How I pursued psychology with an undying passion

The social sciences, or ‘Arts’ as it is popularly called, are often considered irrelevant as a field of study in India. More importantly, many people who I interact with on a daily basis are not sure about what higher education in the social sciences entails. So, when I decided to pursue the social sciences after completing my secondary education, instead of the hard sciences, I got questioning looks.

When people (including my high school teachers) heard that one of the subjects I was studying at college was psychology, the usual, ‘So can you tell me what I am thinking?’ would almost always follow! But I promised myself that I’d never let any of this deter me.

What first drew me to psychology was the science of it. While most people found Sigmund Freud enigmatic, one of the first things I was enthralled by was Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with classical conditioning. I remember that the first time we were introduced to the experimental method, many of my peers considered it to be one of the toughest things to learn. On the other hand, this methodological rigor kept me interested and excited as I pursued psychology further in my undergraduate years.

I remember reading experiments such as those of Norman Triplett on the social facilitation effect, and those of Karen Wynn on early numerical cognition. This was towards my second year of college, and I remember being utterly fascinated by them. By the final year of my Bachelor’s degree, two of my favourite subjects were experimental psychology, where I could actually conduct the very experiments I was so enthralled by, and statistics, using which I could make sense of what we found.

It was during my Master’s that I learned, the hard way, that the academic infrastructure available to me was lacking in many ways. There was a marked paucity in opportunities to conduct research under the ideal conditions of a research laboratory. In spite of this, along with three of my peers, I got the chance to present at two academic conferences, and write an actual research paper - all of which was extremely daunting for novices like us who were doing it for the first time.

We also realized that the scope for research in India is very limited. Moreover, we could simply not access open data, or even academic papers that were focused on India. Personally, I believe that this is because such data and research papers were not publicly available to us by means of online databases. Further, when I conducted independent studies for coursework to get an understanding of my own strengths and weaknesses, I learned that funds were hard to get. 

I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever have a fair shot at conducting research along my academic journey; when finally, I saw a ray of light. I wanted nothing more than to work with like-minded people who were, like me, committed to ethical and rigorous research practices. And this is why I joined the Psychology Department at Monk Prayogshala, a not-for-profit academic research organization based in Mumbai. It was there that I got an opportunity to interact with people who had goals similar to mine, even though our research interests were fairly different. Being in this atmosphere taught me the hard and the soft skills needed to be a part of the academe.

Other than interacting with and learning from like-minded researchers, I also dabbled in science engagement; which means that I engaged with the non-scientific population as well. I learned how to write in order to disseminate ideas to the general public, be it through popular press articles or social media. I truly believe that trying to explain ideas to a wider, more novice audience is the real test of your own understanding. In addition, my time at this organization has also helped me understand that research is a collaborative process that only tempers when you get to bounce ideas off each other.

So, while people around me are still unsure of what exactly I do, I am more than content with the idea that I am actively participating in science, and doing exactly those things that I thought, five years ago, to be arduous and maybe even impossible.