Psychologist

In today's culture, it is possible to make money in just about any position at all. You can go to college and get a job as an engineer, or a pharmacist, or a lawyer, or even an archaeologist or an oil derrick underwater welder. It really is possible to do just about anything. In addition, of all those things, few studies or careers are more fascinating than the study of that one subject that has fascinated humanity since the first misty darkness of history: the human mind itself. Such is the job of the psychologist.

Find the Best Brands at Best Buy

What Does a Psychologist Do?
The word “psychologist” comes from two Greek words: “psyche” and “logos”; literally, “soul-word,” actually, “study of the human spirit.” Essentially, a psychologist studies and works with the human mind and it’s operation. This may include everything from behavioral patterns to the study of knowing, or cognition, the study of disorders, learning ability, child development, and any number of specialized fields, careers, and jobs within psychology itself.

For instance, an experimental psychologist is very different from a child or school psychologist, who is herself very different from a social psychologist. It is important to know the difference between these different careers, as they involve very different sorts of work and vary from salary to salary. If you are considering a career in psychology as a school psychologist, an experimental psychologist, or any other position in the field, you would do well to do your research beforehand. A doctorate is no light matter – if you intend to spend the next years of your life in college to earn a doctorate in psychology, you had better know what you are doing and where you are heading.

Experimental Psychologists
There are two sides to every field; research and application. In normal medicine, for example, some doctors’ careers are spent applying the medical knowledge of the field to heal people, and never do any research. On the other hand, some medical doctors and medical technicians are research doctors and are dedicated to increasing the knowledge in the field and expanding the limits medicine can reach. Both sides of every field are critical; if every doctor was a practitioner, no new research could be done, while if every doctor was a researcher, no one would ever receive the benefit of the research.

In psychology, experimental psychologists provide the research backbone of the field. It approaches the human mind—the psyche—as an essentially predictable and diagnosable part of the human body, which it is possible to heal if wounded and to improve if necessary. It does this by experiment, and the success of experimental psychologists certainly seems to support this idea. Experimental psychologists tend to discount the sort of classical idea of psychology, of a psychologist with individual cases interviewing a patient sitting on a couch. Instead, experimental psychologists tend to favor larger psychological experiments used to examine human behavior across the board; the Milgram experiments at Yale in the early 1960s examining human responses to authority and conformity are one such example.

Careers in Experimental Psychology
A career in experimental psychology means one of two things: either working under your own government grants, likely at a major research university of some sort, or working in the corporate field developing psychological science for companies. Examples of that might, for example, include testing the efficacy of a major ad campaign or researching better how to reach the public with word or knowledge of some particular product. An example of this is the corporate work done into the concept of viral marketing, which is turning out to be a far more powerful method of advertising than anyone had originally anticipated—and one which could not have been used to its full potential if it hadn’t been for experimental psychologists.

Obviously in this field the jobs and careers available as well as the potential salary one could earn, will vary greatly. Salaries vary depending on the sort of government grants you work with or the types of companies – do some further research into any specific field of experimental psychologists today and see if they offer what you are looking for in a psychology profession.

School Psychologists
School psychologists work in school environments with children or teenagers to help the school run smoothly and to help resolve psychological or learning conditions which may arise among the student body. That knowledge – and application – of the way children act and think can be absolutely essential in ensuring the best possible environment for children to learn and grow and develop. This can be a very rewarding job emotionally as well as financially, as there are few jobs on the planet Earth of a higher calling than caring for children.

Of course, even that means quite a wide range. There is a vast difference, for instance, between being a school psychologist in a kindergarten and being a school psychologist in a high school, or between college and middle school, or any other combination of other possible options. The minimum requirements for working as a school psychologist generally require at least a master’s degree in the field; two states (Hawaii and Maine) even require a doctorate. Some states are in between, requiring a Masters degree and a minimum number of internship hours in the field.

Careers as School Psychologists
There are, of course, a number of other options besides just education that go into a career as a school psychologist. You have to, for example, get a certification to work as a school psychologist in whichever of the fifty states you happen to want to practice in. You can get that certification through a national school psychologist organization: the National Association of School Psychologists. The certification requires a certain number of prerequisites, effectively making those prerequisites necessary in all fifty states.

First, the certification requires a master’s degree, as we’ve already mentioned (obviously, if your state requires a doctorate as well, you’ll still have to get it, even if the certification only requires a masters degree for completion). Second, the National Association of School Psychologists requires at least 30 hours of graduate semester hours, to ensure the continuing education of any would be school psychologist. For practical experience, a 1200 hour supervised internship is required. Finally, to ensure that any applicant is up to speed on current medical knowledge in the field of school psychology and child behavioral psychology, any applicant wishing to receive certification to practice as a school psychologist in any of the fifty states from the National Association of School Psychologists must pass the National School Psychology Examination. On completion of all these prerequisites, an applicant can become certified and may then begin looking for work as a school psychologist in his or her state.

Social Psychologists
Social psychology is a different kind of psychology from either experimental psychology or school psychology or even normal personal psychology of the old school. Of all though, a social psychologist probably shares the most in common with the experimental psychologist, as he or she is looking at the overall data in order to learn more about the world and about people. He or she is a research psychologist and not a practicing psychologist in the way a psychiatrist or a school psychologist is.

A social psychologist is a psychologist who spends is career and earns his salary by studying the way social conditions affect the human mentality. An example of applied social psychology, and an area in which a social psychologist might well be able to make rather a lot of money, is in finding the way advertising affects a culture and large groups of people simultaneously. Knowledge of that sort leads to better knowledge of the way the buying part of the human brain works, and better knowledge of the buying part of the human brain means better sales at the checkout aisle – and there is no company on Earth who does not like better sales at the checkout aisle.

Careers in Social Psychology
Social Psychologists, as we have already said, are going to be earning their bread and butter by researching as opposed to applying the knowledge they already have. Social psychologists often work hand in hand with, and can be confused with, sociologists; indeed, “social psychologists” can often be grouped into the separate classes of psychologists and sociologists, each with their own methods of investigation and with their own scholarly journals. Both study society though; only the focus (the effect of the society on the visual versus the society itself) is different between the two.

Because social psychology deals with the behavior and thought of large groups of people, there are quite a wide range of options available to anyone interested in the field. On the academic side of things, there are a number of research institutions out there who may need help with their research. Universities, too, are always a good focal point; many social psychologists receive tenure at major research universities and teach part time while using government grant money to research for the rest, using the facilities and resources of their own respective universities.

Other Jobs in Social Psychology
If you want to earn a really good salary in the field, though, you could hardly do better than to work for a private firm in some directed course of study designed to further the causes of whichever firm or organization you happen to be working for. Many social psychologists get hired into the corporate workplace in a number of high ranking positions, including technology designers, freelance consultants, public relations directors, political strategists, and managers. If you work for a large company which is trying to streamline its processes and make its employees more content with their conditions, what better way than to hire a social psychologist? With a little research and preparation, you could very well be that social psychologist that gets hired for the next big salary check.

There are also government jobs available for social psychologists, or even work in nonprofit organizations. The government will often hire social psychologists as consultants to help them determine good new ways of bringing about things like education reform, or to help come up with ideas to fight crime, poverty, and any number of other social ills that are the bugs under the social psychologists’ particular microscope. Any of these are options for the psychologist. Many often require a doctorate, but in some cases a Master’s degree is equally serviceable – make sure you do specific work in the exact field you’re interested in and see what the requirements are. Even call ahead if you really want to work at some specific institution or corporation and talk to any social psychologists they may have on staff – you might just learn something.

General Information about Working as a Psychologist
A psychologist is a professional worker and a critical part of today’s economic marketplace. Depending on the job you land as a psychologist – any kind of psychologist – you can expect to be making a professional salary. Keep in mind, though, that you will not be making the same kind of money as, say, a surgeon or a lawyer, unless you have a doctorate and an unusual level of skill. The medians for the profession range from around forty to around sixty thousand dollars a year, depending on the segment of the field used.

School psychologists at elementary and middle schools, for example make an average of around $58,000, as do general practitioners of psychology. Those psychologists offering help to families or individuals often expect less, to the tune of around $42,000 a year. As we have already said, though, these figures range very widely depending on the exact location you end up working. Do some research of your own – there are any number of possibilities online which are waiting to help you find the salary you have always wanted. You could well be the next great psychologist; but either way, you will be making a professional salary and an awarding job studying a fascinating subject: the human mind itself. Look in the mirror; whatever it is behind those eyes, you are going to be looking at it for a long time. You might as well get used to the sight.


Local Articles
Career
Home