Goleman calls on psychologists to be better communicators

We live in an inhumane world and it's psychology's job to humanize it, according to Daniel Goleman, PhD. How? By communicating psychology to the public, not just talking to other psychologists, said Goleman at a Sunday session during APA's Annual Convention.

This type of communication has been the backbone of Goleman's career. After graduating from Harvard with a doctorate in development psychology, he faced a dilemma: He knew a little about a wide range of subjects, but not enough about any particular thing to specialize in it. So he went to work for Psychology Today and The New York Times to write about psychology for the public. He later wrote his best-selling books on emotional and social intelligence.

The writing allowed him to share psychology's big, important ideas in psychology with an audience that might never hear about them otherwise.

That experience has convinced him that psychologists would do well to learn how to better communicate psychology on their own. To do that, they need to break out of "journalese," that esoteric tongue spoken in academic journals and nowhere else, and adopt language that everyday people can understand and benefit from, he said.