I was just 14 years old when I first even heard about the field of Psychology; like perhaps many of the students out there I also got fascinated by the field while reading about Multiple Personality Disorder in a fiction novel. I researched about it, came across numerous articles on Psychology and got hooked.
It wasn’t till 4 years later in my first years of graduation that I finally got the chance to be a psychology student. Even then, there were too many relatives who tried to stop me; some even said that those who study psychology become ‘psychos’ themselves 🙈🤣 Anyway, my love for it just grew with each passing day and year and eventually it turned from a fascination to a career choice.
Starting from those years as a student to now as a psychologist, I have felt the need to debunk so so many misconceptions about this amazing amazing field and through this article, I am going to try do just that.
So what exactly is Psychology? Firstly, it is a Science-yes you read that right. Unfortunately, in India, most of the colleges and universities offer Psychology under the Arts/Humanities stream and that has in a way mitigated it’s value in the layman eye. The truth is Psychology is the science of human cognition, experiences and behaviour, and psychologists make use of highly standardised scientifically constructed tools and empirical methods for their research and study.
Secondly, what do they teach us in a Psychology course? Honestly, we don’t study things like “if someone laughs a lot, that means they are sad”, “the people who give the best advice are the ones with the biggest problems” and so on. Hundreds of such “psychology says….” statements/observations are being circulated all over the Internet. They are in fact behavioural observations or common beliefs and sometimes just made up stuff by an individual or a group. This is not what we studied in any class of Psychology.
We actually studied about the biological processes through which human beings function, how sensation and perception happen, the cognitive processes like attention, memory, and later the various psychological theories, among many other things, albeit relating each one to actual observable human behaviour. That is what makes the subject more interesting than a fiction bestseller.
Another misconception is that if you hate math, psychology could be easy for you. No, no, dude, you are wrong. People who suck at math face a fair amount of difficulty in Psychology because it makes extensive use of Statistics and you are bound to come across it A LOT. But don’t be intimidated, you’ll just have to be open to study statistics and keep learning.
And if you have even a slight interest in the way people behave in various circumstances-sometimes predictably and sometimes surprisingly, if you find yourself wondering what makes people the way they are, if you wish to understand human behaviour better, than Psychology will blow your mind and teach you all this and a lot more. Even if you don’t make a career in this domain, you will still be using your learnings throughout your life. Because one most important thing I learnt during all these years, psychology is actually a science which is intertwined with every element every aspect of our lives. Every industry under the Sun makes use of it’s theories and findings in one or the other way.
