The overwhelming majority of my time studying and practicing
psychology has been spent in Melbourne. As such, I have found the
level of use of psychology in a developed nation like Singapore
quite surprising, and unfortunately disappointing.
Here are some examples of what I mean:
1) Former PM Goh's "stayers and quitters" speech: Come on, even
your average person on the street could see that this was going to
piss people off instead of motivating them to stay or return. This
was a blunder that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of
psychology, much less the eggheads in government, could have easily
avoided. What happened?
2) The state of recruitment practices in Singapore is well behind
that of other developed countries. Not only do unstructured
interviews seem to be the mainstay of recruitment in Singapore, the
very fact that many employers announce "only successful applicants
will be notified" would horrify practicioners worldwide.
Despite that, many Singaporeans flock to seminars by psychologists
(or those claiming to be psychologists). Is this a fad?
Like I said at the start, most of my time in the last ten years
have been spent in Australia, and maybe I haven't been around long
enough to see evidence of Singapore appreciating psychology to the
extent that other developed countries do. I'd like to hear your
experiences and opinions, both positive and negative.
