Why is psychology by far the most common social science/humanities major?

[Anonymous]

Here's a list of all psych grad students at UMD:

https://psyc.umd.edu/gradstudents

Notice it's majority female by far, but also notice how many there are. Let's say they produce 10 PhDs a year.. is UMD creating 10 professor jobs, through attrition and expansion? Probably 2-3 at most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting and relatively easy

+1. It’s the easiest

And if you don’t got to grad school, you are basically useless. I know many who have trouble getting jobs.

It’s a lame major unless you go to grad school.

Just like history English communications anthropology sociology etc.

My bosses always thought my English degree was useful. I'm the one who could persuade people through storytelling to give us millions in budget for marketing to help us meet organizational goals.

But yeah, I should have learned to program a computer, I guess? lol Actually, I did learn that on my own time.

One example doesn't mean shit.
Typical english major I guess.

I work with statistics all the time, and I think you are overstating. One example can often matter. Black swan examples kill blanket arguments all the time. And every individual is an outcome, not an average. So hearing examples and seeing if their context aligns with your own can be very relevant to making good judgments--often more valuable than just seeing averages based on one or two relatively reductive variables (e.g., major and salary at one point in time).

Your data analysis is lacking. One example is just that. Statistically, a person with just an undergrad in English or Psych major doesn't get paid all that much.

Recall in scientific lab experiments, if you get an anomalous data point, you throw that data point out.

dp

No, you do specific outlier analyses these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shocking stats. We hear so much here about humanities majors who thrived in the business world, but nothing about Psych majors that did. I never heard a colleague in 30 years at a Fortune 10 company who admitted to being a Psych major. Pray tell about some famous Psych major captains of industry.

I work in marketing research and know a lot of psychology majors. And I routinely hire interns for my departments and they are probably psych majors about half the time. Higher job levels, yes, probably have an MBA or other advanced degrees related to the field (I do, with a marketing undergrad). But a psych major with good stats classes and research methods is a good start for marketing research jobs at research firms, ad agencies, and in-house.

[Anonymous]

Psychology and sociology majors do worse on the LSAT and the GRE than other liberal arts and social science majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shocking stats. We hear so much here about humanities majors who thrived in the business world, but nothing about Psych majors that did. I never heard a colleague in 30 years at a Fortune 10 company who admitted to being a Psych major. Pray tell about some famous Psych major captains of industry.

I work in marketing research and know a lot of psychology majors. And I routinely hire interns for my departments and they are probably psych majors about half the time. Higher job levels, yes, probably have an MBA or other advanced degrees related to the field (I do, with a marketing undergrad). But a psych major with good stats classes and research methods is a good start for marketing research jobs at research firms, ad agencies, and in-house.

market research is one of the lowest paid professions in marketing.

-signed a former market research major who learned how to code instead

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's a list of all psych grad students at UMD:

https://psyc.umd.edu/gradstudents

Notice it's majority female by far, but also notice how many there are. Let's say they produce 10 PhDs a year.. is UMD creating 10 professor jobs, through attrition and expansion? Probably 2-3 at most.

How do you know these folks are looking to be professors?

[Anonymous]

Rightly or wrongly, psychology is stereotyped as a "generic college graduate" major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking at this list, psychology is far ahead of the others:

Psychology 103,801
Political science 33,845
English 32,098
Economics 29,275
Sociology 27,294
History 23,382
Anthropology 8,227
Philosophy 5,644

Why?

To be fair, these are some of the most interesting fields of study and can lead to a plethora of successful careers in academia, government and corporate sectors.

+10 Yes. Music to my ears and to the ears of math hating kid, currently a freshman in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting and relatively easy

+1. It’s the easiest

And if you don’t got to grad school, you are basically useless. I know many who have trouble getting jobs.

It’s a lame major unless you go to grad school.

Just like history English communications anthropology sociology etc.

My bosses always thought my English degree was useful. I'm the one who could persuade people through storytelling to give us millions in budget for marketing to help us meet organizational goals.

But yeah, I should have learned to program a computer, I guess? lol Actually, I did learn that on my own time.

One example doesn't mean shit.
Typical english major I guess.

I work with statistics all the time, and I think you are overstating. One example can often matter. Black swan examples kill blanket arguments all the time. And every individual is an outcome, not an average. So hearing examples and seeing if their context aligns with your own can be very relevant to making good judgments--often more valuable than just seeing averages based on one or two relatively reductive variables (e.g., major and salary at one point in time).

Your data analysis is lacking. One example is just that. Statistically, a person with just an undergrad in English or Psych major doesn't get paid all that much.

Recall in scientific lab experiments, if you get an anomalous data point, you throw that data point out.

dp

NP. Also an English major. I keep in touch with a few former classmates. We're all in our late-40s or early-50s now, and we're all making mid-six-figures and up across a range of fields.

I would love to know which fields. My DD just started college. If she never sees another math class again, she will be happy. Now, English..she reads Shakespeare with ease. History too. ONe of my good friends got an English degree from a Big 10 school eons ago.. Now a talent agent in NYC. That's my most interesting English major friend.

[Anonymous]

Psych has always been popular among the people who want to find out why they are nutjobs, and as the number of nutjobs has risen, so has the number of psych students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting and relatively easy

+1. It’s the easiest

And if you don’t got to grad school, you are basically useless. I know many who have trouble getting jobs.

It’s a lame major unless you go to grad school.

Just like history English communications anthropology sociology etc.

My bosses always thought my English degree was useful. I'm the one who could persuade people through storytelling to give us millions in budget for marketing to help us meet organizational goals.

But yeah, I should have learned to program a computer, I guess? lol Actually, I did learn that on my own time.

One example doesn't mean shit.
Typical english major I guess.

I work with statistics all the time, and I think you are overstating. One example can often matter. Black swan examples kill blanket arguments all the time. And every individual is an outcome, not an average. So hearing examples and seeing if their context aligns with your own can be very relevant to making good judgments--often more valuable than just seeing averages based on one or two relatively reductive variables (e.g., major and salary at one point in time).

Your data analysis is lacking. One example is just that. Statistically, a person with just an undergrad in English or Psych major doesn't get paid all that much.

Recall in scientific lab experiments, if you get an anomalous data point, you throw that data point out.

dp

NP. Also an English major. I keep in touch with a few former classmates. We're all in our late-40s or early-50s now, and we're all making mid-six-figures and up across a range of fields.

I would love to know which fields. My DD just started college. If she never sees another math class again, she will be happy. Now, English..she reads Shakespeare with ease. History too. ONe of my good friends got an English degree from a Big 10 school eons ago.. Now a talent agent in NYC. That's my most interesting English major friend.

More than likely, that ^^pp's classmates have advanced degrees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting and relatively easy

+1. It’s the easiest

And if you don’t got to grad school, you are basically useless. I know many who have trouble getting jobs.

It’s a lame major unless you go to grad school.

Just like history English communications anthropology sociology etc.

My bosses always thought my English degree was useful. I'm the one who could persuade people through storytelling to give us millions in budget for marketing to help us meet organizational goals.

But yeah, I should have learned to program a computer, I guess? lol Actually, I did learn that on my own time.

One example doesn't mean shit.
Typical english major I guess.

I work with statistics all the time, and I think you are overstating. One example can often matter. Black swan examples kill blanket arguments all the time. And every individual is an outcome, not an average. So hearing examples and seeing if their context aligns with your own can be very relevant to making good judgments--often more valuable than just seeing averages based on one or two relatively reductive variables (e.g., major and salary at one point in time).

Your data analysis is lacking. One example is just that. Statistically, a person with just an undergrad in English or Psych major doesn't get paid all that much.

Recall in scientific lab experiments, if you get an anomalous data point, you throw that data point out.

dp

NP. Also an English major. I keep in touch with a few former classmates. We're all in our late-40s or early-50s now, and we're all making mid-six-figures and up across a range of fields.

I would love to know which fields. My DD just started college. If she never sees another math class again, she will be happy. Now, English..she reads Shakespeare with ease. History too. ONe of my good friends got an English degree from a Big 10 school eons ago.. Now a talent agent in NYC. That's my most interesting English major friend.

More than likely, that ^^pp's classmates have advanced degrees.

The doctors and lawyers do, obviously, and one MBA, but others have been successful in commercial banking, publishing, and show production without them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shocking stats. We hear so much here about humanities majors who thrived in the business world, but nothing about Psych majors that did. I never heard a colleague in 30 years at a Fortune 10 company who admitted to being a Psych major. Pray tell about some famous Psych major captains of industry.

I work in marketing research and know a lot of psychology majors. And I routinely hire interns for my departments and they are probably psych majors about half the time. Higher job levels, yes, probably have an MBA or other advanced degrees related to the field (I do, with a marketing undergrad). But a psych major with good stats classes and research methods is a good start for marketing research jobs at research firms, ad agencies, and in-house.

market research is one of the lowest paid professions in marketing.

-signed a former market research major who learned how to code instead

I make the same salary as my software engineering DH so it's worked out fine for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a list of all psych grad students at UMD:

https://psyc.umd.edu/gradstudents

Notice it's majority female by far, but also notice how many there are. Let's say they produce 10 PhDs a year.. is UMD creating 10 professor jobs, through attrition and expansion? Probably 2-3 at most.

How do you know these folks are looking to be professors?

Plus, many schools do not have PhD programs--so UMD is producing professors for those schools as well--every liberal arts college, every regional university. Psychology PhDs might also work in hospitals, businesses, school systems, government, ngos, research organizations, private practice (even if not clinical--e.g., educational psychology or developmental psychology). A lot of people study psychology because it's a broad field where you can specialize in a lot of different ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shocking stats. We hear so much here about humanities majors who thrived in the business world, but nothing about Psych majors that did. I never heard a colleague in 30 years at a Fortune 10 company who admitted to being a Psych major. Pray tell about some famous Psych major captains of industry.

I work in marketing research and know a lot of psychology majors. And I routinely hire interns for my departments and they are probably psych majors about half the time. Higher job levels, yes, probably have an MBA or other advanced degrees related to the field (I do, with a marketing undergrad). But a psych major with good stats classes and research methods is a good start for marketing research jobs at research firms, ad agencies, and in-house.

market research is one of the lowest paid professions in marketing.

-signed a former market research major who learned how to code instead

I make the same salary as my software engineering DH so it's worked out fine for me.

keyword. Look at the statistics. As a market researcher, you should be a numbers person.