The Hapiness Industry: Psychologists or fake experts?

Germn Parada Cores (Psiclogo General Sanitario. Colegiado G/04699)

Abstract This paper discusses the need of restore psychologists credibility and expertise to the Spanish public opinion. There was an important dispersion and "turbulence" in the national market, thus further psychologists have to compete with a large and (sometimes) picturesque service bids in the field of development or personal growth. In keeping with a Fairness & Reciprocity matter this paper aims to highlight the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the psychologist. "Most things are hidden.We don't see what goes into them." Therefore, how spanishs psychologist could be able to "create new challenges for the willingness to pay" in consumers? This offers a way forward for the re-negotiate its fairness and the marginal cost to the spanish consumer. Unfortunately psychology still, unfortunately, poorly applied. Intro There are an awesome proliferation in the development services for individual growth (p.e, better work performance, personal health and well-being). Its includes items closely related to my profession as psychologist (mental health, emotional intelligence, coaching...) Now, I will try to delimite this problem with the main criticisms have been detected in the methodology of the Hapiness Industry (fake experts, pseudo-coachers, self-help books), inter alia. Some of the most common biases in their procedures: a) False claim of historical novelty b) Ignore / No acknowledgment to previous work c) Little scientific quality: Circular reasoning, non causa pro causa, many vague concepts... (Prezlvarez, M. 2012; Fernndez-Rios & Novo. 2012) In summary, all of this contains a great deal of "untrue and redundant information and an endless amount of ill-founded theoretical and practical dubious assumptions and truisms. And all of these contributes to generating skepticism about Psychology in the public "(Lilienfeld, S.O. 2012) Bringing this issue to the extreme of absurdity, I note that there are many spanish professionals who offer themselves as highly skilled technicians or specialists, but I found numerous fake experts (p.e subjects trained and qualified by means a brief on-line course). Bad news, the "Hapiness industry", is targeting to many people who may be going through a big delicate (mental, emotional) moment in their lives and not only will find the solution you really need: Simply exacerbates the problem and aggravate them. Outline: Fake experts? In 2001, Frederic Brochet invited a group of wine experts and asked to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of wine, one Red and one White. Note, however, that both wines were actually the same red wine, one of which had been dyed in red with food coloring. All of these experts used the

typically terms and language to describe red wines ( virtues, organoleptic qualities). That is, the socalled experts failed to distinguish between a wine or another. (Brochet, F. 2001). In this research line, we face several studies where it is argued that "an increase in the perceived price increase activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (MOFC). MOFC is an area of the brain that is widely thought to encode for experienced pleasantness current. (Plassman et. Al. 2008). The MOFC "would be a neural region whose response would be modulated by such a monetary please "(Ann H. Harvey et al. 2010). This phenomenon not only affects Oenology public opinion, but also arts , and what happens in Psychology field? Probably its the same pattern, as marketing investigation argues. Generally, nave people have been shown a significant positive correlation between (over) price and (high) quality. For some goods and services, there is much heterogeneity in consumer tastes, making it harder to infer quality from revealed preferences. (Collin Rao, et al. 1989) Without limiting the foregoing, all the above it also serves to emphasize that its likely that spanishs consumers ( in personal health or well-being service) do not yet have enough criteria to evaluate the quality of this service offering, and may be they are not be able to distinguish the fake experts. Influenced nave users can have the (fake) impression that all worth (anything goes) in seeing the large variability in the market prices. In searching solutions If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make noise? Obviously, if there are any actual expert (factually, objetive) in one discipline but nobody hears him, simply wont influence on public opinion. What psychologists in Spain? Its disturbing to account all these things in a society obsessed with health and welfare, where people is looking for charlatan harangues, self-help books or magic formulas to responded to emerge problems and achieve happiness. Consequently, actual turbulence in the well-being market has led some to try and caricature devalue the profession of psychology. If you want to improve your professional image, you should consider how to improve your direct interventions with users. May be: a) Rewiew standards: Acknowledgment to previous work is added value on psychologist profession b) Reinforce the informative section and scientific of psychologist discipline c) Having more and better presence in the media (social networks, press, radio, tv...). I believe that the quality perceived by customers is the best way forward for the psychologist, with more strength and power than any other measure or social criticism.

Quote citation: (1) Prieto-Ursa Mara.(2006) Psicologa Positiva: una moda polmica. Clnica y Salud. 17(3): 319-338. (2) Prez-lvarez, M. (2012) La psicologa positiva. Magia Simptica. Papeles del Psiclogo, Vol. 33(3), pp. 183-201)

(3) Lilienfeld, S.O. (2012). Public skepticism of psychology. Why many people perceive the study of human behavior as unscientific. American Psychologist, 67, 119-129. (4) Fernndez-Rios & Novo. (2012) Positive Psychology: Zeigeist or ignorance. Int J Clin Health Psychol, 12.(2). 333-344) (5) Brochet, F. (2001). Chemical object representation in the field of consciousness. Application presented for the grand prix of the Acadmie Amorim following work carried out towards a doctorate from the Faculty of Oenology, General Oenology Laboratory) (6) Plassman et. Al. (2008) Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. PNAS 2008 105 (3) 1050-1054; doi:10.1073/pnas.0706929105) (7) Ann H. Harvey, Ulrich Kirk, George H. Denfield, and P. Read Montague. (2010) Monetary favors and their influence on neural responses and revealed preferences. Journal Neurosci. 30(28): 9597 9602. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1086-10.2010 (8) Collin Rao, A.R. and Monroe, K.B. (1989). The effect of price, brand name, and store name on buyers perceptions of product quality: an integrative review. Journal of Marketing Research, 36, 351 357;