interested in controversies inside the field of psychology. That is why I have not find the "Taking Sides" books very helpful and the topics are mostly constroversies that are non-issues (no, homosexuality is not a mental illness) or not controversies within the field of psychology (e.g., animal rights).
I'm still interested in more controversies.
Marie
"John W. Kulig" wrote:
Richard Pisacreta wrote:> I suggest the never ending controversy over what intelligence is, how to
> measure it (only psych can say we don't have a consensus on what it is, but
> here are five tests to measure it)
> How much of it is nature and how much nurture.I agree, this is the mother of controversial issues - if by controversial we
mean debate _outside_ the circle of experts who study it. Inside this circle
there is wide-spead agreement on many measurement issues, heritability, and so
forth. In fact, we measure intelligence as good as we measure any other complex
trait, as evidenced by the extensive ability of intelligence scores to predict
real-life outcomes.
If you want another controversy that has not been in the news, look at
Kingsley Browne's _Divided Labours: An Evolutinary View of Women at Work_ (1998,
Yale). It's an evolutionary explanation of what is known as the "glass ceiling"
effect for women.
If by controversy we mean a new paradigm in the making, then I'd vote for
evolutionary psychology. The issue here will be finding methods to evaluate
claims made by evolutionary psychologists. There is alot of speculation about
what is an adaptation (as opposed to an evolutionary by-product), what modules
are, and so forth.--
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John W. Kulig [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology http://oz.plymouth.edu/~kulig
Plymouth State College tel: (603) 535-2468
Plymouth NH USA 03264 fax: (603) 535-2412
---------------------------------------------------------------
"What a man often sees he does not wonder at, although he knows
not why it happens; if something occurs which he has not seen before,
he thinks it is a marvel" - Cicero.
--
Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Transylvania University
300 North Broadway
Lexington, KY 40508-1797
Office: (859) 281-3656
Web page: http://www.transy.edu/homepages/mhelweglarsen/index2.html
