<p>How strong is Brown’s CLPS department in social and behavioral psychology? From what I glean off the website, it seems as though the department has more of a cognitive/hard sciencey than social sciencey approach towards psychology - is this a fair assessment? If yes, why is this the case? Is this something unique to Brown’s department or is this true for most psych departments at research universities?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>The CLPS department is the result of a recent merger between two departments, Cog/Ling and Psych. From what I can tell, the merger is part of the slow death of traditional psychology, and it’s replacement with cognitive science, which is not unique to Brown. I would assume that the department still has all of the traditional psych courses (abnormal, personality, emotion, etc.) and all of the cog sci courses, and that it’s somewhat two-headed, at least for the moment.</p>
<p>All of that said, I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘social psychology’ (although that might be because I’ve never really studied psychology). Can you give some guidance about exactly what you’re looking for?</p>
<p>This appears to be an accurate description of the situation at Brown, I am sad to say (as an othewise very happy Brown parent with a Ph.D. in psychology, married to another Ph.D. in psychology). It is not, however, an accurate description of the field of psychology. Not by a long shot.</p>
<p>Here is a list of the top social psychology graduate programs:</p>
<p>[NRC</a> Ranking of U.S. Psychology Ph.D. Programs](<a href=“http://www.socialpsychology.org/ranking.htm]NRC”>NRC Ranking of U.S. Psychology Ph.D. Programs)</p>
<p>@mgcsinc</p>
<p>Well, for example, I’m particularly interested in studying stuff like depression, addiction, gender roles and other social dynamics from sociocultural context. I haven’t studied psychology formally so I might be misunderstanding the discipline entirely and you might be right in that my understanding of psychology is overly traditional and undergoing a “slow death” (although it seems bedford disagrees?). I just don’t want Brown’s relative strength and emphasis in cognitive science to skew my understanding about subjects like addiction towards a biological explanation as opposed to a sociocultural one. I don’t know- I might be over-thinking this. I’m torn between choosing a few colleges and I’m trying to find out everything I can about their departments in my potential majors/concentrations. As ever, I appreciate the insight!</p>
<p>@bedford</p>
<p>Thanks for the link! Do you think Brown seems to rank so poorly in these lists because of its relatively small grad school or do you think they are reflective of the department’s quality? At the moment, I think I’d like to pursue a PhD in psychology. Do you think Brown is a good place to learn psych (esp. social psych) as an undergraduate? (I’m also considering Swarthmore and UChicago)</p>
<p>If you look over the list of CLPS faculty and their areas of interest and expertise, you will find that there aren’t very many who list social, clinical, personality or developmental psychology. (You could also look at the CLPS website and faculty C.V.'s more closely to see if any of them are doing anything in the areas you list – depression, addiction, etc.) I think Brown’s low ranking in the list I gave you (which was only social psychology) is largely a result of that. I think the quality of what IS happening in CLPS is probably very high (just like everything else on campus). The department just seems to have decided to go in a particular direction.</p>
<p>I would suggest you try to get a copy of a leading intro psycho textbook, like the ones by
Doug Bernstein and John Caccioppa. If you read them, you will get a better sense of the entire field of psychology, including who is doing what research that interests you. Then you can find out where they teach and take a closer look at their home departments.</p>
<p>All that said, I’d advise against specializing and narrowing your interests too much as a high school student. Psychology is a huge field with a lot of exciting things going on.</p>
<p>It sounds to me that your interests are somewhere between psych and other humanities such as sociology, anthropology, gender studies, etc.</p>
<p>If it makes any difference, I was at ADOCH and sat in on a large-ish Social Psych class taught in Salomon by Fiery Cushman, and everyone I talked to raved about it. I loved it as well.</p>