Het nut van de sociale psychologie voor preventie van ziekte en omgaan met ziekte

summary

What social psychology can do for prevention of illness and adaptation to illness

The progress in fundamental social psychological research has become smaller and because of this, our society increasingly pushes scientific social psychology, and other sciences, into the direction of utility and valorisation. At the same time there is a painful short of use of social psychological knowledge in our society to solve problems. For example, about 50% of the yearly deaths are related to changeable behaviour and 30-50% of patients do not take their medicines as prescribed. These problems can only be solved with the use of knowledge on human social psychological functioning. Thus, processes take place that try to shape social psychology towards a higher societal pay-off. To serve society but stick to the own strict scientific identity, social psychology should explicitly claim an area of application, that of the societal, social and individual ’normal’ problems. In addition, social psychology should define its research in three types: refinement, integration and application. Refinement is the ongoing study of (increasingly less influential) new fundamental social psychological laws. Integration is the study of relations and interactions between fundamental social psychological laws to approach the complexity of real-world human functioning. Application is the use of fundamental social psychological laws to solve societal, social and individual problems. All three types of research, not only applied research, are needed to serve society while preserving the high scientific standards in social psychology.