• Question: what would you say are the most important traits are to becoming a psychologist?

    Asked by anon-204919 to Sally, Lucy, Dan on 5 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sally Tilt

      Sally Tilt answered on 5 Mar 2019:


      Ooo, that’s a great question – and I’m looking forward to seeing the answers from the other psychologists.

      The things that I think are important are:

      – being curious – always wondering why a particular behaviour is occurring.
      – being reflective – thinking through how you have approached a task or piece of work with a client – so that you can decide if you would change your approach in future.
      – spotting patterns and links to research – quite a bit of psychology involves linking what you are observing with a theory or framework. This is a skill that you can learn, but it is helpful to have an interest in research and how to apply this in practise.
      – relationship building skills – psychology involves other people so it is helpful to like other people and to want to build relationships.

    • Photo: Lucy Maddox

      Lucy Maddox answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      Brilliant question. I would say…
      Nosiness – like Sally said about curiousity, always wondering about what’s the reason behind things people say or do
      Ability to stay calm under pressure – often psychology is about keeping your head in a stressful situation and trying to apply the theories you know to real life
      Honesty – really important to do what you say you will and to be able to admit if you make a mistake
      Friendliness – I personally think this is really important for connecting with the people you are trying to help and getting along with team members
      Conscientiousness – getting into psychology involves quite a lot of study and work experience and then the training involves a mix of working in different jobs and studying at the same time, so following through and doing what you know you need to is important.

    • Photo: Dan Taylor

      Dan Taylor answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      Fab questions!
      – Curiosity is definitely an important one! I think its probably vital if you want to do research, if you’re not curios about the result of your findings, why are you carrying out the study to begin with?
      – Empathy is also really important. I don’t think you necessarily have to particularly like the people you interact with, but being able to put yourself in their shoes is a big part of being able to understand that person/group of people.
      – Friendliness or sociability – psychologists deal with people! So you have to be able to enjoy, or at least be able to fake enjoyment, talking to people. Some of my research can involve sensitive topics so being able to put participants at ease and know that they aren’t being judged is really important.
      – Open mindedness partially feeds into the previous remarks on empathy and friendliness, you should never be outright judging the people you’re interacting with (though sometimes it can be hard), but it can also be more than that. Being open to new ideas is really important. Take something like mental health; in the old days homosexuality was thought of as a mental illness and punishable as a crime, imagine if people refused to listen to new ideas as this was still the case! It’d be awful!

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