What Psychology Really Is (and Isn't)

Plenty of people are fascinated by psychology, yet they often know surprisingly little about it. Psychology students are frequently assumed to have mastered some kind of "mind-reading", able to deduce a person's intentions or thoughts from the subtlest of cues.

Defining Psychology – One Branch of Science

In reality, psychology uses scientific research methods to help us understand how people think, behave and function. Many of its more intriguing findings overturn our common assumptions about the world, or the stereotypes we hold. Let us illustrate this with the examples below.

Psychology in Action: Is More Choice Always Better (the Paradox of Choice)?

Suppose you were opening a bakery. How many choices would you offer your customers? Conventionally, we assume that more choice is always better — that we should satisfy as many different customers as possible and let them freely decide which product to buy.

Yet various psychological studies have found the opposite. Research shows that customers are actually more likely to make a purchase in a bakery that offers fewer options.

Studies indicate that when there are too many options, people fall prey to the Paradox of Choice.

Suppose you offer a customer ten options. Once they pick one, they keep turning over the merits of the nine they did not choose, feeling that for the sake of a single choice they have given up a whole host of possibilities. Conversely, when there are only a few options to begin with, the decision-making process actually becomes easier — because there were never that many choices on offer, they do not feel they have missed out on much.

This shows that offering customers a simple, well-curated set of options — sparing them from being so dazzled by choice that they abandon the purchase altogether — is the wiser commercial decision. This is one example of using a psychological lens to understand human beings.

Understanding People Through Psychological Theory 

There are many different kinds of tools and frameworks out there that claim to help us understand ourselves — for instance, some people believe human nature is inherently good (or evil), in astrology, the Enneagram, and so on — but none of these is actually psychology.

Let us return to the bakery example of the Paradox of Choice we mentioned earlier. To prove that "offering more or fewer choices affects how willing people are to buy", we must run an experiment in a realistic simulated setting (the Experimental Method): set up two simulated shops, one stocking more options and one stocking fewer, gather data from the actual behaviour of two groups of participants, then organise and analyse it to arrive at the conclusion that "fewer choices make people more willing to buy".

Just like the other sciences everyone is familiar with, psychology requires experiments in order to reach its conclusions. It is therefore not idle talk, but an academic discipline that offers objective theories grounded in a scientific foundation.

How Psychology Conducts Its Research

Let us look at another example: "Does a long-distance relationship help deepen a couple's feelings?" Questions like this tend to descend into a stalemate where everyone has a point. Some would argue that absence makes the heart grow fonder: when a couple cannot see each other often, they tend to cherish their time together all the more, and their relationship improves. Others, however, contend that a relationship needs both people to invest time meeting, spending time together and getting to know each other, so a long-distance relationship causes the two of them to drift apart. Both views have their merits, and it is hard to say who is right and who is wrong.

To study the question above through psychology and reach an evidence-based answer, we would need to find many couples currently in long-distance relationships, track the state of their relationships, and thereby obtain real data to test the claim and draw a conclusion. This shows that psychology's research methods place great emphasis on empirical evidence, in stark contrast to discussions that are merely verbal or theoretical.

The History of Psychology

So how were the research methods mentioned above established? Psychology was once a part of philosophy, concerned chiefly with studying the workings of the human mind. Later, as natural-science disciplines such as physics, chemistry and biology flourished and rose rapidly, some began to wonder: could the precision and predictability of these natural sciences be applied to the study of human behaviour? This was the embryonic form of psychology.

The father of modern psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, set out to do exactly this, founding the first psychology laboratory to verify scientifically how people respond to different stimuli in different environments — marking an important page in the history of psychology.

The Scope of Psychology's Applications

The range of psychology's applications is in fact remarkably broad. Beyond business, marketing and psychotherapy, my personal favourite is applying it to personal development. Everyone has goals, large and small, that they hope to achieve, but they are often easier said than done, leaving us feeling powerless. This is where psychological research comes into its own: try sharing a common goal with a friend and harnessing social motivation to spur yourself into action. For instance, arranging to work out at the gym with a friend is always far more motivating than going it alone, making it easier to reach the goals you have set yourself.

After many years of development, psychology has become a complete system that contributes to a wide range of fields — education and psychotherapy, for example — and a grasp of psychological theory is also extremely useful for understanding yourself, other people and even recent social events.

Career Paths in Psychology / Types of Psychologist

In Hong Kong, there are two main professions that specialise in psychology: clinical psychologists and educational psychologists, who typically earn upwards of $45,000 a month. Clinical psychologists primarily treat mental illness using psychological methods, while educational psychologists use psychological methods to improve school education and the like. To become a clinical or educational psychologist, you need to complete a relevant master's programme. Getting accepted onto these master's programmes is extremely difficult: the academic requirements are no less demanding than for the "prestige subjects" of the DSE such as medicine and law, and they also call for personal maturity and excellent communication skills. Fundamentally, nine out of ten psychology graduates straight out of university will not be accepted onto these programmes.

Besides these, there are also Industrial & Organisational Psychologists and Counselling Psychologists (Counselling Psychologist). The former apply scientific theory to improve corporate performance — leadership, working relationships and so on — while the latter provide supportive psychological services that promote personal growth.

Getting Started With Psychology: Recommendations

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Good Books on Psychology

Here we would like to recommend two good books to our readers, so that everyone can understand psychology a little more deeply and discover the joy of it.

The Happiness Hypothesis (The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt) 

The author uses psychological methods to explore: how do people become happier? Does money buy happiness? These seemingly "Zen"-like questions about life

Thinking, Fast and Slow (Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman)

The Nobel laureate in economics and renowned psychologist details how people's decision-making is influenced by various factors.

We hope that every reader can enjoy the pleasures of psychology, and benefit from its applications too.

Psychology Articles

And of course, we have to recommend our own Treehole Collection.

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