• Question: what do you think the biggest misconception of psychology is?

    Asked by anon-229039 to Jolel, Emily, Amber, Alex, Sophie on 11 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-228772.
    • Photo: Emily Mattacola

      Emily Mattacola answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      This is an easy one; that we can read people’s minds! If I had £1 for every time someone replies with “what am I thinking?” when I say I’m a psychologist, I’d be very rich.

      I think this comes from the fact that people have quite a limited view of what psychology is in general – people think we only work within mental health, for example, whereas I only personally know a small handful of people who work in this area. We as psychologists should be better at telling people about what we do, and that’s something I think we’re quite bad at, at the moment. Psychology is really broad, it covers everything to do with the mind and behaviour, not just when those concepts go wrong, and being telepathic is definitely not a requirement!

    • Photo: Jolel Miah

      Jolel Miah answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      People think Psychology is the ability to read someone’s mind. I work in the prison service and whilst I can make some educated guess, you never really know what others are thinking.

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