People make all kinds of assumptions about psychology students. While I get it, I don’t necessarily understand all of them. They assume that I am always psychoanalyzing people. A lot of psych students get mad when you say that to them, because they know it’s true. Whether we want to admit it or not, we always find a way to basically psychoanalyze everyone we meet, mainly because it’s interesting and we wouldn’t be psych majors if we didn’t. While some people get mad when I do this, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s not like it’s going to affect you in anyway.
People also make the assumption that the psychology major is an easy major. Fun fact: no major is an easy major. It may be easy to you, but to others it’s not easy at all. Here at MCLA, the Psychology major is only 38 credits. They do this because they want everyone in the major to explore different areas that work with psychology. For example, I am also a biology minor. I learned that I liked biopsychology and I got that option because MCLA gave me that opportunity. You may be one of the people that found PSYC 101 easy—they make it easy on purpose to ease you into the major. And it’s one of those majors that can appeal to a lot of people. But when people tell me that the whole major is easy and they can easily do it, I welcome you to try. I was explaining to someone the other day about a presentation I had to do for my PSYC 516 class, and even someone I know who IS a psych major said that it sounded hard and frustrating. The main point I want to emphasize is that while others may find it easy, that doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone.
Pop psychology—nothing makes me madder than when people tell me that pop psychology is “real psychology.” This term wouldn’t exist if the concepts involved WERE real. Some examples of pop psychology concepts that makes me mad are different learning styles, red meaning love, the Mozart effect, and the idea of 10 percent brain power.
So, I’m going to break these down. The different learning styles may be something you’ve heard of. You might’ve heard someone say, “I’m a visual learner” or “I’m a verbal learner.” Um, yeah, these don’t exist. The different learning styles aren’t a thing. You learn things in a certain way, yes, but that doesn’t mean that’s how you learn everything.
I want to make this very clear, red doesn’t mean love. It is said that people will often wear red when looking for a mate, since red attracts love. Again, this isn’t true. While yes, color can be linked to emotion, that doesn’t mean it’s the same emotion for everyone. For some people, they can love red, but others can hate it.
The Mozart effect is something I really hate. It says that if babies or young children listen to Mozart, it will make them smarter. Well, that isn’t what makes them smarter. It does heighten attentiveness for your spatial reasoning, but anything that can heighten attentiveness will expand your spatial reasoning. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
The myth that we only use 10 percent of our brain power is the myth I hate the most. We, in fact, use more than 10 percent of our brain all the time. We are constantly using almost all of our brain. It is constantly active, making us human. Yes, it is possible to only use one part of the brain at a time, but that doesn’t mean it’s simply 10 percent. This myth has been busted many times, but people still believe this.
Being a psych major is a journey. Having people make assumptions about you based on what you’re interested in, it really is something else. A lot of what I hear when I tell people I’m a psych major is “Oh, so you’re going to be a therapist and help me with my problems?” or “So you can give me medication for free right?” or “Oh your a psych major huh? Please don’t take my kids away from me when I have them!” Yes, I hear this very often. No, none of these things will happen. Don’t get me wrong, being a psych major is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I love this field and I’m grateful I chose it. I just don’t like when people assume things about me when I talk about the major. This major is great, and I’m very grateful for it