• Question: Why did you get into psychology?

    Asked by James738 to Ben, Sam, Kirsty, Maggi, Rose on 12 Jun 2017. This question was also asked by Eviepsycho, Emily Key, Tilly.
    • Photo: Maggi Laurie

      Maggi Laurie answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      I think when I first became interested in psychology, I wanted to understand how other people think, and why people do the things that they do. Now that I’m a few years down the line, I have a much more tangible and manageable research question, and I am exploring how people think and why people do things, but at a much smaller and more controlled level. I’m quite into problem-solving so I think, at first, I saw the brain as one puzzle we as scientists can maybe solve piece by piece. I’ve now come to terms that there’s probably a lot of psychology and human behaviour we could never explain, but the question is fascinating and I’m still learning about it every day.

    • Photo: Sam Carr

      Sam Carr answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      Because I’ve seen just how powerful our relationships can be. I’ve seen (just by being a human and living on the earth) how people’s relationships can hurt them, how painful people can find relationships, how powerful love and human connection can be in healing all sorts of wounds. And that’s universal – it’s true across the human lifespan – from the moment we’re born until the moment we die.

      I think I have always been fascinated by human relationships for that reason. I wanted to understand them better. To think about them deeply. To help other people with their relationships and to help build a society that appreciates and understands the critical significance of our connections to other people.

    • Photo: Rose Turner

      Rose Turner answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      I was always interested in understanding people. I used to read books about dreams and books about horoscopes when I was quite young. I don’t think of those things as very scientific now but am still interested in our psychology and why we do things. Psychology is an amazing subject to study because it is so broad – from looking at the biology of the brain using brain scanners and brain stimulation techniques, to testing how to help people perform better in exams using experiments, to understanding people’s childhood experiences or studying why people commit crimes using interviews (and all sorts in between!) For me, there’s nothing more interesting than understanding human experience. And because humans are so complicated – there’s always lots more to discover!

    • Photo: Kirsty Miller

      Kirsty Miller answered on 12 Jun 2017:


      I got into psychology because I was always interested in people and what made them behave the way they do! I studied it in my final year at school (I went to a local college to do it) and really enjoyed it so went to study it at university.

      The good thing about psychology is that there are lots of different types, e.g. clinical (which is looking at different mental illnesses), biological (which is to do with brains and neurons), developmental (which is about how children develop), cognitive (which is to do with the way we think), social (which is how others influence us), health (which is how we can influence health behaviour), criminal, educational, statistics – the list goes on!

      I love this as basically there’s an area to suit everyone! You can also mix and match – my work is a cross-over between social, health, clinical and developmental psychology. It means that I get to learn about so much that we as humans experience – how the people around us affect us, what can affect our mental health, and the things that influence how we behave and how we feel. It’s helped me understand people much better and it’s also helped me understand a lot of the crazy stuff that’s going on in the world just now!

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