How many fields of psychology are there?

Question

I can't find an exact answer anywhere in my text book. :(

I really just need a number.

Answer 1

social, personality, cognitive, evolutionary, biological and developmental (basic ones). Then you have the applied ones like clinical, educational, organizational and industrial.

that's what i know, there may be more


if i had to pick a number it would be 7, the non-applied fields:
..see above, and 2 more: comparative and abnormal. I'm not sure if evolutionary is an independent field.

Answer 2

It's hard (or perhaps impossible) to come up with an exact number, because there is a fair amount of overlap in the research. Would a research study of brain activation among infants be classified as developmental psychology or neuropsych? There is also a large push to integrate different areas as a result of funding and other issues. There are also fields that are more applied derivations of other areas than areas all to themselves (like industrial/organizational being derived from social and personality psychology).

In short, it seems like a simple question, but there is no set answer. The American Psychological Association lists 54 active divisions, but like I mentioned above, there is plenty of overlap so any one psychologist may do research that falls within several divisions.

Answer 3

There's really no exact number, but here's what APA lists as some major areas with a brief description of each (17, I count, but their list isn't exhaustive):

http://www.apa.org/topics/psychologycareer.html

Answer 4

There are several fields of psychology, including

clinical/counselling
human factors/ergonomics
social
developmental
industrial/organizational
cognitive
experimental/biological
school/educational

Answer 5

There are three main ones; clinical, forensic and organisational.