What Concentration of Psychology Is This?

[BCB]

Hi, everyone, sorry for being a complete noob to the whole grad student process in general, and psychology in particular.

 

I have a BBA in Finance and have worked as a personal financial planner for about three years now. I entered the profession because I am fascinated by how people make decisions about money and how money relates to happiness. However, getting to explore the psychology of clients' decisions turned out to be like 5% of the actual job. So over the past six months or so I've realized that a career in psychology would be much more in line with my interests.

 

However, I'm having a really hard time figuring out which area of psychology that my interests fall into. My major interests are in happiness (especially in relation to money and careers), behavior and decision-making, and motivation and goal-setting.

 

Would this fall under I/O psychology because of my interest in employee happiness/career decisions? Or would it be social? Or something else?

 

Thank you for any and all guidance, and good luck to anyone still waiting to hear back from their schools! 

[sdt13]

It seems like you can do either social or I/O depending on the program. I dont know much about this area, but it seems like there are business schools that have programs for this as well. One of the recent graduate students at my school took a job at a business school near NYC. Vaguely speaking, he studied the role of money in interpersonal relationships as a social student. 

You should look into the work of Kathleen Vohs (I believe she is at a business school in Minnesota) and her colleagues to where they are at/where they come from.

 

[CBrown]

Definitely I/O, though there is far less of a focus on money and finances versus job performance, motivation, decision making so make sure you know how much you want to concentrate on the I/O and interpersonal aspects, try visiting a few of the I/O specific program websites. I know the big ones in Canada are Guelph, University of Western Ontario, and University of Calgary. USA I don't so much know. Good luck!

[STEAM116]

This could fall into a few different fields: I/O is the obvious one, but positive psych is an emerging field that seems relevant here (you won't find many programs for it, but look up Seligman at Penn). Also, decision-making as it relates to money? I'm thinking cognitive (for decision-making in general) or even behavioral economics (there's quite a bit of overlap at some schools, and with your background this might be easier to break into). 

[lewin]

Look up Elizabeth ("Liz") Dunn at the University of British Columbia and the people she publishes with. A lot of her work looks at how spending patterns affect happiness and she's really well-regarded (e.g., publishes in Science). One of her well-known studies is on how spending money on other people makes us happier than spending money on ourselves.

 

Like above, judgment and decision making ("JDM") and behavioural economics are probably your best bet. These people could be in marketing departments or psychology (cognitive, IO or social).

Edited February 23, 2013 by lewin00

[DarwinAG]

To me, a lot of the interest you mentioned falls in the realm of social and i/o psychology (unsurprisingly); however, I would focus less on the area of psychology and focus more on the actual people conducting research on your topics.

Lewin mentioned Dunn.

I actually do work on the relationship between money and happiness (well-being). Here are a few other names:

-Ryan T. Howell (my adviser)

-Tom Gilovich at Cornell

-Peter Caprareillo (I forget where he's at, but he graduated from University of Rochester)

-Amit Kummar at Cornell. Works with Gilovich.

-Travis Carter. Graduated from Cornell

-Leaf Van Boven. Graduated from Cornell. He is now at Boulder, Colorado. He may have moved away from this research but check out Van Boven & Gilovich (2003). If you do a forward literature search of this article you can see who else is doing reserach on this.

In terms of goal-setting research and motivation:

-Edward Deci and Andrew Elliot at Rochester

-Faculty at NYU (I don't remember their names offhand...Gollowitzer I think and someone else).

Now to do research on your own on the topic. I highly reccomend just looking at each field and looking for a review paper or meta anaysis, then start looking at the faculties cited. That is probably the best way to figure out who the people are in your area of interest.

[PsychGirl1]

Every area of psychology crosses all boundaries :-). For example, with eating, you could do neurospych, social psych, health psych, clinical psych... you could even approach it from more of a policy/psych perspective, or behavioral economics... basically... anything.

 

My suggestion: read papers and think about the problem and what sort of things you're curious about. You will likely have some sort of approach you innately prefer, or something that just feels more right or more interesting to you :-)

[PsychGirl1]

For example...

 

Health Psych: "how does stress/cortisol affect food choices/amounts?" "how does certain things affect glucose/insulin/leptin/ghrelin and therefore eating behavior?"

 

Social Psych: "how does eating with a friend who is overeating affect that person's eating behavior?" "how does having overweight friends affect your likelihood of future weight gain?"

 

Behavioral Economics: "if we put calories on a menu, how does that affect food choices?" "how does it affect food choices if we put less healthy items in harder-to-reach, out-of-sight places?"

 

Clinical psych: "how to reduce binge eating episodes?" "what sort of interventions work to reduce binge eating/improve weight management/improve symptoms of anorexia?" "What sort of factors predict success in these interventions?"

 

Policy: "how does the food environment affect our eating, and how does policy changes reduce obesity?"

 

Neuroimaging: "how do certain macronturients affect the brain?" "how do certain factors or types of eating change how people's brains react to eating food/seeing food/etc.?"

 

And of course, people study overlapping between these areas, too.

 

Just some "food for thought" (HAHA pun). But just keep things in mind as you begin to learn about the issue/idea and see what approach you find intriguing :-)

[memyselfandcoffee]

Every area of psychology crosses all boundaries :-). For example, with eating, you could do neurospych, social psych, health psych, clinical psych... you could even approach it from more of a policy/psych perspective, or behavioral economics... basically... anything.

 

My suggestion: read papers and think about the problem and what sort of things you're curious about. You will likely have some sort of approach you innately prefer, or something that just feels more right or more interesting to you :-)

i second the above. decision making and motivation are researched extensively in social psych. so i would look at some researchers in that field. Also there are some pretty cool masters in decision making- if your rich check out the MSC in decision making at UCL (London) and i am sure there are comparable one's in the US.

[sdt13]

You may also want to look into the work of Tim Kasser at Knox College. He studies materialism is a wide variety of contexts. Unfortunately his school doesn't have a PhD program, otherwise he would have been my top choice. Ken Sheldon (Missouri-Columbia) has done some similar work, but he focuses more on positive psychology in general but from a goal/motivation perspective.

 

[BCB]

Thank you all for your insightful comments. I have made a list of every school/professor you guys have mentioned and will begin researching them. 

[olayak]

I agree with another poster- check out Seligman and Positive Psychology at U Penn. He's amazing!

[Angua]

Just a note that some of what you may be particularly interested in is also going on in business PhD programs -- don't forget to check out Organizational Behavior profs as well.

[EastCoasting]

I would look at Dan Ariely too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely

[Engali]

Dr. Louis Tay at Purdue University does research on the relationship between money and subjective well-being.  He trained under Dr. Ed Diener at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who is well-known for his research on this topic.

[juilletmercredi]

There are a variety of fields you can do:

 

I/O would work

Social would also work

Cognitive may also work depending on the program and mentors

You may want to look into decision sciences programs: Carnegie Mellon has a good one

There may even be some business PhD programs that look at this.

 

Really, it's going to be advisor-dependent.  Any of these PhDs will get you to go, but which one you pursue will depend on your career interests (do you want to teach?  Solely do research?  GO work in industry?) and who's doing what in which departments.