Why to (or not to) study Psychology
As the admissions period in Türkiye draws to a close, I would like to share my own 2 cents on the appeals and shortcomings of the field of psychology and of psychology education, drawing from my own four years at one of the country’s elite universities.
It’s Not Quite What You Might Think
Psychology focuses on the most important topic there is: Us. - Paul Bloom
It’s not hard to see the appeal of psychological sciences. Maybe you’d like to discover the intricacies of the brain, make friends and influence people, decode and use your dreams to understand human nature in a deeper way, or maybe you’re struggling and just want to become less troubled. It’s not unreasonable to think that the psychological sciences would hold the answers to your questions, and the truth is, they somewhat do. There is more research being done in the field than ever before, focusing on an incredibly wide range of questions. This is all great, of course, but the yields of psychological research don’t always have the certainty the word “answer” is associated with. In fact, you might find yourself swimming in a sea of studies, each with their own nuanced findings, often contradicting one another, leaving you with more questions than answers. You might even begin to feel like you’re piecing together a puzzle where the pieces don’t quite fit, a frustrating exercise in academic whack-a-mole where for every theory you pin down, two more pop up in its place. And just when you think you’ve grasped the complexities of, say, the impact of social media on adolescent development, you’ll stumble upon a dozen studies offering conflicting conclusions, each with their own methodological problems, assumptions and limitations.
Of course again, this is what science is. Conflicting studies and opinions are a natural part of the process but Psychology doesn’t have great ways to settle these debates. A major cause of this is that psychology deals with complex systems maybe even too complex. The human mind, is a dynamic and ever-changing system, influenced by a myriad of factors, both internal and external and we don’t have a lot of great ways to study it. It’s chaotic. Neurons firing, hormones surging, and visions and memories from past shaping our perceptions and behaviors. Ultimately psychology often finds itself grappling with messy, multifaceted phenomena that defy easy categorization. This however, isn’t to say that the pursuit of psychological knowledge is futile. There are undoubtedly valuable insights that come from the field, but perhaps we need to temper our expectations and acknowledge that the neat, definitive answers we seek may be elusive in isolation.
This may be best represented by the replication crisis. In 2015, the Reproducibility Project: Psychology, a large-scale collaborative effort, attempted to replicate 100 studies published in top psychology journals. The results were alarming, with only around 40% of the studies successfully replicated. This, however, isn’t psychology’s first dance with problematic research practices biting back. The field has a history of grappling with methodological issues and questionable research practices, dating back to the early days of social psychology in the mid-20th century. From the methodological limitations of influential studies like the Milgram obedience experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiment to the more recent controversies surrounding priming effects and implicit bias, psychology has consistently faced challenges in ensuring the replicability and generalizability of its findings. These recurring struggles underscore the ongoing need for critical self-reflection and a continued push toward greater methodological rigor within the field.
Psychology does not need psychologists
Psychology has made a lot less progress than it could have because too many psychologists know too little about other animals - Steve Stewart Williams
When considering the shortcomings of psychology, it’s easy to feel disheartened, especially given the field’s history and the perceived lack of significant findings in recent decades. However, this isn’t a sign of hopelessness or impending doom for the discipline. Instead, it highlights the need for change and that change should begin with how we educate future psychologists. Psychologists must rise to the complexities of the questions they ask rather than being taught with a rigid adherence to outdated methods. The field should embrace a more interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from other fields such as statistics, philosophy, biology, and computer science to foster a deeper understanding of human behavior. This shift in education would not only equip future psychologists with the tools to tackle complex issues but also encourage innovation, which the field desperately needs. By focusing on the process of inquiry—how we ask questions, design studies, and interpret data—rather than finding comfort in how it is traditionally done, we can cultivate a more resilient and adaptive discipline. Ultimately, psychology is a very young science. Its glory lies not in its past achievements but in its ability to evolve and address the ever-changing landscape of human experience, ask ambitious questions, and try to answer them with rigor rather than running towards easy answers. To do so, we must cultivate knowledge that doesn’t classically doesn’t come from a psychology education. To try to answer fundamentally complex questions of human behavior researchers themselves must match those complexities.
So, if you are considering psychology as your major and want answers to your questions, do study psychology, but I would also greatly encourage you to take a step back and explore other fields. It would be nothing short of delusional to say that psychology has good answers to the fundamental questions of human behavior, but what we do have is a start. There is great research being done, and there is true progress in the field, but it’s also not uncommon to be drawn to easy, half-cooked answers in pursuit of answers to hard questions. It’s crucial to investigate the intricacies of each question and the feasibility of each answer rather than settling for superficial understanding. Psychology as a discipline has often fallen into the trap of recycling its errors in new guises, but then again, maybe it’s time for that to change.