r/AcademicPsychology

I want to get better at figuring people out, read the room and change minds and attitudes. However I am in law school and I can't take a second major in psychology because my university has some dumb policies going on.

I am not interested in negotiation techniques or persuasion tricks right now. I pursue a working knowledge of the science and the mental mechanisms behind the techniques. How people protect their sense of self, how cognitive processes are scaffolded, what triggers emotions.

Right now, Cialdini's Influence and Young's Persuasive Communication are very useful. Vliet's Psychology of Influence too. But I can't find other books, especially regarding emotional influences on persuasion.

Please, help me find books or textbooks that explain what I need to know to figure out people and change their minds when possible.

I'm 44, a primary parent to a young child, and my husband has a very demanding career that makes him unavailable for school pickups, sick days, etc. This means I need fully online or low-residency programs. Cal State schools, as much as I love the price tag, simply aren't an option for my situation. I'd also like to start in January or Spring 2027, and nearly all the CS programs are fall only. I'm graduating from undergrad with a BA in psych in Dec with a projected GPA of 3.8- if that matters.

I need the program to be BBS approved (California licensure track), which narrows schools considerably.

I'm already aware that "where you get your LMFT doesn't matter" and also that everyone dunks on the programs I'm considering. Just need to find the right program for my personal situation.

Here's where I'm at:

Pepperdine ($120-130k)/ USC ($140k+)/ Northwestern ($160k) - legitimacy is unquestionable, but the cost is ridiculous. Northwestern isn't even BBS approved, but it's my dream program. Pepperdine has less clout outside of the LA area. USC only has a summer start date (and I'm aiming for January/Spring start date)

Antioch LA ($87k) - seems respected in the local mental health space, but reviews are all over the place for students. Love the social justice slant, but they seem highly disorganized

Alliant ($65k) - most affordable, but the mixed reviews online make me nervous

Fair Oaks ($81k) - less name recognition than Antioch, but generally seems more organized than Antioch. Program is 2.5 years with synchronous night classes.

Given my age and the long road to licensure, start dates and length of the program matter a lot to me. I need to be earning as soon as possible, which could make a more expensive school actually make more sense for me in the long run.

I plan to be in PP, as my husband's salary can bear the brunt of running a home/cover health insurance, etc and I can be around for my daughter until she gets older.

Other schools I've ruled out: Anything with a religious slant (Pepperdine's GESP isn't affiliated with the church), National, Sentio, Walden, Touro, any straight up diploma mill school. But open to hearing about others if I'm missing a good one!

I'm a User Experience professional from India with 18 years of experience in design. By education I am a commerce graduate but for last 3-4 years I have developed a keen interest in psychology. I really want to go for a formal education in psychology.
Looking for some guidance on how should I approach this? Thanks in advance!

I recently published a theoretical paper in Social Sciences & Humanities Open called “Attachment Dysregulation and Political Identity: A Developmental Framework for Understanding Ideological Fusion.”

The paper asks a question I’ve been trying to make more precise:

When does political identity become more than a belief, preference, or group label, and start functioning as a way people regulate threat, shame, belonging, uncertainty, or self-coherence?

I’m not arguing that politics is pathological. I’m also not arguing that “trauma explains politics,” or that one side is emotionally damaged and the other side is rational. That would be way too broad and not useful.

The narrower idea is that for some people, under some conditions, political groups, leaders, narratives, or communities may become emotionally load-bearing. They may help a person feel safer, less ashamed, less alone, more certain, or more coherent.

If that is happening, then disagreement may not feel like ordinary disagreement. A factual correction may not just challenge a claim. It may feel like a threat to the structure that helps the person stay steady.

The paper introduces the Attachment-Regulation Framework and a construct called Perceived External Regulation, or PER. The point is not to treat PER as proven. The point is to ask whether it can be measured cleanly.

That’s the part I’m most interested in now.

How would you test something like this without just re-labeling things we already know about, like partisanship, political interest, identity fusion, affective polarization, negative affect, or general distress?

A few questions I’m thinking through:

1. What would count as evidence that PER is a distinct construct?
2. What would falsify it?
3. How would you distinguish healthy political conviction from compensatory regulatory reliance?
4. Who would you expect to score high on something like this, and who would you not expect to?
5. Are there adjacent literatures I should be connecting this to more directly?

I’m genuinely interested in skeptical feedback. The goal is not to defend the framework at all costs. It is to figure out whether the idea survives measurement or collapses into existing constructs.

if you look at all public data the average iq or g is stated to be 100, but if you subtract 20-25 points from their g you get FSIQ most of the time within a range of g. I tested random people and they varied 60-70s in g so their fsiq is at least 45-55 so this is a large disparity of whatever the public knows, if you google "mental ret****ion iq" it says its 70; manual labor jobs are around 50 FSIQ from personal observation of physical movement and eye movement they seem low fluid and incapable of making decisions on their own about serious things, but they're sentient albeit. This means AFQT or whatever test that measures FSIQ that correlates to income is irrelevant at complete know how in this context unless you use raw ability not cretinous hocus pocus. Any thoughts?

Hi all! Laymen here interested in quantative psychology. I recently pondered up a scenario that I've been itching to have answered.

Say two scientists look at the same study and agree on its quality. One takes the findings at face value. The other says: "this other phenomenon Y also scored positive the same metric as the this study, X, but in addition has Z property, so therefore X probably has property Z too."

Is that second move considered evidence for the claim about the other phenomenon? Or is it just a hypothesis that now needs to be tested directly? My intuition says the latter.

Thanks in advance!

Hello!

My background - I graduated with a BS in psychology from the most highly ranked university in the country, but internationally, this university falls in the 500-600 range of QS rankings. I currently work in the same university I graduated from, but not as faculty. I don’t want to get too specific, but the gist of my job is that I help out with and manage students’ extra curriculars. I want to be able to do more in my country with psychology, including teach and research.

In my country, it’s not a norm for us to have research labs, so experience in a lab is something that I don’t have at all. Research labs were very foreign to me and something I only discovered when I began looking into pursuing further studies outside of my country. I was able to publish 1 research paper, but that is probably the extent of my research experience.

I’d really like to pursue further studies abroad, where psychology has advanced more than it has in my country, but with my lack of of research experience, I’m not sure if it’s possible. I feel hopeless and even a bit frustrated that those interested in pursuing psychology from my country are already disadvantaged because of the opportunities we lack. I want to be able to study abroad and bring what I learn back home so that eventually, we have better opportunities to set us up for something beyond what we have here. It just feels like even if I try my best, I can’t even compete with other applicants who have already had research opportunities available to them since undergrad years.

I guess my biggest question is if there is a way around the crutch that I feel like I have? Any advice on how to proceed?

I’m 24 (F) and currently an assistant manager at a Big Four firm UK in financial controls testing (worked here for nearly 3 years after completing my undergrad degree). Good salary, stable career, but honestly I don’t enjoy it and can’t see myself doing it long term.

I’ve just accepted an offer for the University of Edinburgh’s Psychology of Mental Health conversion master’s. My long-term goal would be becoming a clinical psychologist via the DClinPsych route.

The **problem is I know how competitive clinical psychology is in the UK.** There’s a real chance I could leave a secure career, spend years retraining, and still never get onto the doctorate.

I’m also still within my cooling-off period for another week, so I can still withdraw from the course offer - which is making me spiral a bit over whether I’m making a huge mistake.
I feel completely stuck between:

**1. staying in a stable career I don’t enjoy**

**2. or risking everything for something I genuinely care about**

Has anyone made a similar switch?

Would you take the risk?

Or is this genuinely a bad idea?

**Please be brutally honest rather than just reassuring me. Thank you**

Just to share and hoping to get some feedbacks anonymously. What we are doing is a Mathematical model of consciousness and psychology. We figured out an alternative ML paradigm than DL. It learns much faster and more efficient than backpropagation, and it can compress information in a way that all current models cannot do. Attention-like mechanism, CNN-like structure, and more would self-organize within the model naturally. It can explain all the psychological phenomena we can currently think of / look for in a mathematical way. And it fits well on GPU, while it can also run on distributed network and analog computing. It scales linearly by computation while time is nearly constant. All the results would not be published since we are looking for direct commercialization. We are discussing with some VCs.

I apologize if this is an inappropriate question for this sub. I'm not a psychology researcher, just interested in this subject.

I've been looking at papers (mostly from 2020 on) on the subject of social media use and adverse mental health effects (including addiction) and, at least to my understanding, the findings seem to be kinda all over the place. Many papers even highlight this inconsistency in their introductions.

If you're a researcher in this area (or familiar with it) would you mind sharing your insight on what the latest research says on the topic? Or maybe share a recent study that you consider authoritative on the subject?

Thanks!

Some of the studies I've read so far:

• https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2835481

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032724014265?via%3Dihub

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X20304031

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764020978434

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306460321000307?via%3Dihub

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12888-024-05709-z

How do you choose the best theory for your research paper?
Im going through some theories and each of them feel right in their own way, idk which one to go for and which one to drop
Please helpp!!!

Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing well! 😊

I'm currently a Grade 12 student with psychology as one of my subjects, and I genuinely enjoy learning about it. However, I've been feeling a bit lost and unsure about where to focus my efforts as someone who wants to pursue psychology in the future.

I'd really appreciate any guidance on what topics, skills, or resources I should be exploring at this stage whether that's specific branches of psychology, books, research areas, or anything else you think would be valuable to know early on.

Thank you so much for your time and advice!

Hi everyone,

I have a question because I’m still very new to psychology as a field and I’m trying to understand how the academic path works.

Can someone who studied a completely different bachelor’s degree (for example languages, nursing, business, translation, etc.) later move into psychology through a master’s degree, or is a psychology bachelor’s usually required?

I’d really like to understand the full picture from people who know about this field or went through something similar.

Some things I’m wondering about:

How does this path usually work?

Are there countries or universities that allow this?

What are the limitations if your bachelor’s is unrelated?

Is it harder to get accepted?

Can someone eventually work in clinical psychology or therapy through this route?

What are the pros and cons compared to studying psychology from the beginning?

Are there specific things someone should do during their bachelor’s to prepare for this transition?

Do online courses/certificates help in applications at all?

I’d appreciate any detailed explanations, experiences, or advice because I’m trying to learn how realistic this path is before planning my future.

Thank you!

EDIT: I am currently based in Milan and therefore I’m considered as an EU-equivalent Student and my studies will be here in Europe.

Hi everyone,

I have a question because I’m still very new to psychology as a field and I’m trying to understand how the academic path works.

Can someone who studied a completely different bachelor’s degree (for example languages, nursing, business, translation, etc.) later move into psychology through a master’s degree, or is a psychology bachelor’s usually required?

I’d really like to understand the full picture from people who know about this field or went through something similar.

Some things I’m wondering about:

How does this path usually work?

Are there countries or universities that allow this?

What are the limitations if your bachelor’s is unrelated?

Is it harder to get accepted?

Can someone eventually work in clinical psychology or therapy through this route?

What are the pros and cons compared to studying psychology from the beginning?

Are there specific things someone should do during their bachelor’s to prepare for this transition?

Do online courses/certificates help in applications at all?

I’d appreciate any detailed explanations, experiences, or advice because I’m trying to learn how realistic this path is before planning my future.

Thank you!

EDIT: I am currently based in Milan and therefore I’m considered as an EU-equivalent Student and my studies will be here in Europe.

I’m an incoming senior in college, double majoring in Statistics and Psychology. Right now, I’m trying to figure out potential graduate paths that combine both fields, but I’m feeling pretty unsure about what direction actually makes the most sense.

The main field I keep coming across is I-O Psychology, but I’m not sure if that is the only option or if there are other paths that might better combine stats and psych. I’m interested in understanding what people actually do in these roles day-to-day and how heavily they use quantitative vs. psychological concepts.

I’m also feeling a bit of pressure because I feel like I need to figure this out soon, and I’m honestly scared of committing to a master’s or PhD program and realizing later that it wasn’t the right fit or that I misunderstood the field.

I’d really love to hear from people who work in fields related to psychology + data/stats

- What your job is actually like

- How niche or in-demand your role is

- What the job market looks like for your field

-And how you figured out what you wanted to do in the first place

I’m also curious about whether people went straight into grad school after undergrad or worked first, and what you’d recommend. I’ve also been looking at programs in the UK and Ireland, but I’m not sure how those degrees translate back to opportunities in the U.S.

More broadly, I guess I’m just trying to understand what options actually exist at the intersection of psychology and statistics, and how people figure out what fits them best when they’re starting out.

Any insight or personal experiences would really help. Thanks in advance.

I mean let’s say you use the ever popular NHST and found that stretching has a positive effect on burnout, Sig <=0.05. It is so big such that for this to be effected by chance is 0.05 highly unlikely this is effected by chance. But what is this effect?

If the effect is only 0.001 improvement, you won’t recommend it. In fact if doing nothing, just resting had 0.01 percent improvement, you should recommend resting over Stretching.

So what is the effect size after being tested using NHST?

And why do we not test a particular effect size( We can actually). Say there is an effect size of 0.15, 0.05 percent confidence. Now this is a more useful test isn’t it?

And it does seem we can use this to test now why are psychologists not using this?

I’m looking into forensic psychology as a career path. I do not like giving therapy and counseling as these are very demanding in empathy. Is it disadvantageous for me to choose this career, especially since forensic psychologists partly give rehabilitation programs and psychological assistance to their clients? Is there any way to avoid this or is this a reality of the job?

Any psychologists here who work with ADHD patients?

I’m building a visual scheduling/time-planning app and would genuinely love professional input on:

- time blindness

- executive dysfunction

- planner abandonment

- overwhelm from traditional productivity apps

- what actually helps ADHD patients consistently

Would love to hear your observations or pain points from real-world practice.

I am 27 years old and have a Bachelor of Science in Psychology that I completed back in 2020. I turned 4 years into 3. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and had a perfect 4.0 major GPA. I have plenty of research background. I really loved the field, and took part in officially published work.

My professors were devastated to learn I was not seeking a Masters programs due to getting married (happy for my next step in life, though). My advisor even tried to ask me to get into a program just to have the option. I felt it was not the time for it and declined.

I’ve since had a child and currently have one on the way as a stay at home mom, but I dearly miss school and think I really dropped the ball in my academic potential. The ambition in the back of my mind is telling me to get my Masters degree.

First piece of advice I seek:

Is it too hopeful to juggle a masters degree with kids? Has anyone in this forum entered a masters program as a mom of young kids? If anything, I can wait a few years and begin when they are a bit older… But I see so many videos of parents walking across the stage holding their children and I somewhat see that vision for myself.

Second piece of advice I seek:

I am all over the place of what to do with my degree. My bachelors focused around ABA research work, but I do not see that path for myself anymore. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy my cognitive psychology and neuroscience classes. I am really drawn into neuropsychology or cognitive psychology. Apparently the best path for that is a PhD but I truly don’t know if I’m capable of a PhD at the moment, I feel like I should start with trying to take a bite at a Masters first… The degree would have to be online, if that is an option for my interest.

Third piece of advice I seek:

If I were to pursue something along the lines of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology, would I qualify for a job in a hospital setting at the masters degree level? What would I be doing exactly with this degree at the masters level?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and consider giving me advice. I can’t quiet this deep calling to brush all this dust off my bachelors degree for about 2 years now and counting.

I hope this type of post is allowed here. If not, I deeply apologize and ask for direction to where it is better fit.