Majoring in Psychology: Understanding Why People Do What They Do
I found myself majoring in psychology by simply taking the courses that most interested me. Coming into Grinnell, I had a slight background in the subject from taking AP Psychology in high school. I always saw the discipline as one that can apply to pretty much anything involving human thinking and decision-making — which is a lot. Taking psychology courses made me think about the differing levels of specificity that come with understanding and analyzing the world. For instance, one can zoom in and out to get a more holistic view of a concept. I was able to zoom in through the lenses of my courses Neural Plasticity and Brain & Behavior, where I learned how the brain is constantly adapting, using different neurons and regions of the brain. On the other hand, I was able to zoom out through the lenses of my courses, Industrial Psychology and Behavior Analysis, where I learned that discriminative stimuli in one’s environment set the occasion for their behaviors and that society is strategically nudged to perform certain desired actions.
I have enjoyed my experience with the psychology major, both inside and outside of the classroom. In my Developmental Psychology class, I got to observe children through a one-way mirror at the Grinnell Preschool Laboratory. Other classic psychology opportunities included seeing live rats in the neuro laboratory and being a research subject in student-led studies involving a range of tasks, such as putting a golf ball or clicking a button when I recognized the difference between two images. Getting to not only study, but to also partake in research studies, was an exciting and immersive experience.
Through my first psychology course at Grinnell — Abnormal Psychology — and others delving into researching brain structure and function, I became intrigued by the notion that many breakthrough discoveries that can help humankind often come from subjects who differ from the norm, such as those with lesions to specific brain regions. I learned through the psychology major that while you cannot explain away differences in individuals by claiming that “everyone is different,” there is great difference among people. I also learned that there is often a spectrum where virtually all individuals are doing more or less than the “norm.”
I conclude my senior year by taking both History of Psychology, which gives me an overview of how my major field has arisen and evolved, and the capstone course, Senior Seminar, in which groups of students work together to review the literature on a topic and then learn and practice the best way to communicate the findings. Conducting this review of the literature and collaborating with classmates to create a model puts me into the seat of what many psychologists whose work I have read do in their careers. The process of connecting the literature, making a model, and presenting the model gives me a much more informed perspective on how psychology research can be utilized to better the world.
My passion for understanding why people think or make decisions the way that they do — bolstered by knowledge from my studies in psychology — has helped me arrive at and will help me through my next endeavor – pursuing a master’s degree in advertising.