what do psychologists do on a day to day basis?

Question: what do psychologists do on a day to day basis?
- Keywords:
  psychologist,
  work
Asked by anon-204422 to Sally, Lucy, Louise, David, Dan, James on 2 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-204909.
- Sally Tilt answered on 2 Mar 2019:
  
  Wow – good question – hopefully you’re going to hear about quite a bit of variety I think in the jobs that we do – I’m looking forward to the answers from the other psychologists in this zone too!
  
  As a forensic psychologist, I work in prisons. My main tasks include meeting with prisoners to understand the story that has brought them to this point – and then to use what the research tells us about criminal behaviour to understand:
  
  – how likely might the person reoffend if they are released
  – what might help to reduce the chance that they will reoffend
  
  I also work with prison officers and other staff – they bring their experience and knowledge to their roles and I can add in what the psychology research tells us – together we can help to plan the best way to work with a person in prison or to design how a prison operates.
- Lucy Maddox answered on 2 Mar 2019:
  
  I agree – great question and I’m looking forward to hearing about what everyone else does too!
  
  As a clinical psychologist what I do is different on different days and is a mix of:
  – seeing people for 1:1 talking therapy to try to help with tricky problems,
  – training foster carers on psychology ideas
  – research (into how therapists can best show people they care)
  – trying to share psychology ideas through making podcasts, writing, helping people share their stories of mental health treatment, and other projects
  – I also go to meetings – sometimes really long ones – to talk with other people about how best to do some of the things above.
- Dan Taylor answered on 4 Mar 2019:
  
  Already there have been some fab answers, as i’m still a baby psychologist, my days are currently less varied. As a PhD student I spend a lot of time reading! Which I personally love because I get to read about a topic I really love (as a sex researcher I spend a lot of time reading about sex). I also get to think about planning studies and dealing with numbers – I found that over time i’ve become a bit of a statistics geek and really love playing around with data. Teaching does provide me with another outlet, I spend most of these days running seminars (smaller than lectures and tend to have a focus on activities rather than just listening). It’s wonderful getting to talk to students about interesting ideas in psychology as well as their hopes and goals for the future!
- Louise Rodgers answered on 7 Mar 2019:
  
  Hi purple2002 and 855reaq29, if you are thinking of being a psychologist, you will find a huge range of jobs and daily routines just in the Relationships Zone here! My day today has looked like this:
  
  – 8.00 to 9.00am meet my boss (Principle Educational Psychologist) at the office and go over the work we will be doing in a school this morning including our notes from the last time we were there and hypotheses around the cases we are working on there.
  – 9.00 – 10.00am consultation with a parent about her child, who the school have concerns about regarding communication and language
  – 10.00 – 11.00 I logged onto a live I’m a Scientist chat and answered some general ‘Ask’ questions, whilst my boss spoke with two class teachers in the school about two different children.
  – 11.00 – 12.00 we agreed on next steps with the school, analysed a questionnaire we’d done with a teacher and had a reflective discussion between ourselves on the way back to the office
  – 12.00 – 1.00 had lunch and caught up with other colleagues
  – 1.00 onwards writing reports in the office, which is made even more exciting by periodically answering questions like yours!
- James Munro answered on 10 Mar 2019:
  
  Hey Sophie and purple,
  
  I get bored *really* easily. I always have. So everything about my career is making sure I never have the same day twice. That makes my answer to this pretty scattered :). Instead of giving a typical day, I’ll give a list of examples.
  
  Morning: Travelling to the MRI scanner to put participants inside and scan their brains – or – teaching a class on why humans like to do things that hurt, like eating chillis or breathing menthol – or – working with sports science to track the eyes of professional athletes or referees to understand how they make decisions quickly – or – trying to help a student design their own project or calculate their findings.
  
  Afternoon: Giving a presentation in front of 50 people about my work or students’ work – or – analysing data from my MRI studies, which means looking at pictures of brains to work out what parts were important at different times – or – visiting schools to share how psychology works
  – or – creating 4D images of participants’ faces for eye witness studies – or – talking with a colleague about new research to get ideas on how we can answer important questions – or – answering questions on i’m a scientist!
- David Chadwick answered on 11 Mar 2019:
  
  This is a very tough question for a computer scientist to answer. I suggest you ask a psychologist 🙂

Question: what do psychologists do on a day to day basis?

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