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Why Study Psychology?

What do I Gain by Studying Psychology?

The study of psychology is one of the most popular options taken by university students in Australia. Almost every university offers psychology, and students from every faculty on this campus currently are enrolled in psychology subjects. What attracts them is the content area - focusing on the study of people in all their diversity. The content area has relevance to diverse disciplines.

For example creative art practitioners may be interested in the process of creativity or the therapeutic uses of art or music. The commerce student may consider working in management or advertising, where an understanding of others within the organization or society is critical and there is a necessity to evaluate the impact of practices or products on people. Engineers need to take into account human factors in their designs, as indeed do computer professionals. Teachers need an understanding of their children's developmental changes. These are just a sample of the possible productive combinations.

Most of those who study psychology do not become professional psychologists. Nevertheless we suggest that, during the course of a degree in psychology, numbers of skills are focused on that will be useful in your working life - and indeed life more generally. We would argue that it is the range of skills acquired that makes psychology graduates distinctive and employable - in addition to the content that may have attracted them to study psychology in the first place (Hayes, 1996; O'Hare & McGuiness,.2003; Roe, 2002).

Just what are these skills? Recently Hayes (1996) published a paper that focuses on the question of "What makes a psychology graduate distinctive?" She wrote about psychology in the UK where course structures are somewhat different, but the content and approach is nevertheless very similar. She highlighted 13 different skills or attributes, the first six of which are relevant to other disciplines (though not usually found together in the same discipline) and the remainder are more specific to psychology itself.

The list she provided follows:

Literacy - this is practised in a range of formats, from essays to the more concise, structured format of laboratory reports.

Numeracy - training is providing in the presentation and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, as well as its interpretation.

Computer literacy - from their first class psychology students use computers and become familiar with a range of applications, including word-processing and statistical analysis.

Information-finding skills - content dates readily, but finding out information means you can keep pace with those changes. Psychology students become familiar with library material, databases, and a range of other ways of gaining knowledge.

Research skills - training in research methodologies is central to psychology. The range of techniques is considerable, from observational and interview methods, surveys and questionnaires, to controlled laboratory experimentation.

Measurement skills - related to research skills, psychology students learn to operationalise complex processes, design surveys and develop new measurement instruments.

Environmental awareness - knowing how the surroundings (both physical and interpersonal) can influence people is important knowledge. Hayes states: "Psychology graduates are familiar with this type of knowledge in many guises, ranging from traditional stimulus-response perspectives to the direct study of environmental psychology, and including issues such as nonverbal signalling, habit formation, and social appropriateness" (Hayes, 1996, p. 132).

Interpersonal awareness - how social communication occurs, in its productive and maladaptive modes, is a focus. Additionally students gain an understanding of interpersonal conflict. This awareness can be useful in solving problems in many social and work-related contexts.

Problem-solving skills - Hayes (1996) considers that the capacity to deal with a diversity of different sorts of problems is "the most distinctive characteristic of the psychology graduate" (p. 132). The problems posed for psychology students require them to draw on a range of different strategies and techniques, on a spectrum from the broad ranging as in applying differing perspectives, through to fairly specific solutions.

Critical evaluation - recognising the problems and limitations of research and theoretical arguments is a central thread running through most psychology subjects. Hayes describes it as "direct training in scepticism: students are expected to appraise whether what appears to be evidence for a phenomenon is really so; to evaluate, critically, the quality of an argument; to identify the shortcomings and pitfalls of a particular line of action; and to anticipate problems or difficulties" (p. 132). Students often feel psychology lecturers are unduly negative, but being able to sift the wheat from the chaff is an important skill.

Perspectives - being able to look at problems from a variety of perspectives and being able to distinguish your perspective from that of others, can help you to see an issue more clearly.

Higher-order analysis - this involves being able to get beyond the details in order to see the overall pattern or as Hayes (1996, p. 133) describes ' ...being able to extract general principles rather than becoming bogged down with the details of the immediate situation.'

Pragmatism - any research study operates within constraints. Psychology students learn to make the best of situations, and as such adopt a pragmatic style of working.

Currently in the School of Psychology we are working on sequencing these skills more explicitly throughout the curriculum.

References:

Hayes, N. (1996). What makes a psychology graduate distinctive? European Psychologist, 1, 130-134.

O'Hare, L. & McGuiness, C. (2003). Skills and attributes developed by psychology undergraduates: ratings by undergraduates, postgraduates, academic psychologists and professional practitioners. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 4, 35-42.

Roe, R.A. (2002). What makes a competent psychologist? European Psychologist, 7, 192-202.

Beverly M. Walker
Teaching Policy Committee