The field of psychology is vast. Psychology can be applied to just about every situation imaginable and to anything that a person could possibly be interested in. This is why I love psychology. Maybe this is just the psych major in me talking, but I think that learning about psychology is one of the most interesting things, because no matter who you are some sort of psychology applies to you. Along with being fascinating, understanding psychology is important. Psychology is how we understand people and how we understand why people do the things they do. Considering we live on a planet with over seven billion people on it, I would say knowing about psychology is pretty important. Everything we know about psychology today has come from one thing: research. Repeating old research and coming up with new research is the way we learn more about psychology. And it is the coolest way to make the world a better place. As a psych major, it is pretty hard to get through your undergrad without doing some sort of research. There is a reason for that. Research is important, especially in a field that describes over seven billion beings.
First, I would like to stress that psych is for everyone, no matter what your interests are. For example, when I was in a research lab there were three groups. Each group did research on something totally different. One group did a study on comic book culture, one did a study about churches and aesthetics, and I did a study about dance and personality. Those three things are completely different. It is amazing the infinite amount of things that you can do psychological research on. Because there are so many things to be studied, we need every psychology major to do their part in research.
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Second, doing research is beneficial for the researcher. Conducting a study well is a challenging and rewarding thing for the person/people doing it. Doing research is a way for you to shine. Plus, if you find something really cool out you could get it published and maybe even become famous among psychologists. Now I am not saying that in your undergrad you are always going to conduct a great study or find out something amazing, but the experience is definitely enriching. When you conduct psychological research you learn about ethics, about yourself, about others, and about the world around you. These are all things that graduate schools and future employers like to see.
Lastly, there is a reproducibility crisis going on right now. In order to understand this crisis, you must first understand that findings from studies are not concrete and are not considered to be 100% accurate. In fact, the most accurate findings, those which have been tested multiple times in multiple ways, are still not 100% accurate. This crisis is about findings being known as fact when in reality the findings have only been shown through one study. This is not how research is supposed to work. Before things can be labeled as "fact" they need to be shown multiple times, through many studies. As psychology majors, it is important to realize that this crisis is happening and that we are the ones responsible for doing something about it. We must make sure that when we are sharing new found information from new studies that we are looking into how many times these findings have been shown and if the methodology is accurate. Along with that, we must not be afraid to replicate old studies to see if the findings are the same. That way we can debunk some of the misleading research out there.
So my fellow psychology majors, I leave you with one last plea. Go out and do some research, replicated or new, because I know that you can find something interesting to learn more about.
