Q.What are the problems for which collaboration of psychologists with other disciplines can be fruitful? Take any two problems to explain.

Because virtually every discipline that deals with people eventually runs into questions about how people think, feel, and behave, psychology today operates as a deeply interdisciplinary field, drawing on -- and contributing to -- a wide circle of other subjects. Broadly, when the question concerns the brain and behaviour, psychology's natural collaborators are neurology, physiology, biology, medicine, and computer science; when the question concerns how human behaviour takes shape within a socio-cultural context, its natural collaborators are anthropology, sociology, social work, political science, and economics; and when the question concerns the mental activity behind literary, musical, or dramatic creation, its natural collaborators are literature, art, and music.

Some of these collaborations solve genuinely practical, high-stakes problems. In medicine, psychologists working in hospitals help prevent health-hazardous behaviour, support patients in following a doctor's prescribed treatment, and provide psychological counselling for patients facing serious illness or intensive care, reflecting the recognition that a healthy body needs a healthy mind. In law and criminology, psychological research answers directly practical questions -- how reliable is an eyewitness's memory of an accident or crime, what factors sway a jury's verdict, what signs are treated as evidence of guilt or deception, and what degree of punishment is considered proportionate -- questions with real implications for how fairly a legal system actually functions. In economics, political science, and sociology, psychology has contributed substantially to understanding consumer and saving behaviour and decision-making (work recognised by Nobel Prizes in Economics awarded to Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, and Thomas Schelling), the exercise of …