If you’re thinking of doing a psychology degree then there are many things that may have drawn you to the course. Perhaps you just find the human brain fascinating, maybe you’ve studied it before and you’re good at it, or maybe you want to have a career as a therapist.
While psychology has many positive traits, there are also some downsides. Becoming a clinical therapist for instance is hard and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to land that career once you graduate. At the same time, psychology isn’t directly related to that many other jobs and it’s not one of the classical subjects.
So is this a good subject to do a degree in or not? The answer is yes and here are five good reasons why…
It Affects Everything
The first thing to understand is that psychology is one of the topics with the very broadest impacts of any subject. If you study psychology, then you are really studying human nature and this is a topic that impacts on everything else that you do in life. In short, psychology helps you to navigate your relationships more effectively – and that means your relationships in business, with friends and with partners, with family.
It Helps Personal Development
You might even find it helps you to become a better parent. It will help you to understand the possible motives of other people too and more importantly, it will help you to understand your own motives better which will result in more personal growth and development. You’ll learn to better understand the flaws in your own thinking – such as those that come from cognitive biases – and you’ll learn to better help yourself overcome various forms of anxiety disorder/bad habits etc.
Business Is Psychology
Psychology affects everything as we’ve said already, but it especially affects business. Business is really about relationships – it’s about being able to sell to other people, to persuade other people and to work well alongside them. If you understand how other people’s minds work, then you will be able to get your point across and ensure that your colleagues, clients and business partners respect you. You’ll be able to make people more likely to buy a product and generally you’ll find you have the skills you need to really excel in business.
Psychology Includes Statistics
When you take a psychology degree, you don’t just learn about the human mind, you also learn about science generally. This means you will learn how to handle statistics, which in turn can help you to use spreadsheets more generally as well as handling math. In short, this is another string to your bow that many people don’t realize they’ll get from psychology.
Psychology Includes Critical Thinking
Another highly useful and related skill that you can gain from a psychology degree is critical thinking. Much of most psychology courses involves looking at the different theories and studies that have been carried out in different areas of the subject and then trying to discern which of those provide useful and accurate information. By looking at potential flaws in those arguments you will then be better positioned to engage in debates and to make judgments. This can be useful in many areas of life, from helping you to discern between helpful and unhelpful information, to aiding in arguments in your professional and personal life.