How psychology became a separate discipline

Disclaimer: I am writing here as a philosopher and as a historian, not as a psychologist. That is, I freely admit that I am not an “expert” in psychology, although I do have some minimal exposure to the subject. My intent here is only to show how psychology fits into the broader history of philosophy, by talking about how psychology became a separate discipline in the last two centuries.

Psychology has long been one of the most popular majors in the United States. By some measurements, it is second only to business in its popularity among college students. And it’s easy to see why the subject is so popular. It has a strong human interest element, and helps you to understand all kinds of human behavior. Classes focused on psychological disorders are often so popular that there are waitlists to get into them. Many want to enter the mental health professions, and use their training to help people in the most personal way. And it has long drawn students interested in the scientific side of things, who want to do research – or, at least, to benefit from the prior research of others. But psychology as we know it has only been around since 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt’s Laboratory was founded in Leipzig. And the discipline has many predecessors from back in antiquity, in various attempts to make a distinction between the mind and the body.

Wilhelm Wundt

What should I study to go into marketing research?

I should preface this by saying that I have a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, with a Concentration in Marketing. I don’t have the kind of personality to succeed in the sales end of marketing, but I never really intended to do that anyway. Rather, I wanted to go into marketing research, and apply my analytical personality to studying consumer behavior.

I believed that doing social sciences might be more appropriate for my personality, and studied marketing with this goal in mind. But for various reasons, this did not work out, and I ended up doing something else instead. Nonetheless, I do have some basic education about the subject, and might be able to advise people about what to study to enter the field. I have some inside information, at least with regards to formal education.

My experience with communications

"The use of language begins with imitation. The infant imitates the sounds made by its parents; the child imitates first the spoken language, then the stuff of books. The imitative life continues long after the writer is secure in the language, for it is almost impossible to avoid imitating what one admires. Never imitate consciously, but do not worry about being an imitator; take pains instead to admire what is good. Then when you write in a way that comes naturally, you will echo the halloos that bear repeating."

– E. B. White, in Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style"

During my high school years, I had no idea what the communications major was. When I heard people talk about it, I thought that meant the study of communications technology; and I had the mental image of a radio and learning Morse code. Those who have taken a communications class are probably laughing right now, because they know it's a far cry from what the communications major is. Communications, in short, is about the art of communicating with other people. It's about the message rather than the medium, and about the humanities more than the sciences.

A classic radio, something like the mental image I had for the communications major

The difference between skepticism and close-mindedness

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

- Aristotle

Open-mindedness is defined as a "read[iness] to entertain new ideas" (which is positive)

It's long been fashionable for people in the Western world to claim they are "open-minded," and so this is claimed even by people who are not that way at all. (No one says with pride that "Yeah, dude, I'm closed-minded!") Yet closed-mindedness seems to be as common as it ever was, with people refusing to entertain any number of ideas they don't agree with. But what does it mean to be "open-minded," anyway? The website of Princeton University defines the word open-minded as "ready to entertain new ideas," and this seems to me to be appropriate. How does one know if an idea is false, if one has not heard it? (Or in the words of the Princeton definition, "entertain[ed]" it?) How does one know if they will like this food, if they haven't tried it? And how does one know if this idea is wrong, if they haven't heard it out?

Aristotle

Why I majored in marketing

This post expands upon a story from a previous blog post, linked to here.

Why is my stats class so focused on bell curves?

I would wager that many a student has taken a statistics class, and been introduced to bell curves without having the slightest idea why they're used. That was me, to some extent, when I took my first statistics class. I was told they were useful, and was willing at the time to take their word for it. But it was not until a second statistics class, many years later, that I learned why bell curves are used.

Personality

I have long been interested in personality. I read an informal book called Please Understand Me when I was a young boy, which was a popular book on the subject of personality. When I became an adult, I found and read its sequel, and enjoyed that as well.

These treatments of personality are not as scientifically valid as some others, as people often test as a different type when they retake the tests. Nonetheless, in their informal way, these have been among the more valuable books I've read for understanding others.

My positive experience with psychology

One of the great surprises of my education was how much I liked psychology. This would have surprised me in my younger days, as I thought of psychology in terms of counseling and clinical psychology - things that I would not have been good at. To be sure, those things are a part of psychology, but psychology was so much more than that, something I little suspected in my youth.