Usefulness

• Usefulness


  Whether research can be used
• Benefits of useful research

  • It can have positive practical applications that can improve the quality of people's lives
  • If research is likely to have practical applications then it is more likely that the research will actually be carried out
  • It can improve the reputation of psychology as an academic subject
• Drawbacks of useful research

  • Research which is useful can be put to bad uses as well as good uses
  • If two people on opposite sides both make use of the same psychological insight then the usefulness of the research is cancelled out
  • If it is implied that research ought to be useful then psychologists might not due pure research that isn't useful but could be useful in the future
  • If it is all-important that research is useful then this could put pressure on researcher to breach some ethical guidelines