I have been told so many times over the past 5 years that psychology is a soft science, and I want to do my part to dispel that rumor. Many people think that we don’t measure up to chemistry, biology, physics, et cetera. Well I’m here to tell you that not only are we on par with all of those fields, but that we are at least proficient in them as well.
Over my years of studying, I have had to learn more than basic biology, chemistry and even physics. These days, psychology is as much anatomy and biochemistry as it is traditional psychological theories and therapy.
In my various upper level classes, we have learned about neurochemistry, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and all of it’s different variations. We covered all of the areas in the brain, how they function separately and together.
We closely studied drug classes including methylphenidates, benzodiazepines, typical and atypical antipsychotics (of which there are too many to name), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, tricyclics, etc. We learned how they worked, where in the brain they worked, and why sometimes they don’t work.
We have learned the process of aging, how neurons change over the course of years. We learn neural pathways and how they grow and change with us, how different areas of the brain change as we get older. We learn why adolescents really love risky behavior.
We cover some of the most difficult topics in society, such as suicide, child and elder abuse, substance abuse, self harm, human sexuality, death, and the beginning of life.
In my internships, we go through safety training, we learn how to read fMRIs, diffusion tensor imaging, how best to communicate with children and their parents, how to manipulate experimental conditions as well as how to input and analyze the data from participants that we run ourselves.
Sure we also learn about cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, and other non-medication treatments, but just because they don’t require high level chemistry does not mean that they are any less scientific than anything else. These methods have been tested time and time again to make sure that they work, and nobody can nitpick details like a psychologist.
The psychology major gets a bad reputation because there are plenty of people who take it just because they think it’s easy. But plenty of those people are also mistaken; if you take psychology seriously, it’s not easy. If you’re really passionate about building a career in it, it’s not easy.
Psychology requires an understanding of the world that many other fields do not require; it demands that you understand at least the basics of every other topic that you might have to take in your undergraduate degree (with the exception, maybe, of the fine arts). Understanding imaging alone requires knowledge of chemistry, physics, and biology.
Many of the things that we study in this field are not only applied in the brain; long term psychological stress, for example, impacts the immune system. Neurotransmitters are affected by the circulatory system as well as the endocrine system.
And we have to know all of it, right down to the details. I understand why in the past, psychology may have been considered a soft science. That is not the case anymore, though, and I hope that soon, we psychology majors will stop having to defend our choice of major. Not only is psychology a field on par with all the rest, but it is becoming more and more significant as the incidence of mental health problems rises in our population.
