Psychology
Psychology is the study of people’s behavior including how they act, think, and feel. This definition explains more about the causes of normative and atypical behavior amongst human beings. The concept of psychology also helps to understand the connection between people’s social relationships, the brain, and the chemicals that influence their vision and human development. There are several subfields of psychology including developmental psychology, personality psychology, biopsychology, learning psychology, perception psychology, psychopathology, industrial organized psychology, and social psychology. This paper explores what type of work is involved in the mentioned psychology career fields, the opportunities available, level of education required, typical setting, average income, and the biggest takeaway learned from each of the career fields.
Developmental Psychology
Humans go through several developmental changes over their lifespans. The purpose of developmental psychology is to study these changes in development and human growth. There are three distinct developmental stages in human beings including childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Developmental psychology studies the changes that human beings experience in the mentioned stages. This concept does not only focus on the study of how human beings develop, grow and change over their lifespan but it is also interested in critiquing other factors such as emotional, intellectual, and physical development of people through the three mentioned developmental stages.
An individual with an undergraduate degree can pursue his or her career as a developmental psychologist. Some of the available opportunities for such an individual in this career field include gerontology aide and child life specialist. Gerontology aide is required to offer direct or indirect services to the older population within the society. They are required to create programs designed to promote health and intergenerational activities in work settings that include retirement communities, senior citizens’ centers, and community agencies. The work of gerontologists is rewarding but tends to drain them emotionally. The average annual salary of a gerontologist is $198,933 (Yates, 2020). Child life specialists are required to assist children and their families to manage various challenges in life such as a child’s hospitalization. Many of the child life specialists work in hospital settings. Their career is also rewarding but drains emotionally. The child life specialists earn an average annual salary of $53,491. The biggest takeaway learned from this career field is that developmental psychologists are always responsible for researching the daily practical problems and issues related to the populations they study.
Personality Psychology
People are usually individually different due to various psychological forces. The purpose of personality psychology is to explore the concept of personality and how it differs amongst human beings. Personality psychologists assist people to solve certain personal issues that they may encounter such as substance abuse and suicide attempts. Some of the career opportunities available in this field include being a special education teacher or a social worker. The role of a special education teacher is to help students living with a range of disabilities in adapting to the general educational lessons within the school settings. The minimum educational requirement for an individual to be a special education teacher is an undergraduate degree. The annual average salary for special education teachers across the United States is $59,780. Social workers always help people to cope with various life challenges that they may encounter. The minimum educational level required for an individual to be a social worker is a bachelor’s degree. Social workers do work in various settings including hospitals, settlement houses, schools, mental health clinics, community development corporations, among others. The annual average salary of social workers across the U.S is $47,980. The biggest takeaway learned about the role of personality psychologists is to study the variations that exist between individuals.
Biopsychology
Biopsychology explains the basis of an individual’s behavior by integrating different areas of neuroscience with psychology. The areas of neuroscience included in biopsychology include neurochemistry, neuropharmacology, and neuroanatomy. The major area that biopsychologists are interested in is to research how hormones and other chemicals impact human behavior. Another area of interest of biopsychologists is to research how drugs impact an individual’s neural activities. Many biopsychologists across the United States are employed as educators and researchers. Some of the work settings include research institutes, pharmaceutical companies, various government health agencies, and universities. For an individual to be a biopsychologist in the U.S, he or she needs to have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. The annual average salary of an educator is $62,860 and for researchers is $153,245. The biggest takeaway learned from this field is that biopsychologists are certainly interested in how human beings’ neural activities are impacted by various body hormones and chemicals.
Perception of Psychology
While human beings’ sensory receptors constantly collect information from the environment, it is imperative to know how their social interactions are affected by how they interpret that information. Perception psychologists are often interested in researching human thought processes such as how people learn and how they perceive information. To be a perception psychologist, an individual should have a Ph.D. in philosophy (Beanland, Walsh & Pammer, 2020). In addition to the course work, perception psychologists need neuroscience, cognitive learning, and training in research strategies. Some of the available career opportunities for this field are clinical duties, and teaching, and research. In clinical duties, they can assist individuals in managing problems such as dementia in hospital settings. In teaching and research, they are allowed to teach about perception psychology as a discipline in school settings both at undergraduate and masters levels. The annual average salary for perception psychologists across the U.S is $75,710. The biggest takeaway learned from this field is that perception psychologists research how individuals perceive the information their sensory receptors constantly collect from the environment.
Learning Psychology
Psychologists define learning as an individual’s permanent change in behavior that often results from experience throughout his or her lifetime. Learning psychologists largely explore various topics such as how people learn and interact with their environment. The career paths of learning psychologists often take several routes as they can be program developers in school settings or be researchers in government agencies. As program developers, learning psychologists can help to find out what strategies at various schools are ineffective and find out ways to improve them. As researchers, learning psychologists do study learning processes and come up with strategies on how best to integrate various practices into an existing educational curriculum (Sayette & Norcross, 2020). For an individual to be a learning psychologist, he or she needs to have a bachelor’s degree. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary of learning psychologists across the country is $75,670. The biggest takeaway learned from this field is that learning psychology is interested in exploring how human beings interact with their environment to gain experience.
Industrial Organized Psychology
Industrial organized psychology is a subfield of psychology that focuses on the study of how people behave within organizational settings and what factors contribute and are associated with job satisfaction. Some of these factors include age, pay, employees’ attitude, motivation, employee turnover, and absenteeism. Industrial organized psychologists are required to employ effective strategies in an organizational setting towards the selection and recruitment of workers to ensure job satisfaction and productivity within a company is maximized (Wagner & Westaby, 2020). Some of the career opportunities available for this field include industrial-organizational consultant and behavioral analyst. Industrial-organizational consultants focus on a firm’s issues related to human resources and management psychology. Besides, the role of behavioral analysts is to assess and measure the behavioral conduct of employees in organizational settings and eliminate unacceptable conduct from a particular workplace. An individual who desires to be an industrial organized psychologist is required to have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. The average annual salary of industrial organized psychologists is $87,100. The biggest take-away learned from his career field is that industrial-organized psychologists often use psychological principles and research methods to improve job satisfaction and productivity within various companies.
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of the realm of mental illness and its elements including symptoms, causes, treatments, strategies, behavior. The role of a psychopathologist such as a neuroscientist may be to focus on an individual’s brain changes related to mental illness. Many of the psychopathologists across the U.S are psychiatric nurses and nurse practitioners. Psychiatric nurses are responsible for evaluating the physical health needs and problems of patients throughout their lifetime. Nurse practitioners often assess and treat the psychosocial consequences of physical illness in a hospital or clinical setting. For an individual to be a psychopathologist, he or she needs to have a doctoral degree. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual average salary of psychopathologists across the country is $51,593. However, this depends on the geographical location and the population that psychopathologists work on. In some instances, the annual average salary of psychopathologists in particular regions is estimated to be $200,000. The biggest take-away learned from this field is that psychopathologists focus on particular issues such as mental illness and disorders.
Social Psychology
Social psychology is a subfield of psychology that focuses on the study of how an actual, imagined or implied presence of others influences the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of people. The role of social psychologists is to examine how the presence of people causes behaviors of others to unfold in a given way including their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs (Barros & Almeida, 2019). There are many types of opportunities available in this field including human resource specialists. Human resource specialist works in organizational settings to help businesses to hire and recruit right and effective personnel in various positions. The academic requirement for a human resource specialist is a bachelor’s degree. Their annual average income according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics is $66,220. The biggest take-away learned from this field is that human behaviors at most times are influenced by the presence of others.
The concept of psychology helps people to understand how their social relationships with others are impacted by various factors such as body hormones. There are various subfields of psychology including industrial-organized psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, among others. Industrial-organized psychology is interested in the study of how people behave in the workplace and the implications of their behaviors. Developmental psychology studies developmental changes and growth in human beings throughout their lifetime. Social psychology is a subfield of psychology that studies how people’s behaviors are influenced by the presence of others around them.
References
Barros, A. S., & Almeida, M. B. F. (2019). Basic Internship in community environments: Real practice to building knowledge in Social Community Psychology studies. Pesquisas e Práticas Psicossociais, 14(3), 1-14. Retrieved from http://pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?pid=S1809-89082019000300007&script=sci_abstract&tlng=en
Beanland, V., Walsh, E. I., & Pammer, K. (2020). Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of and Engagement in Research Participation to Fulfill an Introductory Psychology Course Requirement. Teaching of Psychology, 47(1), 74-83. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0098628319888115
Sayette, M. A., & Norcross, J. C. (2020). Insider’s guide to graduate programs in clinical and counseling psychology: 2020/2021 edition. Guilford Press.
Wagner, M., & Westaby, J. D. (2020). Changing Pay Systems in Organizations: Using Behavioral Reasoning Theory to Understand Employee Support for Pay-for-Performance (or Not). The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 0021886319896411. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021886319896411
Yates, B. T. (2020). Research on Improving Outcomes and Reducing Costs of Psychological Interventions: Toward Delivering the Best to the Most for the Least. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 16. Retrieved from https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-071519-110415