Specialty Areas in Psychology

What are some of the major specialty areas of psychology? Psychology is remarkably diverse with a tremendous range of specialty areas, and psychologists seem to be in more demand than ever.

Psychologists frequently choose to specialize in a subfield that is focused on a particular subject within psychology. Many of these specialty areas in psychology require graduate study in a given area of interest. Learn more about some of the largest subfields in which psychologists work.

Let's take a closer look at a few major specialty areas in psychology.

Clinical Psychology

Clinical psychologists make up the single largest specialty area in psychology. Clinicians are psychologists who assess, diagnose, and treat mental illnesses. Typical work settings include hospitals, schools, universities, prisons, mental health clinics, and private practices. Work settings can vary based on the particular population that a clinician is specialized in working with.

Some clinical psychologists work with a wide range of clients while others specialize in treating certain types of psychological disorders or a certain age group. Working with the general population can include individuals, couples, or families coping with stress, mental illness, substance abuse, or relationship problems.

There are a number of sub-specialty areas in clinical psychology including health psychology, neuropsychology, and geropsychology. For example, some clinical psychologists might work in a hospital setting with individuals suffering from brain injuries or neurological conditions. Other clinical psychologists might work in a mental health center to counsel children recovering from abuse and trauma.

Clinical psychologists usually perform a broad range of tasks on a daily basis such as interviewing patients, conducting assessments, giving diagnostic tests, providing psychotherapy, and administering intervention programs.

Counseling Psychology

Counseling psychologists make up another large specialty area in psychology. These professionals perform many of the same tasks that clinical psychologists do, but counseling psychologists tend to work with clients suffering from less severe forms of mental illness.

Counseling psychology focuses on providing therapeutic treatments to clients who experience a wide variety of symptoms. The Society of Counseling Psychology describes the field as "a specialty within professional psychology that maintains a focus on facilitating personal and interpersonal functioning across the life span. The specialty pays particular attention to emotional, social, vocational, educational, health-related, developmental, and organizational concerns."

Experimental Psychology

Experimental psychologists (or research psychologists) conduct research on the behavior of humans and animals. They often work at universities, private research centers, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Some major areas of research include genetics, neuroscience, motivation, substance abuse, cognitive processes, and social psychology.

Forensic Psychology

Forensic psychologists work in the specialty area that deals with the intersection of psychology and the law. Forensic psychologists are often involved in custody disputes, insurance claims, and lawsuits. Some professionals work in family courts and offer psychotherapy services, perform child custody evaluations, investigate reports of child abuse, and conduct visitation risk assessments.

Those working in the civil courts often assess competency, provide second opinions, and provide psychotherapy to crime victims. Professionals working in criminal courts conduct evaluations of mental competency, work with child witnesses, and provide an assessment of juvenile and adult offenders.

They may even get involved with criminal profiling, analyzing the nature of the crime to determine the personality and other characteristics of a criminal offender. Criminal psychology is a subset of forensic psychology.

Human Factors and Engineering Psychology

Human factors is a specialty area of psychology that focuses on a range of different topics, including ergonomics, workplace safety, human error, product design, human capability, and human-computer interaction.

Human factors involve applying the principles of psychology in designing products and creating work environments that boost productivity while minimizing safety issues.

The field of human factors formally began during World War II, when a range of experts worked together to improve the safety of airplanes. Since that time, human factors psychology has continued to grow and today plays an important role in many other fields, including computing, manufacturing, product design, engineering, military, and government industries.

Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology focuses on workplace behavior. The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists (SIOP) describes I/O psychology as a field that "tries to understand and measure human behavior to improve employees' satisfaction in their work, employers' ability to select and promote the best people, and to generally make the workplace better for the men and women who work there."

I/O psychologists perform a variety of functions, including hiring qualified employees, developing performance evaluation criteria, creating training courses, and performing research on different aspects of the workplace such as employee and consumer satisfaction.

The rising demand for skilled psychologists has led to an increase in the number of university programs offering degrees in industrial-organizational psychology.

School Psychology

School psychologists are part of a specialty area that involves working within the educational system to help children with emotional, social, and academic issues. The goal of school psychology is to collaborate with parents, teachers, and students to promote a healthy learning environment that focuses on the needs of children.

School psychologists provide psychological and academic assessments and arrange interventions and support for students as needed. They also work with teachers and parents to develop techniques to deal with home and classroom behavior.

Other tasks include training students, parents, and teachers about how to manage crisis situations and substance abuse problems.

Social Psychology

Social psychologists are focused on understanding how interactions with other people impact individual and group behavior. Prominent areas of study include group behavior, leadership, attitudes, and perception.

These professionals often work in universities or may be sought by organizations focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some will get into politics and policy development. They can also engage in market research, organizational management, conflict resolution, and other applied areas.

Final Thoughts

These are some of the fastest-growing specialties in psychology and have the highest demand in the years to come. With an ever-changing political climate, economic stressors, and the demands of life, there will be no shortage of jobs for psychologists. Considering our increasing interface with technology and artificial intelligence, there is a focus on new ways to promote mental health through virtual reality, apps, language and behavior analysis, chatbots, and more. If you are interested in exploring your career options in the field of psychology, there are infinite possibilities.