What does psychology study? Psychology is a subject that studies the human heart, human emotions, and human desires. If you open any introductory psychology textbook, you will see feelings, perceptions, personality, emotions, etc., but what is the relationship between these conte

What is psychology studied?

Psychology is a subject that studies the human heart, human feelings, and human desires. If you open any introductory psychology textbook, you will see feelings, perceptions, personality, emotions, etc., but what is the relationship between these contents is more difficult to explain. I think, generally speaking, psychology, including the entire psychology course, roughly includes the following parts: (1) meta-content: about the history, methods, ethics and general thinking of psychology; (2) cognition, that is, How people understand the world has gradually been integrated with neuroscience in practice in recent decades; (3) Development, that is, how the human heart develops and matures throughout life; (4) Society, that is, influenced by How the individual behaves under the influence of the environment; (5) Health, that is, the mechanism and coping methods of psychological abnormality or abnormality. This includes many abstract questions, such as the operation of the brain, and many practical questions, such as why you fall in love with others. Not surprisingly, if you break it down, you should learn these contents in the course: the joy of the senses, the beauty of perception, the mystery of consciousness, the depth of memory, the rules of learning, the principles of thinking, the brilliance of reason, and emotion The vividness of the relationship, the pursuit of motivation, the stability of the personality, and the power of the situation.

So what is psychology? Is it a combination of developmental, cognitive, social, and therapeutic? Of course this is not the way to answer the question. Many textbooks define psychology as "the scientific study of psychological processes and behaviors" or "the science of the development and changes of human psychology." This is equivalent to no definition at all. Because chemistry may also be "the scientific study of chemical processes and elements" or "the science of the development and changes of chemical phenomena." This is a relatively meaningless definition. Let's think about this phenomenon. For example, you don't know how much a box weighs, but your teacher asks you to move it from the first floor to the third floor, and you don't find it difficult. But there is a scale on the second floor. When you arrive, you put the box on the scale and see that it weighs 40 kilograms. This number is far more than you imagined. If you climb up to the first floor, you feel that you will not be able to carry it up. We may all have this experience. In this example, the person's strength has not changed, and the weight of the box has not changed. The only thing that has changed is how you look at the box. When you don't know the weight, you may think it's fine. But once you know the weight, you feel it's heavy and you can't move it anymore. This is psychology. There is a physical world outside, but the physical world does not directly affect people. People have to process it. In other words, the same physical environment may look different to different people. A dollar given to you may be really worthless, but to a beggar who has been hungry for several days, it is a life-saving medicine. Psychology is not concerned with the external world; it is concerned with how we perceive the external world. You can first understand it narrowly: the way you look at the external world is the research object of psychology.

You may have noticed that I am using physics as an analogy to psychology. Broadly speaking, what does physics seek? Of course it is an external problem; psychology explores internal problems. The inside and outside here can actually be understood as the inside and outside of a person. Roughly speaking, all problems that do not involve people are physics problems; problems that involve people are psychology problems. Of course, this is not absolute. In fact, pure physics may also involve psychological issues, such as the electron double-slit interference experiment. In fact, no one can clearly answer the question of what psychology is, and most disciplines begin their research without a precise definition of the discipline. If I had to give a simple definition, it would be an answer to the question of how the human heart works. But the human heart is too abstract. Thinking, desire, emotion, will, opinion, belief, and motivation are all human heart. How they work effectively becomes a matter of blind men and women feeling the elephant. Just now I seemed to use physics and psychology to distinguish all disciplines, but in fact, what I expressed may be the difference between social sciences and natural sciences. Having said that, biology also involves people, but it is not psychology but it is very related to psychology.Therefore, the inside and outside may not be the inside and outside of a person, but more like the inside and outside of the mind, or to put it more mysteriously, the inside and outside of the soul. This is no joke, the English word for psychology is "Psychology", "Psych" is the soul, and the word psychology actually expresses the elaboration of the soul. To put it in detail and without mystery, I think a better distinction may be the distinction between subjective and objective laws. Psychology involves subjectivity, and psychological phenomena are related to people, but they are also very subjective in relation to people. part. Everyone's subjective set should also have rules, and these rules are objective when combined. Then I think psychology is the objectivity of subjectivity. That is to say, everyone has subjective parts and processes, and psychology is about the subjective part and process. The search for these subjective and objective laws, the search for objectivity from subjectivity, is the essence of psychology as I understand it.

The subject nature of psychology

In fact, problems involving people are likely to be social sciences. The subject nature of psychology is very strange. Some people call it social science, some people call it natural science, and some people call it Called interdisciplinary or bridge disciplines, I think the main distinction here is how the disciplines should be divided into broad categories. Psychology can be a natural science or a social science. This is not determined by the nature of the subject, but by the subject issues faced by the subject. Psychology has had an interdisciplinary temperament since the beginning of the discipline. Its ideas originated from philosophy and the humanities, its methods were taken from the natural sciences, and its research questions were oriented to the social sciences. The discipline is often divided into a natural science orientation that is biased toward biology and a social science orientation that is biased toward society. The situation of mutual understanding between the two sides is becoming increasingly serious.

Xi Jinping clearly stated in his “Speech at the Philosophy and Social Sciences Work Symposium” in May 2016: “We must speed up the improvement of disciplines that support philosophy and social sciences, such as philosophy, history, economics, political science, law, Sociology, ethnology, journalism, demography, religion, psychology, etc., to create a disciplinary system with Chinese characteristics and universal significance." In other words, psychology is at least a social science or a discipline that supports social science. In fact, as a discipline that supports philosophy and social sciences, psychology often provides a large amount of theory and research for sociology, political science, ethnology, communication , economics, management, linguistics, education and other disciplines. Method support. Judging from information science ’s cross-citation research on all documents in today’s academic world, psychology is even listed as one of the seven independent pillar disciplines together with physics, chemistry, mathematics, earth science, social science and medicine (Boyack, Klavans, & Börner, 2005). Other studies have also found that psychology and mental illness issues form the core of the entire social sciences together with economics, and even surpass the status of economics. Even if the cognitive neuroscience of psychology is placed in the natural sciences, this Status is no less generous (Rosvall & Bergstrom, 2008). Therefore, psychology must be the axis of the discipline, and the discipline of psychology must also occupy an axis position in modern universities. For example, the four recognized founders of communication studies are Lewin, Lasswell, Lazarsfeld and Hovland. Take a closer look. In fact, you have already seen Lewin in my family tree. He was the founder of experimental social psychology and later a psychology professor at MIT; and Harold Lasswell (Harold Lasswell ) was an early political psychologist who studied psychoanalysis at the University of Berlin and later became the founder of the discipline of communication; Paul Lazarsfeld was a psychology teacher at the University of Vienna and an empirical social psychologist. , later became a professor at Columbia University; and Carl Hovland (Carl Hovland) was directly a PhD in psychology from Yale University, and later became a professor of psychology at Yale University. Early theories and empirical methods from psychology are still commonly used in communication science. Another example is management. In fact, management in European and American universities is usually a subject only studied by graduate students, and there are very few undergraduates. About 30% of the management teachers in universities have a psychology background, 30% have a sociology background, and 30% have a management background. Professor with academic background.If you look at the classic textbook "Great Ideas in Management" of management theory and , there are a total of 26 management theories. Among the founders of these 26 theories, exactly 13 scholars have obtained doctorates in psychology (basically social psychology).

To a certain extent, knowledge innovation, theoretical innovation, and method innovation in various fields of philosophy and society are inseparable from the development of the discipline of psychology. At the same time, psychological research covers various fields such as history, economy, politics, culture, society, ecology, military, and party building. As a systematic scientific study of human beings, psychology not only promotes the development of other philosophical and social sciences, but also pays attention to the great practice of contemporary China in the context of the times. Faced with the most extensive and profound social changes in our country’s history, and the most ambitious and unique practical innovation in human history, psychology is no matter in the practice of the social psychological service governance system that maintains social stability and achieves long-term peace and stability in the country, or in the national psychology It plays a vital role in health improvement and post-epidemic psychological rehabilitation and guidance. Over the past few decades, psychology has had the highest growth rate of funding from the National Science Foundation (which also includes the social sciences) of any discipline. When I attended the freshman meeting this year, a student from my department asked me if I could become an academician by studying psychology. Unfortunately, there is no precedent for directly appointing professors from the psychology departments of our universities and research institutes as academicians. For example, Academician Wang Jian was once a professor in the Department of Psychology of Hangzhou University, but he was awarded the title of Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences because of his work in the corporate world; Academician Chen Lin's main work is related to psychology, but he is not a Psychologist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The researcher of of the Institute is a member of the Institute of Biophysics; others such as Academician Lu Lin are not complete psychologists. It is far-fetched to say that psychologists can be called academicians. Of course, Professor Pan Shu from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences was once a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the predecessor of the academician. National Academy of Sciences In fact, among the academicians are psychological and cognitive science branches. Many psychologists are academicians of the American Academy of Sciences, and many social psychologists are also in the political and social science branches.

Our country attaches great importance to science and engineering, because it is understandable that the country needs construction and performance in recent years. However, our country's young students are no longer the students who "learned mathematics, physics and chemistry well" decades ago. Science and engineering may have to give way to economics and management among college students. major. Most top scorers choose economics and management-related majors regardless of whether they are suitable or not. Psychology has always existed as a minor subject from beginning to end. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education two years ago, the number one major among American undergraduates is business, the second is health-related majors, the third is social sciences and history, the fourth is psychology, and then biology , engineering, communication, etc. Among the doctorates awarded in the United States, the rankings are health, law, education, engineering, biology, psychology, physics, etc. In fact, I am not listing psychology separately. In the professional rankings in the United States, psychology is a separate subject category. In the degree catalog of China Ministry of Education , psychology is only a first-level subject (0402) in the education category. Such a configuration has narrowed a university course and restricted the development of psychology. In the application for the National Natural Science Foundation of my country, psychology has only one application under the Ministry of Life Sciences, while in the National Social Science Fund There is not even a reporting window for psychology. There are quite deep historical reasons for this situation. In the future, we must rely on your joint appeal and efforts. What is better is that society’s expectations and demands for psychology are getting higher and higher, which will also drive the development of the discipline.

If you look at the world's cutting-edge scientific issues, such as the 125 scientific issues selected for the 125th anniversary of the founding of Science magazine, many of them actually involve psychology. The once very popular " cognitive science " is considered to be the most important discipline in the future. It involves philosophy, linguistics, artificial intelligence , anthropology , neuroscience and psychology, but actually enters this subject. Over the past century, cognitive science has all but died out, replaced by the sole discipline of psychology.Some cognitive scientists once asserted that psychology will completely replace cognitive science by 2038 (Gentner, 2010). In fact, not more than ten years later, this situation has now been completed. Research two years ago found that psychology has accounted for more than 60% of all subjects, whether it is student curriculum or articles published in cognitive science journals (Núñez, Allen, Gao, Rigoli, Relaford-Doyle, & Semenuks, 2019). To some extent, cognitive science has died out and has been replaced by psychology. At the end of the last century, the expectations expressed by American scientists about the world included psychology: "In the next century, or within about five generations, some breakthroughs will occur in nanotechnology (the elimination of natural and artificial molecular systems). boundaries between the (Human cognition) and the social sciences (understanding cultural information, harnessing collective IQ), these breakthroughs are being used to accelerate the pace of technological progress and may once again transform our species in a profound way that rivals hundreds of thousands of generations. Before humans first acquired knowledge of spoken language” (NBIC Manifesto). And psychology will inevitably become the final science. To borrow the words of Schopenhauer , "Human psychological consciousness is the same as nature. We can only see superficial things, but not inner things. This is why psychological consciousness is human The ultimate question to explore”. The hope of this final science has already been seen by the empirical sociologist Comte (Auguste Comte). He thought it was sociology, but in fact, from the current concept, it is social psychology: "The last science of mankind should It is the study of human behavior with biological characteristics in a social environment."

What can do for learning psychology?

What can you do by studying psychology? In fact, as mentioned above, if psychology is roughly divided, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, developmental psychology, personality and social psychology, clinical and counseling psychology are the main branches of psychology. The psychology departments of famous universities in North America are indeed almost composed of these branches or directions. You can browse them when you have nothing to do, such as Stanford University , University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University , University of Michigan, Yale University, You will know a little bit about the psychology department information of famous universities such as Princeton University . It should be noted that in the psychology department system in the United States, educational psychology generally belongs to the department of education and is not the main focus of psychology, while social psychology is generally in the department of psychology, not the department of sociology. These two points are completely opposite to those of our country in terms of the direction of concern. Of course psychology can intersect with most other disciplines to form sub-disciplines, but I think the four sub-disciplines of cognitive, developmental, social and clinical already form the foundation of psychology.

There are many application scenarios for psychology. Mainly speaking, there are three scenarios: generalized consulting scenarios, corporate scenarios and educational scenarios. In a broad counseling setting, you can provide psychological counseling, which may be in schools, enterprises, institutions, government departments, or in special settings such as prisons, sports teams, and the military. Of course, you can also practice freely. In an enterprise scenario, you can conduct user research, explore user experience, accurately grasp user needs, and place advertisements for marketing; you can also engage in human resources management, such as talent assessment and , job matching, corporate consulting, and salary design. In the educational scenario, you will serve as a psychological teacher to solve students' psychological problems in real time and improve students' performance and happiness. Take myself as an example. When I was in college, I had 33 classmates and 2 are now university faculty. There are more than 100 people majoring in psychology, and 6 are currently engaged in scientific research. Other jobs include primary and secondary school teachers, prison civil servants, corporate human resources departments, government civil servants, freelancing, etc. When I was a graduate student, there were 121 students in my class, and about 10 of them are now university teachers.Other jobs include primary and secondary school teachers, college counselors, college administrators, prison civil servants, Internet company user experience, company human resources, and practicing as a consultant. When I was studying for my Ph.D., there were 6 students in the same class, all of whom were university teachers. This more truly reflects the employment destination of psychology students.

Of course, I think psychology students should have higher pursuits and ideas. Because in addition to its application in life, psychology is also the "art of slaying dragons." Trump is not favored because of the precise push on social media and real-time grasp of voters' mentality through two psychologists from Cambridge Analytica. Eventually became President of the United States. Obama also had dozens of psychology and behavioral science think tanks to help him make decisions when he was in office. In fact, the last presidential decree issued by Obama as President of the United States was to establish a behavioral science department in the White House It is better to use psychology serve the people. Commonwealth countries around the world, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, have government-organized psychology decision-making bodies to “nudge” government policies. During the COVID-19 epidemic, you should have seen the British government’s psychology nudge team. Members appeared next to Johnson. In the words of Hobbes at the beginning of "Leviathan", "Because the quality of individuals and the education they receive vary widely, they are covered up and confused with disguise, deception, fabrication and fallacy, so that it is difficult to be recognized as it is now. What man understands about the human mind can only be understood by those who inquire into the human heart.” Serving the country and the public is what psychologists should do, because we are people who explore the human heart. Sun Yat-sen already mentioned this in the opening chapter of his founding strategy: "A country is the accumulation of people, people are the tools of the heart, and state affairs are the psychological phenomena of a group of people. Therefore, the ups and downs of politics are related to The heart of the people is upbeat. If I believe in my heart that it is possible, it will be difficult to move mountains and fill the sea, but there will be a day of success; if I believe in my heart that it is not feasible, it will be easy to break branches and there will be no hope of success. How great! The heart of the husband is the source of all things. The overthrow of the Manchu and Qing dynasties was accomplished by this heart; the builders of the Republic of China were defeated by this heart." This is the ideal of psychology people, to encourage each other.

would like to share some of my suggestions on learning psychology. First, be in awe: Please believe that psychology is the final question, the ultimate exploration of mankind, the integration of humanities and science. It is not only a life practice, but also a noble pursuit of vision. Second, master theory: Psychology can draw inspiration from philosophy and early sociology, or it can directly apply middle-range theories rooted in modern psychology to other disciplines in the social sciences. Third, learn methods: The advantage of psychology is that it has the most rigorous training in research methods among social sciences. This is the basis for psychology to become the most upstream discipline of social sciences. Fourth, conduct research: Psychology students should start empirical research on and as early as possible instead of speculation. You can speculate, but that is something after you become famous. Another benefit of conducting research is that you understand the theories and methods during the research process, which is much better and deeper than simply reciting.

About the College Entrance Examination Psychology Volunteer Application

Today’s candidates are all born after 2000. In 2019, the Beijing Normal University Examination and Evaluation Center teamed up with multiple educational institutions to release the "Post-2000 College Entrance Examination Volunteer Interest Report". A total of 772,000 college entrance examination candidates participated. The college entrance examination volunteer assessment covers 362 cities and counties in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across the country. The report presents the interests, characteristics and influencing factors of post-2000 college entrance examination candidates in choosing university majors. Among the science and engineering majors that post-00s are most interested in, “psychology” ranks first, far ahead.

If we compare not only science majors but all majors together, among the top ten popular majors released by China Software Engineering this year, psychology is still firmly in the top ten, and science majors are the most popular.

Generally speaking, psychology majors are admitted to science majors or both liberal arts and sciences in universities, but Wuhan University where I work only recruits students to liberal arts majors. If you want to ask which school is better for psychology, I definitely recommend Peking University , Beijing Normal University , because this is the center of psychology in China.There is a question here: Generally speaking, the psychology of normal universities in various rankings is better than that of comprehensive universities, so which one should you choose? I still recommend that if you have the same scores, you should go to a better school and choose a university first rather than a major first.

People do things irrationally, and sometimes the more important the decision, the more irrational it is. To buy a dress, you can choose it online for a few days, but to buy a house, you may just slap your head on it, and the same goes for filling out a volunteer application. Some time ago, my friend's child just entered junior high school, and she said she wanted to take the , Peking University, and exams. I asked why not , Tsinghua University, and . She said she read a book and thought Peking University was good. You see, this thing is so simple. I have never been to Peking University and Tsinghua University, and I don’t know what is good about the two and how to compare them. Without information, it is easy for us to form a simple attitude and then turn it into a solid attitude. bias. As a teacher in the Psychology Department of Wuhan University, I would like to talk about why you can come to Wuhan University to study psychology. This question is actually divided into two progressive questions. The first is why you want to come to Wuhan University and then why you want to study psychology at Wuhan University; the second is why you want to study psychology and then why you want to come to Wuhan University to study psychology. There are two types of persuasion. One is the peripheral approach, which is to superficially influence your judgment. For example, if you find a campus beauty or alumni celebrity to endorse you, you will feel good about it at first sight. The second is the central path, which is reasoning. I can't solve the problem of students who want to take the peripheral path. I want to try the central path.

First let’s look at the first question. Why do you want to come to Wuhan University and then why do you want to study psychology at Wuhan University. This is obviously for the purpose of studying at Wuhan University and then choosing a major there. There is actually no need for me to say too much about this type of students. This first involves the comparison between Wuhan University and other schools of the same level. Some people say that there are only the top two schools in China, and other schools are similar. Looking at it this way, I think Peking University and Tsinghua University are indeed the top universities. Shanghai Jiao Tong University , University of Science and Technology of China , Fudan , Zhejiang University are generally considered to be in the second echelon. Wuhan University, Nanjing University , Sun Yat-sen University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology are probably of the same level in the eyes of ordinary people. Of course, people in Wuhan will think Wuhan University is the best, people in Nanjing will think Nanda is better, and people in Guangdong will think Zhongda is better. This is understandable. I am from Wuhan. In the eyes of Wuhan people, maybe because of the name, I still have a better feeling towards Wuhan University than Huazhong University of Science and Technology. This classification is very rough, because the issue of major is not considered at all. Comprehensive university rankings have an advantage, but detailed majors are not necessarily the same. In fact, for many liberal arts majors, non-comprehensive universities such as Renmin University and Beijing Normal University are better. I also met students from Wuhan University who told me that their scores back then were enough to get into Beijing Normal University, but they ended up studying psychology at Wuhan University. Yes, to be honest, this is the wrong choice. You should go to Beijing Normal University to study psychology. Needless to say, why you want to go to Wuhan University? It’s all because of the college entrance examination scores. The candidates with the highest scores also went to Tsinghua and Peking University, and there are probably no students who meet Tsinghua’s score line and still cry out to go to Wuhan University. We just took this score. Compare Wuhan University with the schools above. Maybe you think it will be better in some aspects, or you may have formed a simple preference bias. I don’t know how these prejudices are formed, but they are nothing more than some simple reasons. Who in the family said that Wuhan University is good? Who is a famous celebrity who graduated from Wuhan University? I learned about a certain teacher from Wuhan University who is particularly famous on the Internet. I went to Wuhan University to see it. I visited Sakura once, my parents supported Wuhan during the epidemic, and they are Hubei people who plan to stay in Wuhan, etc. In fact, these are not so rational. When you go to Wuhan University, you should study a good major in Wuhan University, such as philosophy, library archives, and horse theory. I work in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University. I really think that the philosophy major at Wuhan University is very good and has so many great masters that I envy them all. When choosing a major in college, the school is certainly important, but the ranking of the major is also very important. However, in students' choices, professional strength is not important. There are fundamental differences between majors, such as thinking that a certain major will have better employment prospects, etc.For example, many top picks choose the management major, regardless of whether they are suitable for it. In this sense, psychology is actually an attractive major.

Why should I study psychology at Wuhan University? I think this is because you may have a simple and basic interest in psychology, or it may be because you like other subjects but cannot find them, such as philosophy or biology, so you chose a similar subject. If you just want to study philosophy and biology, then I advise you to study psychology. I think this is too much. In fact, I just want to say that if you are still a little interested in psychology, and you can't go to other good subjects, and you don't like the rest, then psychology is not bad, and the psychology department of Wuhan University is still acceptable. Many subject rankings are based on articles. For undergraduates, it is true that they can learn things through tangible teaching. We are only of this size and cannot write many articles. Of course, there is no need because we still focus on developing features. But we are all very serious about teaching, and we also listen carefully to students' suggestions to modify various training plans. I think the students we train are not bad. According to the feedback from teachers at other prestigious universities that we sent as undergraduates, the students at Wuhan University are very good. This year we applied for the first-level subject of doctoral degree in psychology. In fact, the ones currently available in Hubei Province are and of China Normal University. In Hubei and even in the surrounding provinces bordering Hubei, I think Wuhan University should be very attractive to study undergraduate psychology, and I can learn something.

This involves the second question, why do you want to study psychology and why should you come to Wuhan University to study psychology. Many students will wonder, I am interested in psychology. If I insist on studying psychology, why not just study psychology at a normal university? Their subject ranking is higher, so why bother to go to Wuhan University with a few extra points? Well, I still feel that no matter how cool the situation is, 985 University will always have advantages over other schools in the job market and future development. I am not even a 211 undergraduate, and I am very aware of the pain along the way. Generally speaking, teachers at universities will look at recruitment, students will look at recruitment, and companies will look at recruitment. To put it bluntly, when you walk on the streets of Wuhan, The aunties selling hot dry noodles will be more welcoming. Needless to say, if you are interested in psychology, Peking University and Beijing Normal University are of course the best choice. If you can’t get into Peking University and Beijing Normal University with scores, but you can’t get into other normal colleges, then I think Wuhan University Psychology is a good choice. The school is good but the psychology is not bad.

I would like to enumerate the recent development of psychology science at Wuhan University:

Psychology major (071101), with a 4-year academic system and a degree in science, was established by Wuhan University in 2005 and belongs to the Psychology Department of the School of Philosophy. The total professional credits are 140 and the total credit hours are 2520. , practical teaching accounts for 7%, and the teaching rate of professors in this major to undergraduate students is 100%. There are currently nearly 150 undergraduate students and nearly 70 master's and doctoral students.

The Psychology Department of the School of Philosophy of Wuhan University currently has 20 full-time teachers, including 1 Chutian Scholar Distinguished Professor of Hubei Province, 2 Chutian Scholars, and 1 Wuhan Talent, all of whom graduated from famous universities and research institutions at home and abroad. Associate professors and above account for 74%. As of 2021, it has won 5 teaching achievement awards at the provincial level or above, 7 national-level courses or teaching materials, 1 experimental teaching center, 17 internship training bases, 11 teaching reform projects, and more than 10 teachers have won school-level or teaching awards. Provincial teaching competition award, 9 people won titles at provincial or ministerial level or above. So far, 16 laboratories have been built, with a total area of ​​321 square meters, a total of 6 pieces of equipment worth more than 200,000 yuan, and a total fixed asset value of 5.72 million yuan.

Dozens of students from the Psychology Department of the School of Philosophy of Wuhan University have won awards and titles at the provincial or ministerial level or above. Graduates from the Psychology Department of Wuhan University are active in different fields of society such as the party and government, the military, the corporate world, and academia. The employment rate of undergraduate graduates is over 90%. Graduates continue their studies at world-famous universities such as Harvard University, University of Chicago, and University of Pennsylvania, or at well-known domestic universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Renmin University of China, and Beijing Normal University. There are already undergraduates who have taught in famous universities such as Beijing Normal University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, and Wuhan University.

The Department of Psychology of Wuhan University adheres to scientific psychology training, inherits the tradition of humanistic psychology, and creates a disciplinary model that focuses on cultural psychology and develops together multiple psychological research directions. The cultural psychology research team has innovatively explored the basic theories of cultural psychology with Chinese traditional culture as the core, and actively serves people's lives, and has a high influence in the country. The moral psychology research team explores the characteristics of Chinese people's moral psychology and the moral psychology issues of modern science and technology. It has become a research center for domestic moral psychology and has international influence. The health psychology research team conducts multi-dimensional exploration of physical and mental health in the social environment, especially the workplace, and has made important academic contributions in maintaining individual physical and mental health and public health. Positive Psychology The research team applies the basic principles of positive psychology to life based on adolescent personality development, connects personality, society, physiology and culture, innovates mental health education models, and puts them into practice in universities, middle schools and primary schools.

During the epidemic, a lot of work and policy suggestions were carried out and received instructions from the leaders of Hubei Province. Recently, the lectures of teachers from the Department of Psychology have been reported by hundreds of media including People's Daily , Xinhuanet, People's Daily , China Daily , Guangming.com, CCTV, China Youth Daily , and many of the teachers have won awards from Wuhan. Top ten teachers in the university or comprehensive teaching scholarship.

Wuhan University’s Psychology Discipline Construction History:

• Enrollment of Undergraduate Psychology Majors (2005)

• First-Class Master’s Degree in Psychology (Approved in 2011)

• Psychology Undergraduate Major Awarded as a First-Class Major in Hubei Province (2021)

• First-level discipline for doctoral degree in psychology (has passed the school's independent review in 2021)

• Psychology major ranks 15th in the country for soft subjects, rated B+ (2021)

• Psychology major has been approved as a national first-class undergraduate major (2022 )

• Psychology/ Psychiatry Wuhan University has entered the top 1% of ESI globally (2022)

• Psychology major ranks 12th in the country in soft subjects, rated B+ (2022)

I asked my own PhD and master's degree , undergraduate students, why should you come to Wuhan University to study psychology? To summarize:

First, the campus is really beautiful. I have been to several universities myself. Wuhan University is the most beautiful school. Living on a park-like campus is as good as living in a campus like a park. The feeling of campus life is completely different from that of middle school.

Secondly, the teachers in the Psychology Department are really attentive. They care about their students and lead students step by step in doing scientific research. It is important that the teachers are warm and accessible.

Third, the atmosphere of Wuhan University is really free. This is an important thing that many students ignore. Compared with the rigid management and dogma of engineering schools, Wuhan University allows you to do what you want to do.

Fourth, the Psychology Department of Wuhan University is really educated. Unlike any other psychology department, the Psychology Department of Wuhan University is located in the School of Philosophy and insists on emphasizing both humanistic psychology and scientific psychology. Here you can even learn more humanistic philosophy, which may not be available in other psychology departments.

Fifth, Wuhan University is really a good springboard. If Wuhan University is the best school for your grades, then psychology is at least a good springboard to a better place.

Sixth, students from Wuhan University are really confident when walking on the streets of Wuhan.

Seventh, it’s free to watch cherry blossoms for life.