Yes, psychology makes a significant difference in people’s lives. The application of psychology in real life can be seen through the following examples: psychological tests offer an objective quantifiable means of assessing human talents, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses; the concept of positive reinforcement has found wide application in schools and in child-rearing; understanding violence as a learned behavior has allowed educational agencies to be careful about the teaching curriculum and method; animal health has been improved by making them learn new behaviors through conditioned reinforcers; psychological therapy is helping people suffering from mental illness; self-help books are helping people move to optimal personal adjustment to the problems faced in life. More recently, psychology has lead to the emergence of the concept of viewing the child as a person allowing children to have legal rights, due process, and self-determination, along with the recognition that they should be regarded as competent persons worthy of considerable freedom. Psychology has ensured that the most beneficial parenting style for an effective child-parent bond is authoritative.
The concept of psychological stress has to lead to the recognition of stress as a causal factor in illness and disease. Psychology has helped the public understand that human behavior may be triggered by unconscious motivations. It also helped explain prejudice and racial bias and suggest various ways of overcoming them. On the managerial level, psychologists have brought in new concepts such as goal setting, worker–job fit, job satisfaction, and personnel selection and training. Thus psychology has found a lot of direct application in our lives. Psychology has helped advance a variety of innovations in education by making the public aware of principles of attention, learning, memory, individual differences, and classroom dynamics.
Human suffering has been much alleviated through effective therapeutic interventions along with promoting prevention strategies and appropriate environmental change. If one studies all the applications of psychology in real life, one would find that psychological contributions have saved lives, reduced or prevented suffering, saved money, made money, enhanced educational goals, improved security, and safety, promoted justice and fairness, made organizations operate more effectively, and more. Thus it is easy to conclude that psychology does make a significant impact on the daily lives of people.