Talk:Individual differences psychology

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"Individual differences psychology" searched for as a phrase has 350 google hits, and "differential psychology" has 29,000 hits. Any objections to moving the article to the latter title?--Nectar 02:34, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, differential psychology is the correct term for the field of study concerning individual differences. I created a "differential psychology" page and I think this one should just be deleted as it isn't very good. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]]).

The standard phrase would be "(psychology of) individual differences". It is difficult to count google hits for this because "psychology of" is usually omitted and "individual differences" may refer to other than psychological differences.

"Differential psychology" is a very old-fashioned expression. Nobody uses it any more except historians.

In standard use, "(psychology of) individual differences" refers to the study ofpersonality and intelligence, which, for historical reasons, are treated as the two subfields of psychology that are mainly concerned with individual differences. There are two objections to this: (a) neither personality nor intelligence are exclusively about individual differences, and (b) there are individual differences in all areas of psychology (memory, attention, development, social behavior, etc).

This article should describe these ambiguities rather than pretending that "individual differences psych" exists as a separate subfield of psychology. The "(psychology of) individual differences" has some relevance today as an interdisciplinary programme. See, for example [1] the "about" section on the homepage of Journal of Individual Differences:

The Journal of Individual Differences publishes manuscripts dealing with individual differences in behavior, emotion, cognition, and their developmental aspects. This includes human as well as animal research. The Journal of Individual Differences is conceptualized to bring together researchers working in different areas ranging from, for example, molecular genetics to theories of complex behavior. Moreover, it places emphasis on papers dealing with special methodological and conceptual issues in basic science as well as in their applied fields (assessment of personality and intelligence).

Lebatsnok 16:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)