Dr. Sven van de Wetering has just stepped down as head of psychology at the University of the Fraser Valley and is a now an associate professor in the same department. He is on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Dr. van de Wetering earned his BSc in Biology at The University of British Columbia, and Bachelors of Arts in Psychology at Concordia University, Master of Arts, and Ph.D. in Psychology from Simon Fraser University. His research interest lies in “conservation psychology, lay conceptions of evil, relationships between personality variables and political attitudes.” Here we discuss his background and views, part 3.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you consider the most salient point for people to understand about psychology in light of your background, research, and current perspective?
Dr. Sben van de Wetering: I’m not sure there is a salient core truth about psychology that I can impart. Psychology is a sprawling multi-tentacle monster with no obvious centre and very few widely shared premises. As I indicated above, I consider this a good thing, and maybe would even like to see it become more like this.
After saying that, I have to admit that pluralism makes me a little uncomfortable. I went into psychology thinking that there were a relatively small number of core truths about human nature. That those truths were discoverable, and that psychology either had found or would soon find the way to get at those truths. The truth about human nature would lead to a technology of human nature, which would make the solution of a large number of problems with psychological roots a much more straightforward matter than it currently is. I find it much harder to believe in this now, for two reasons. First, I seriously doubt that psychology is on track to discover many such truths. Second, to the extent that we do have a technology of human behavior, the people who use it are not concerned citizens trying to solve human problems, but rather rich people trying to get richer and powerful people trying to get more powerful. For example, advertisers use a technology of behaviour to induce people to buy goods they don’t need with money they don’t have, which is all right, I guess. However, in the process the advertisers incidentally persuade many people that buying things is the primary route to happiness. We have data suggesting that this is an astonishingly pernicious belief to hold.
Jacobsen: As you observe academics pursue their careers in search of fame, fortune, and/or utility (personal and/or societal), what course do you recommend for amateur academics? If you perceive pitfalls or benefits in particular reasons for and types of an academic career, can you bring some of these to the fore?
There are a bunch of different people who fall under the heading of amateur academics, and I think different things will bring them utility.
First, there are those who are in the academic world more or less by accident, perhaps even against their will. They`re living at home, and their parents will kick them out unless they either get a job or go to school. So they go to school. Or they`re on their own, but the economy`s bad, so they get student loans and study for a while.
I have a lot of sympathy for people in this situation. I have ‘been there, done that’. As an instructor, I often don`t like having people like this in my class, because their palpable boredom drags down the rest of the class, but I usually manage to avoid blaming them for it. I do have advice for such people: pretend you care. It`s not as good as really caring, of course, but it`s better than simmering in ennui and resentment for four years.
A second group, unfortunately much smaller, is motivated primarily by curiosity. These people don`t need advice. They`re in the right place, their appetite for new information will be satisfied as in almost no other environment, and all they have to do is follow their natural proclivities in order to succeed.
A third group, overlapping with the second, is the glory seekers. They hope to make a name for themselves by making some sort of big discovery, etc. My advice here is more complicated. First, if you`re part of this group, you`d better also be part of the second group, or you`re not going to make it. The process of discovery is so demanding of time and energy that if you don`t enjoy the actual process, you`re not going to get anywhere. Second, I`ve discovered that freedom is overrated.
Let me explain that remark. I`ve discovered that in graduate school, there are two sorts of academic supervisors. One type has a highly active research program on the go, with lots of graduate students and research assistants working on various components of that program. When the new graduate student comes, their range of freedom is severely limited: do they want to plug into this part of the program or that part? The second type of supervisor, for one reason or another, does not have a program of research which the student can plug into. They therefore give the student a great degree of freedom to do what they want. This has the advantage that the student can pursue their true interests, but also the disadvantage that the student gets relatively little guidance, and endlessly seems to be reinventing the wheel. This is a lot of fun for students in the second group, the highly curious, but a bit of a handicap for students in the third group, the glory-seekers, because productivity is likely to be low throughout graduate school and may remain low in their academic career.
Jacobsen: Who have been the biggest intellectual influences on you?
When looking back on who has exerted the biggest influence on my thinking, it`s remarkable how few are psychologists. My move into social psychology in the early 1990s was inspired by Shelley Taylor, but the longer I stay in the field, the less I actually draw on her ideas. The two books I have read in the last 10 years that have influenced me the most have been Jared Diamond`s Collapse and Robert Putnam`s Making Democracy Work. I`ve traditionally been a big fan of Wittgenstein, though that influence is also waning. Probably the single psychologist who has changed my thinking the most in the last little while is Philip Tetlock with his Expert Political Judgment, which really revitalized my uneasy endorsement of pluralism.
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Original publication on www.in-sightjournal.com.
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