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  • Should I study sociology or psychology?

  • Are you crazy? Or do you just want to drive yourself crazy trying to make sense of all

  • the other nuts out there?

  • What do you mean?

  • Psychology has few career options outside of counseling.

  • I could get a job as a criminal profiler.

  • You watch too much CSI. You’d be more likely to get a job as a negotiator, MBA managerial

  • track position or marketing.

  • Psychology has nothing to do with marketing.

  • That’s only what companies want you to think.

  • What do sociologists do?

  • They sometimes work in marketing, performing opinion surveys and studying demographic trends

  • of the customer base and its shifting preferences.

  • I thought they worked for non-profits studying people and determining public policy.

  • It’s rather hard to get a decent paying job at a non-profit these days. You might

  • make more money at a think tank.

  • Or a senior track position in sociology.

  • Fewer than one in four doctoral candidates in the liberal arts get a tenure track teaching

  • position today.

  • So much for teaching.

  • At least psychology is taught to nurses to better understand patients, police officers

  • to handle criminals, liberal arts majors who want an easy science class and business majors

  • who want to understand what sells other than sex.

  • I’ve heard that companies hire sociologists.

  • For marketing, sometimes. But they hire psychologists for things like improving worker productivity

  • by minimizing distractions, reducing stress and finding out what is messing people up.

  • Youre making it sound like all the good paying positions are in business.

  • Marketing requires an understanding of human nature via psychology to improve the odds

  • of a sale. They need an understanding of sociology to market that message to a whole lot of people

  • or manipulate opinion on a large scale.

  • Or I could study evolutionary biology.

  • That just makes you look stupid at parties to blame everything on evolution except your

  • own failure to find a way to make a living with a liberal arts degree.

Should I study sociology or psychology?

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