Psychology

Go to a general science meeting (such as the British Ass or the AAAS) and observe the press conferences. Now compare the "hard science" events with those of the softer, social scientists. I have had the opportunity to do this many times and am often struck by how particle physicists and cosmologists manage to bring very arcane subjects to life. They make their tricky fields apparently comprehensible and rational (this, of course, has to be an illusion, because the subjects are so mathematical). Now listen to the psychologists. I, for one, often (but not always) find them much more baffling. They often resort to jargon that makes life seem much more obscure than it should be (positive affect = being happy. Perhaps this obscurantism should not come as a surprise. We haven't a clue what consciousness is, and people are much more complicated than individual particles, after all. But, using all this unhelpful jargon, they often state the obvious too ("They were chocoholics because they liked the taste of chocolate"..."Education is linked to good health habits" ..."Anger and sadness frame how we respond to a terrorist attack"). The very thought of having to dip into the literature of psychology defocuses my affect regulation skills to engender significant negative affective behaviour.