So You Say Psychology Isn’t Important?

It’s incredible how many times I’ve heard people [especially in the corporate professions such as transport, law, IT, banking, and a few others] tell me that they were worried about people who take a degree in psychology, because psychology was too wishy-washy, uncertain for the prospect of getting secure jobs on the basis of a degree in it, and somewhat not as important as were their professions [of course they'd say that, but that's another story].  So the core argument was ‘we need lawyers, we need IT almighties, we need transport, we need bankers, but we don’t really need psychologists’.  These same people would also tell me that the number of people who go for a degree in psychology is the highest of all degrees simply because psychology is the easiest degree to get and if one wants a degree for the sake of the paper to give them the passport to a job in any field, a degree in psychology is an obvious choice without needing too much effort.  But then…  

…if this argument that psychology is wishy-washy and unimportant, and it’s questionable whether we need psychologists is true, then how come billions of every currency are invested into research of consumers’ behavior, habits, beliefs, etc?

My argument – and not only because I happen to be a professional in the field of psychology – is always that the very opposite of what all these people tell me is true, but they don’t realize it because they’ve always seen this argument from only their angle: the whole life of every human being is built entirely on psychology.

If it were not, and if psychology wasn’t as important as other professions, then

• why would entire industries, notably retail and pharmaceutical, invest immense amounts of time, money, and energy in researching consumers’ buying behaviors, habits, and decision-making processes?
• why would entire industries grow around things like stopping smoking, losing weight, fiscal management, etc?
• why would there be so much value placed on the mere existence as well as incessant research of the placebo effect in the health and pharmaceutical world…
• and why would health be such big business in the first place?
• why would the occurrence of divorce be so high in today’s societies?
•  why would the word coaching be so fashionable especially on the American continent nowadays?
• why would the marketing industry exist at all?
• why would it be that the highest percentage of people who finish a degree in psychology end up in marketing?
• why would we have so many consultants of all sorts?

If you are a reader who has advocated the view that psychology is not as important as is perhaps your or some other profession until you came across this article, I invite you to take a few moments, suspend that view, and have a go at changing your perspective with the help of the points given above.  If you tried it and now are those few moments older and wiser, do you agree with me?

And if you’re a reader who has always agreed with my argument that every human being’s life was built entirely on psychology, and are thinking of exactly the person who should read this, because you’ve had this conversation with him/her before, I invite you to show it to that person and encourage that person to share his/her views of this subject with me directly.