Psychology Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language | Individual differences | Personality | Philosophy | Social |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |

Social psychology: Altruism · Attribution · Attitudes · Conformity · Discrimination · Groups · Interpersonal relations · Obedience · Prejudice · Norms · Perception · Index · Outline


Population profiling is used in social psychology and demography to describe the characteristics of populations or groups under study. Such descriptions may be in terms of demographic characteristics, such as chronological age, sex etc.

Criticisms and qualifications of population profiling

Population profiling is essentially an exercise in making generalizations about groups of people. As with all such generalizations many individuals within these groups will not conform to the profile - demographic information is aggregate and probabilistic information about groups, not about specific individuals. Critics of popultion profiling argue that such broad-brush generalizations can only offer such limited insight and that their practical usefulness is debatable.


See also

References

Advertisement