Scientist or therapist: Is one's view of psychology a matter of values

This study investigated the congruence between participants' own values and the values they perceived to be characteristic of science. It was hypothesized that extent of self/science value congruence would be related to both gender and views about the nature of psychology. One hundred and forty undergraduate and graduate psychology students completed the Science Issues Survey and a scale indicating the extent to which they viewed psychology as a science or as a helping profession. Graduate students indicated their program of enrollment (clinical/experimental) and undergraduates who intended to go to graduate school indicated their intended program of enrollment. Participants also ranked the importance of possible future activities in which they would engage (i.e., research, teaching, or applied work). For all participants, an incongruence between the values of self and science was found. Participants viewed science as justice-oriented while they viewed themselves as care-oriented. Gender, view of psychology, and program were unrelated to self/science value incongruence. Two post-hoc findings were of interest. First, amount of training in psychology (undergraduate/graduate), in combination with gender and with view of psychology, was related to participants' self and science values. Follow-up analyses indicated that both selection and socialization appeared to be related to these effects of amount of psychology training. Second, rankings given to the importance of research as an intended future activity in psychology were related to participants' self/science value incongruence. Although quantitative results indicated that neither gender nor view of psychology were related to the extent of incongruence between self and science values, interviews with twelve of the participants indicated that gender and view of psychology may have been related to participants' epistemological views. Results are related to research on women's attitudes toward science and to the debate about psychology's identity as a science or a helping profession.