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Asked by anon-266952 on 30 Oct 2020.
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Madeleine Steeds answered on 30 Oct 2020:
I think psychology is important because it can effect a lot of parts of life. Psychology tells us why some people are mean to others, what causes mental illnesses that we can’t see and how to help these people, and why humans are able to do so many things that other species like rats and monkeys can’t!
I learn it because I think memory and the processes brains do that we can’t see (called cognition) are really cool and I like finding ways to measure it and make it better or worse. In the long term I hope I can help people by making them remember more things.
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Parise Carmichael-Murphy answered on 30 Oct 2020:
Psychology is important to me because it helps me to understand my self and be able to relate to others better. I am interested in children’s development and this inspired me to learn more about psychology 🙂
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Naomi Fisher answered on 30 Oct 2020:
Psychology (in particular applied psychology, which is what I do) is important because it is the link between a person’s biological body and brain and the social world around them. People respond to their environment in different ways, depending on their psychological make up.
For example, imagine lots of people going through the same experience – like a global pandemic! Each person will respond to this in a different way, depending on their circumstances, social situation and their psychology.
Some people might respond by feeling very pessimistic, they might feel there is no hope of anything improving and they might stop trying to do things like exercising and eating healthily, feeling that there is no point. Others might see it as more of an opportunity, since so many things are moving online and it makes it possible to connect with people all over the world. Still others might think that it’s a chance to reevaluate their lives and spend more time with their close family. Others might be in more of a survival state, if they are worried that their job and income are under threat. From the outside, it might seem incomprehensible that people respond in such different ways to the same thing, but it’s because of individual differences both in their psychology and their social situation.
Applied psychology is about the way in which we respond to the events of our lives. A basic way of thinking about it would be that things happen to us, we interpret them and respond to them in various ways – and psychology offers theories and models for how this happens. Without psychology, we only have biology and the environment, and these can’t explain all the different ways in which people behave and respond to the world around them.
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anon answered on 30 Oct 2020:
Psychology thinks about what we do, our behaviour – and our behaviour is everything! From the minute you wake up in the morning to when you go to sleep, you are (even without knowing it) making decisions about how to behave and the things you do. By learning more about psychology, you can uncover and explore so many things to do with the human brain, body and the world around us and with that, work towards making the world a healthier and happier place for everyone to live in.
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Katie Riddoch answered on 30 Oct 2020:
Psychology is important as it focuses on the person as a whole. In many other sciences we try to break people down into their parts – their chemistry and biology! But in Psychology a lot of it is about speaking to people – understanding their thoughts, feelings, and their relationships. These aspects of life are what makes us human, and dictates how we connect to others. It’s relevant to EVERY person in the world!
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Annayah Prosser answered on 30 Oct 2020:
Psychology is important to me because it’s the science of human behaviour, and humans have a huge influence in shaping our environment, planet and societies. As we develop further and invent new technologies, it is really important for us to understand what makes people tick, so we can understand how and why we shape our world in the way we do. Psychology also teaches us how we can best improve our world and society in the future, and how best we can help others. Understanding how people work and what they need to thrive is vital for making the world fairer and greener.
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p answered on 30 Oct 2020:
My fellow psychologists have all given fab answers, so I think the part I would add is about working clinically in psychology and why this is important, as this is the field I work in. In my role I work with people who have many different types of mental health difficulties, this could be things like depression and anxiety, or it could be that someone has experienced a trauma, or they have a learning difficulty or memory problems. I also work with people who have experienced a brain injury for example if someone has had a stroke or they were in an accident. Sometimes I work with the individual themselves, other times I might work with their family or other professionals working with them. I think psychology is important in this regard as when I’m working with someone I’m thinking about all the different things that have happened in their life and are currently happening to them, and how this might be impacting on their mood, thoughts and behaviour. I then use psychological interventions (this includes approaches like CBT or ACT) to help support that individual with their mental health. I also use types of cognitive tests called neuropsychological tests or psychometric tests and these assess for what problems or difficulties someone might be having, which helps me work out how best to support them. There’s many different parts to psychology and as psychologists we can work in a whole range of different ways. I think that everyone should have the opportunity to learn about psychology so they can better understand themselves, their thoughts, behaviours… and others too!
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Eve Bent answered on 30 Oct 2020:
Psychology is really important in everything we do as humans. Every time you think about something, feel an emotion, make a decision, remember something and much more – it is using your brain. Psychology is the study of our brains and how they work and we learn about it to better understand how and why we behave in the ways we do as human beings.
For me as a developmental psychologist, I learn about how and why children’s brains develop in the ways they do. How children learn to talk, walk, understand the world around them and become creative interesting little human beings.
I hope that helps x
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Joanna McParland answered on 30 Oct 2020:
Psychology is important I think because it helps us to understand how people think and feel. Knowing this can help us to understand someone’s behaviour. For example, if I know that my friend doesn’t like chocolate ice cream then I can expect if I offer it to them then they won’t take it. So, knowing what someone thinks about something can sometimes help me to predict their behaviour.
I learn psychology to help me to understand what people think about when they experience pain. This can help me to know, for example, whether someone might, for example be scared and not want to move when they have pain or whether they can still go about their daily lives when they have pain.
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Clare Lally answered on 30 Oct 2020: last edited 30 Oct 2020 4:04 pm
Psychology helps us understand people, how they think and how they act. Psychology isn’t just about emotions and how we are consciously feeling (although this is important too!), psychology also includes the thoughts we have and the things we do without even realising. This is called cognitive psychology, which refers to how our minds work as information processors. This includes how we remember things, how we make decisions and how we understand language. One of the reasons this is important is because by understanding how things work, we know more about how to help when things go wrong. For example, if somebody had a brain injury and could no longer remember things, we have helpful strategies to help them to recover.
I study cognitive psychology because I want to understand how we learn to read. Reading is a very interesting skill, because it is different to talking. Most people learn how to talk as babies, just by hearing people talking around them. Reading is different because we have to be taught how to do it, but once we know how to read we do it automatically. We can read things super fast with very little effort, but not many people can describe how we manage to do this. I study what information is important when we read to try and understand this better and help people who find reading more tricky (such as people with dyslexia).
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Marianna K answered on 1 Nov 2020:
Psychology is important is because it helps bridge the gap between humanities and sciences. Sciences like medicine and biology can tell us what is happening in the body when some one becomes physically injured or unwell. Sociology (a humanities subject) can give an explanation for why factors like poverty and inequality can be harmful to people’s health. All experiences (including pain and discomfort) are processed by the brain. Having an understanding of psychology helps us to understand wellbeing and health.
I chose to learn it because I wanted to be better at giving people advice!
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Maggi Laurie answered on 2 Nov 2020:
Lots of great answers here, so I’m just going to add my spin on why I chose to study psychology! I’ve always been interested in other people and why they do the things that they do. I loved history at school and used to be fascinated by the Egyptians – which led me to all sorts of questions about the different things that people do and the different things that they believed at the time. As others have mentioned, this is a big central part of the science of psychology – understanding our own human mind, and how it’s created and developed through our environment (i.e. our culture), our biology (the physical brain) and our behaviour. Asking these questions about why we do the things that we do led me to an interest in the human mind – which then naturally led into studying psychology.
When I was in school, I volunteered at a care home for adults with learning disabilities, and learnt a bit more about how having a learning disability can make the brain process information differently, and make some things harder or easier compared to the ‘average’ person. I think studying these differences in human thinking can help us create a society which is more accepting of people who think and learn differently from ourselves. I think psychology is so important because this it can be applied to just about everything that we learn about and do as people, and as others have said, it’s a bridge between our own human experiences and the different topics that we learn about and engage with in our lives.
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Simona Skripkauskaite answered on 2 Nov 2020:
Psychology is important because it allows us to understand why people think or behave a certain way. This can include such things as understanding how our childhood experiences may shape our later relationships, how we tend to buy things that are displayed in certain places in the shops (e.g. things in middle shelves), or how pilots can estimate their landing trajectory. So really it covers most of our experiences!
Personally I am very interested in how where we look changes or reflects what we think and who we are. I am also very interested in how our behaviour changes over time.
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Katie Lightfoot answered on 2 Nov 2020: last edited 2 Nov 2020 9:59 pm
Psychology is extremely important as it serves to scientifically explain human behaviour, which is not always easy as humans are not as well behaved as water droplets or plants when they are being studied! Nor are humans as predictable! Importantly, considering psychological aspects of the human experience allows us to consider people as individuals who have unique thoughts, feelings, experiences and so on, rather than as being completely the same just because biological factors might be shared. Psychology allows us to look at individuals holistically, as a whole, and respond to them in a way that suits their unique psychological jigsaw.
In medicine, it also allows us to consider all aspects of a patient, their psychological and social experience of health and illness, as well as their biological symptoms. This allows patients to be considered ‘people’ rather than ‘bodies’ or ‘machines’ and leads to more long-lasting and effective treatment outcomes.If we think about the World we live in at the moment, with the COVID pandemic, it is health psychology that has allowed us to create national health behaviour change such as washing hands and wearing hand gel by considering motivations behind behaviours and all of those individual factors that may act as enhancers or barriers to health behaviour change. Therefore, this is one example why it is relevant and important and why I continually love to learn it, teach it and work in it.
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Natalie Jenkins answered on 3 Nov 2020:
The area I study is dementia. This is really important to me becuase my grandma has Alzheimer’s Disease dementia (that’s the most common type of dementia). It’s important to me to try and find out why some people get dementia, and how to stop people from getting dementia. We use psychology, neuroscience, genetics, computer science and many more subjects to try and help us with these questions. It’s super fun working with lots of different types of scientists… that’s one of my favourite things about my job.
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Simon Payne answered on 4 Nov 2020:
I started learning about psychology because I wanted to help other people reach their potential in sport rather than regretting – like I do – never playing as well as they might have if their psychology hadn’t gotten in the way! From that initial interest in sport psychology I now work in all sorts of areas of ‘performance psychology,’ not just sport. Psychology can be harnessed to help people lead happy, healthy, and productive lives, and this makes it vitally important!
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Tanya Schrader answered on 4 Nov 2020:
Psychology is understanding people. I am particularly interested in social psychology and found it particularly enlightening as an undergraduate. It helped me understand what drives negative social behaviour between groups of people (e.g. prejudice, discrimination). By understanding the psychological pathways underpinning negative behaviour, we as researchers, can find interventions which may be able to reduce the things that cause people to act badly towards one another.
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Emma Karlsson answered on 11 Nov 2020:
I think psychology is really important because it teaches us how people behave and why they behave in the way they do. It means that we can use the study of psychology in pretty much every aspect of life! For example, we can use psychology to make people care more for the environment by simple techniques that encourages people to do things like recycling. We can use psychology to promote healthy behaviours, like exercising. We can also use psychology to learn more about the brain and for example investigate why some people have a harder time reading or writing, and what we can do to help with these difficulties. I love psychology because it is just such a diverse area of study!
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