Applied Psychology and Social Justice: One and the Same.

TheAppliedPsychologist attended a roundtable discussing whether or not Applied Psychologists (Industrial-Organizational Psychologists) should be involved in social justice.  To the Renegades, that answer is obvious: our field IS social justice. There are many people who believe that fairness, employee development, and concerns about adverse impact will always eventually contradict the profit-oriented motivations of businesses.  I have a word for social scientists and business owners who act within this framework:

Lazy.

It's hard to believe we have to say this in 2012, yet here we go: just because a problem hasn't been solved does not mean that problem is unsolvable.  The Arthur Jensens and Charles Murrays of the world would have you believe that people of specific races and/or within the lowest socioeconomic classes are genetically less intelligent than others.  Murray in particular seems to suggest that attempts to create 'race-neutral' cognitive ability (intelligence) tests are a waste of time.

Well, that must settle things!  After all, mankind has never ended up making discoveries that contradicted scholarly opinions held for decades!   We should just stop trying, because the experts of the past 50 years have weighed in!  No progress to be made here!

(In case you couldn't tell, the previous paragraph was sarcastic.)

It's difficult to swallow such limp conclusions from those who don the cover of science to defend them.  Then again, high-profile researchers aren't often known to possess uniform amounts of humility.

When executed properly, the principles of applied psychology benefit everyone.  They improve the lives of individuals, the selection of employees, and the profit margins of businesses.  Attempts to create and popularize fair and effective business practices only fail for the following three reasons: they are developed poorly, they are executed poorly, or they are evaluated poorly.  In this regard, they are no different from almost everything else human beings ever try to accomplish.