Developing psychological literacy in students of other disciplines

In this chapter, we have highlighted the usefulness of individuals being psychologically literate within society and recommend developing this attribute in non-psychology students. We then identified some issues with teaching psychology to non-psychology students. Further inter-disciplinary discussion and development is needed between psychology and non-psychology educators, to design activities that can be used to develop psychological literacy in other disciplines; and ultimately to encourage students to apply psychological literacy within society. Also, there is a need to identify valid and reliable measurements of psychological literacy that can be used across disciplines, to evaluate and assess the effectiveness of these activities. At a more central level, national psychology bodies are making increasing efforts to highlight the usefulness and impact of psychological research and practice for society, e.g. the BPS (2019) are encouraging and developing formal and informal links between psychologists and journalists and government bodies. In these ways, it is hoped that psychological literacy will become a key learning outcome for courses across many disciplines, much as information literacy and media literacy have become key learning outcomes in schools and universities.