John Amaechi: belief

Transcript context

…How do you think you are different as a psychologist from, say, a median psychologist with broadly a similar demographic background? Whilst I’m an incredibly robust scientist, I’m interested in the evidence-based process and using the best possible research, I am not interested in appearing clever to people. I’m interested in people understanding. And I think many psychologists, especially those who make them their names in academia, they want to write in a way that makes what they know seem completely inaccessible, if not magic. And I want to write in a way that makes everybody know that what I know is ordinary and easily gainable if you’re willing to engage in the process. That is one of the reasons. One of the other reasons is that I am a practical psychologist. I’m interested in what psychology can do to make people’s lives better. I want to help people thrive. And so for me, psychology is not theoretical; it’s pragmatic. And I do have lots of colleagues who think that way too, but a lot of the very famous ones, it appears that they write for a theoretical audience rather than an audience living in a very real and rather challenging world. What do you think is an overrated idea in current psychology?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.