When I tell people I’m a psychology major, I usually get a lot of mixed reactions. Sometimes positive reactions saying how "interesting the field is" or how "it seems really valuable." While others can be rather negative, focusing on how “there are no available jobs” or how getting that degree “is a waste of time.” And while that’s not true, it’s important to not be offended by what people don’t understand but to teach them instead. So, without further ado, I have come to make a bit of clarification on these common misconceptions. This is for all the times you told someone you were a psychology major and they made a worried face or laughed like it wasn’t important. Because really, learning about how the brain functions is pretty important.
1.“Psychology isn’t a science.”
Wrong. The course study ranges from neuroscience to statistics and it don’t stop there. The overall point of psychology is the study of the brain, the scientific study behind behavior and mental processes. If that isn’t enough, take into account all of the research revolving around the use of the scientific method.
2. “All you’re learning to do is to psychoanalyze people.”
Another falsity. While this might be an aspect of what is learned, it’s not the whole science itself. There are so many different areas of psychology (forensic, health, environmental just to name a few) that focus on a such wide range of studies. Psychoanalyzing doesn’t come up usually unless you’re talking about clinical or other forms of psychology.
3. “There are limited jobs available for psychology majors.”
You can really never have too many psych majors. Like I said, there are so many different kinds of psychology. This leads to careers in many different field and also many available jobs. The work that can come from psychology majors is endless and life changing.
4. "You get paid a lot of money to listen to people’s problems.”
Just like with most careers, to get paid a lot of money you must go through a lot of schooling. That being said, after all that education you don’t use it to simply “listen to people’s problems”. Clinical psychology gets thrown under the bus here as this is the type of psychology that is pictured when you think about helping people's struggles. When in reality, clinical psychology focuses on helping people who are battling serious mental illnesses. It’s not just listening but finding solutions to better people’s lives.
5. "Psychology is an easy major."
It’s really not all that simple. Sometimes people will take an intro course and think there’s not much to it. Or, with the other misconceptions it’s easy to think there isn’t much to a psychology major, but there is. After graduate school, challenging courses, math and science based courses, tons of research and studying it can’t be that easy. With any major, it requires time, dedication and extraordinary care for what you're studying.
