Psychology, Interdisciplinarity and the Major Challenges of the 21st Century

Liam Delaney
Talk to the DU Psychological Society, 24th January 2008.
Room 1.11 Aras an Phiarsiagh 6pm
All Welcome - No Admisson Fee!

Talk Outline
Some of the key challenges faced by the world in the 21st century can, at least partly, be tackled by psychology. This talk will discuss a number of ways in which psychology, through interactions with other scientific disciplines such as economics has a big impact in these key areas. The first area of discussion refers to globalisation and economics. While economics has tended to focus on the economic benefits to globalisation, it is clear that there are pressing psychological dimensions to globalisation and that understanding these is necessary for a true understanding of trade, migration and investment in a global economy. The second area I focus on is the ageing world. Ireland, like many other countries, is getting progressively older and this is the defining demographic shift of the 21st century. How Ireland and other countries adapt to this in terms of health care and pension reform will largely determine our standard of living as we grow older. I will give key examples of recent papers in economic psychology that have contributed to understanding and managing the complexities of this demographic transition. The third area I focus on is well-being, the environment and national planning. We continuously observe discussion in the media about indicators such as economic growth and inflation yet there is less real analysis about what exactly makes people better off in terms of their psychological well-being, which ultimately is what we should be trying to improve. I talk about how psychologists have been collaborating with economists and environmental scientists to derive new measures of national well-being that may eventually replace or heavily supplement the standard measures you will all be familiar with from watching the news. In this regard, I discuss key issues that have emerged over the “Celtic Tiger” period such as the unprecedented increase in the male suicide rate, the question of whether increased money provides increased happiness and the extent to which certain groups in society have benefited differently from the increased growth and the potential psychological consequences of this. In particular, I talk about the psychological impact of being isolated, disabled, unemployed, acting as a full-time carer, being “over-worked” and other potentially psychologically painful states. I also review current thinking examining the role that psychological services and treatments will have to play in improving global well-being in the 21st century. The final part of my talk summarises the area of behavioural economics which is a mixture of economics and psychology and focuses on decision making in key life domains. Under this heading, I discuss the growing area of neuroeconomics in which key life decisions are explained with reference to how people make tradeoffs with respect to risk and time and how these decisions are implemented by different brain areas. I also discuss the recent literature on the behavioural economics of student choices and briefly overview some of my own work that has examined risk behaviour among Irish students and how behavioural economics is being employed to examine areas such as financial decision and transport choice. This talk will be of interest to people who want to understand the wider role of psychology and may provide stimulation as to potential career options that had not been considered before.