About Psy101 Fields

Psy101 Fields is a study guide for introductory psychology students and curious readers who want to compare research areas: what each studies, how it emerged, who shaped it, which methods it uses, where it is taught and where it is applied.

What is inside

61 field profiles, each with five sections, numbered sources, claim-by-claim evidence and the nearest textbook reading.
History: dated milestones from the profiles, labeled by what kind of event each was.
58 university examples from 50 institutions, with the exact official name and kind of unit.
16 professional contexts, with titles and licensing kept separate by jurisdiction.
Course and Sources: 298 distinct sources, each with the part that was read.

How the types and clusters work

Psychology has no single official list of fields. This guide groups its profiles into 7 clusters for browsing and gives each profile one of four types. These are editorial labels, chosen to help a reader compare like with like. They are not an official classification, and a profile can sit near several others. The list is selected, not exhaustive.

Core subfield: A long-standing main area of research in psychology. (10 here)
Interdisciplinary field: An area that draws on psychology together with other disciplines. (32 here)
Professional specialty: An applied area with its own training routes and, in some places, credentials. (12 here)
Methodological tradition: A way of doing research that runs across several fields. (7 here)

Foundations and methods: How psychology measures, models and reflects on itself. (7 here)
Brain and cognition: Mind, brain, perception, language, emotion and animal behavior. (11 here)
Development and learning: Change across life, learning, schooling and behavior analysis. (8 here)
Social life and culture: People in groups, cultures, communities and politics. (9 here)
Health and care: Assessment, care, health and the specialties built around them. (11 here)
Work, technology, and performance: Organizations, design, markets, media, sport and the military. (8 here)
Law, environment, and public life: Courts, policing, environments, peace and critical or Indigenous approaches. (7 here)

A division of the American Psychological Association is an interest group inside one organization. Some divisions match a research field closely and others are topical or professional communities, so divisions are not treated as equal fields here and are never used by themselves to show that a field exists.

How history is told

Fields usually emerge through early work, a name, institutions such as laboratories, societies, journals and programs, and later professional recognition. The profiles keep these apart. They name people only for roles that a source documents, such as the author of a work or one of the organizers of a society, and they do not tell sole-founder stories. A date appears only when a source states it.

How an entry is checked before it appears

A writer drafts the profile from sources it opened, with each claim tied to a source and a location in it.
A different reviewer opens the same sources again and judges every claim as supported, qualified or unsupported. Unsupported claims are removed or reworded; entries the sources cannot carry are held back.
Only then is the profile admitted, with the reviewer's name, date and counts shown on the profile.

Sources are labeled by what was actually read, from a full page down to a search snippet or a page that did not open. A source that could not be opened supports nothing by itself. Checks were made on October 21, 2026; that is an access date, not the publication date of any source. Course links use OpenStax Psychology 2e only to show nearby reading.

Areas considered but not yet admitted

These areas were drafted or proposed and are not profiled yet. Each is held back for the reason shown, not dropped from the plan.

Consulting psychology. Fewer than two openable sources addressed the area itself. Society and journal pages could not be opened, and the only leads were search snippets.
Critical psychology. The sources that opened cover only the German tradition, so a profile would have presented one tradition as the whole area.
Group psychology and group psychotherapy. Both substantive sources came from one multidisciplinary association, and nothing opened documented group psychology as a research area or psychologists' training in it.
Military psychology. Definition and practice were supported, but the entire history rested on one general-audience essay that could not be corroborated.
Psychology of gender and sexual diversity. The sources opened described one psychiatric classification decision, one diagnostic fact sheet and one researcher, not the area as a field of psychology.
Theoretical and philosophical psychology. Only a one-sentence society scope and a publisher blurb could be opened, so the area's history and methods could not be documented.

What this guide does not do

It does not give professional, clinical or legal advice, and it does not say who may practice. Regulators decide that.
It does not rank universities, promise admission or equate a degree with a license or a protected title.
It does not claim to be a complete or universal map of psychology.
It does not collect data about readers, load outside services or use tracking. The site is not listed in search engines.