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Psychology majors often wonder if their education will help them find jobs and achieve important life goals after they leave Syracuse University. The answer is that psychology majors have the opportunity to develop a broad range of skills and qualities that make them attractive to employers in many fields and can enrich them personally. Listed below are skills, capabilities, and personal qualities that psychology majors should expect to develop through their academic courses and research projects. This list includes capabilities that were identified by formal research on the thinking skills of psychology graduates (Hayes, 1997), as well as capabilities emphasized by Department of Psychology faculty. A subset of these items has been proposed to the University Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee for inclusion in a set of "core learning outcomes," to be used in defining the goals and values of a liberal education at SU.
Psychology graduates are expected to be highly literate and, moreover, to be able to write in more than one literary format. Psychology course work requires students to write expository essays, in which they must explore issues and develop arguments in detail, yet it also requires them to master techniques of concise scientific writing within a prescribed format (a skill much valued in commercial and business occupations) as they write up empirical research papers.
Psychology graduates also are expected to be highly numerate. They must be able to interpret data summaries and to understand probability statements, and to be familiar with a wide range of statistical procedures and processes. When faced with numerical information, they are more likely to respond by seeking to discover what the numbers imply than by avoiding them altogether.
Psychology graduates also must be familiar with using computers and be able to select and learn relevant packages for the tasks they must perform. While psychology graduates usually are not expected to be familiar with computer programming, they should be adept in using computers for word processing and statistical analysis.
It sometimes is more useful to know where information can be found than to have memorized that information directly, particularly in areas that are developing and changing over time. Studying psychology involves a considerable amount of information-finding skill. Psychology graduates must be able to search through library book collections, journals, CD-Rom databases and a range of other information sources. They are expected to organize information searches and to sift, summarize, and interpret the results. "Learning how to learn" about a particular topic or area isn’t a skill needed for every job, but it is always one worth having.
Psychology students are expected to be familiar with basic research methods, including experimental and observational techniques, survey and sampling methods, and in some cases, meta-analysis. Together, these amount to considerable expertise in gathering systematic information about human experience or behavior–expertise that is useful in any number of different fields.
Measurement skills go hand-in hand with research skills, and psychology graduates should be competent in these as well. They should be able to describe methods for measuring complex processes in areas such as thinking, creativity, and emotion, and should be familiar with the principles of psychometric measurement, questionnaire design, and how to develop other measurement instruments. These skills are familiar to psychology graduates, and are useful in many walks of life, but they are not easy skills to acquire without explicit training.
Knowing how someone’s environment influences their behavior helps us understand people at work, at home, in education, and at leisure. Psychology students become familiar with this kind of knowledge in many guises, from Pavlovian stimulus-response perspectives to the study of phenomena such as behavioral cuing and reinforcement, nonverbal signaling, and interpersonal communication. When faced with a problem involving human thought, feeling, or performance, psychology graduates should quickly be able to identify a range of environmental inputs that ought to be considered.
Psychology students also are expected to know about the major mechanisms of social communication and the potential sources of interpersonal conflict. This is not the same thing as being socially skilled oneself, of course, although it can contribute to it. But such awareness can make a considerable difference to someone dealing with everyday interpersonal problems. Being aware, too, of the sources of conflict or misunderstanding can sometimes results in the ability to perceive ways through difficulties that would not be readily apparent without such knowledge.
From their very first laboratory class, psychology graduates are systematically trained in problem-solving skills. The ability to tackle a range of different kinds of problems is probably the most distinctive characteristic of the psychology graduate. Psychology students learn how to apply different strategies and approaches to understanding problems, and how to identify the practical steps to implement a solution. They can operate on a macro-level, applying different perspectives or levels of analysis to the problem, or at a more basic level in terms of choosing appropriate methods and techniques. Optimal methods for identifying and defining problems, for generating and evaluating possible solutions, and implementing appropriate courses of action have been studied extensively by psychologists and these techniques are acquired by students of psychology. In addition to their value in scientific work, problem solving skills possessed by psychology graduates are extremely useful in clinical, educational, organizational, and community settings.
Psychology students also are trained in critical evaluation, a set of cognitive skills that can be viewed as direct training in skepticism. Students are expected to appraise whether evidence for a phenomenon really is what it appears to be; to evaluate critically the quality of an argument, to identify the shortcomings and pitfalls of a particular line of action, and to anticipate problems or difficulties. They learn not to immediately jump to conclusions but to reserve judgment about alternative possibilities. Students sometimes feel that having to look at everything critically seems to be negative, yet this training in skepticism can be extremely useful to them in their later working life.
The ability to examine issues from multiple points of view or to explore phenomena using different schools of thought can be surprisingly useful in many different contexts. Being able to identify different ideologies or paradigms helps clarify social issues and gives us a better awareness of the implications of different arguments or positions. Although this skill may seem a bit esoteric, it has great practical value and is, in fact, essential if one is to understand and appreciate people from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Understanding, moreover, that a single event can be usefully conceptualized in several alternative ways, and being able to identify multiple psychological origins (cognitive, social-environmental, biological, genetic) for a given problem is a valuable skill, but it is one that is relatively uncommon in the layperson’s thinking.
Psychology graduates are skilled at spotting recurrent patterns in human activity, or noticing similarities in situations that seem on the surface to be quite different. This type of higher-order analysis involves being able to extract general principles rather than becoming bogged down in the details of the immediate situation. Psychology students are expected to acquire this skill through research experiences that involve sifting through vast quantities of experimental evidence and interpreting it in terms of schools of thought and other general principles.
Psychology students soon realize that it is impossible to achieve the perfect experiment, and that behavioral scientists simply have to do the best they can with what is practical. Their experiences in doing research projects are expected to imbue them with a pragmatic approach to work and problem-solving: a valuable skill, and one that is not particularly common.
Psychologists have discovered that a person's ability to master challenging new material is greatly affected by their level of "epistemologic awareness," that is, their understanding of the nature of knowledge itself. A person with a high degree of epistemiologic awareness views knowledge as highly complex, tentative, and derived through reason, rather than as simple, certain, and handed down by authority. Psychology students learn how knowledge is created, organized, and verified in such diverse areas as physiology, mental function, social behavior, and statistics. They are expected to develop unusually high levels of epistemologic awareness that help them master demanding new material in virtually any field.
In consequence of its diversity, psychology confronts students with a wide array of intellectual challenges. It is the rare individual who excels equally in the quantitative, verbal, analytical, and interpersonal competencies psychology graduates must master. Studying psychology gives every student, regardless of his or her particular talents, opportunities to undertake intellectual tasks that are unfamiliar and demanding. As a result, psychology graduates are expected to demonstrate self-critical awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, including specific know-how in handling one’s personal limitations, that can be very useful in approaching problems in later working life. Training in techniques for organizing, comprehending, memorizing, and applying new information is part of a psychology student’s education, and this ability is one that can be applied in many areas of life.
Psychology deals with a number of issues with important ethical implications for individuals and society generally. Problems relating to the measurement of human abilities, the treatment of mental illness, controversies in criminal justice and education, are only a few of the areas in which psychology can be applied for good or ill. Psychology graduates are expected to demonstrate an understanding of the social ethics relating to their discipline, of the need for sensitivity to cultural differences, and of the psychologist’s responsibility to act in the best interests of vulnerable individuals and social groups. Sensitivity to societal and ethical issues in the application of psychology and science generally is essential to good citizenship and social responsibility.
The portfolio of skills possessed by psychology graduates is one that can be valuable for many types of work apart from the profession of psychology itself. Psychology provides its students with an extensive education, training them in thinking and reasoning skills, and encouraging students to explore a broad range of ideas and assumptions. Psychology integrates areas of knowledge that span the sciences and the arts, and in the process it provides students with a traditional liberal education as well as a particularly wide range of practical and professional skills.
Majoring in psychology can be, and should be, a life-changing experience.
Portions of the above were adapted from:
Hayes, N.
(1997). The distinctive skills of a psychology graduate, APA
Monitor, July, p.33.