Have you ever thought about how many types of psychologists are there? What the different types of psychologists do?
When we hear the term psychologist, we think about a man or woman who sits in front of his client, scribble notes, and hears what his/her client says. Yes, they are the psychologists who are engaging themselves in this type of talking therapy. However, that’s not the only task of the people involved in the field of psychology. They also do a lot of other things as well.
In case you are wondering what are the different types of psychologists and what they do, we have got you covered. You are going to about their types and work in this article.
Who is a psychologist?
In layman’s term, a psychologist studies the emotional, cognitive, perceptual, social process, and behavior along with the normal and abnormal mental states based on various experiments, observations, interpretations, and records.
S/he opts to examine, observe, interpret, and record how the individuals are related to one another and with their environments in society. Very often we see them work based on hypothesis as well.
Almost in all the countries, to qualify as a psychologist, one has to achieve a bachelor’s degree in psychology as well as an honors year. There are a lot of areas or types of psychology, so are different masters programs that align with each area.
The majority of the tasks that psychologists do remain confidential, as they are not supposed to reveal any personal or sensitive information to others outside of the workplace concerning the patient.
The most well-known psychologist:
When it comes to the most well know or common type, the clinical psychologists top the list without any doubt. The are associated with treating people with mental illness. They opt to diagnose people with mental illnesses.
This process can be of two typesm and both are very common since the very outset of this field:
- A normal consultation setting, or
- A court setting
When performed in a court setting, it is determined to find out if the offender had a rational mindset while they committed the offense.
Different Types of Psychologists:
There are more than 20 types of psychologists who work on separate fields of expertise in the mental health field. Today we will be discussing the most common and top 10 types of psychologists and their work briefly.
1. Cognitive Psychologists:
They investigate the thinking process of people. Their work centers on the problem-solving or decision-making process of human beings. They are interested in how the human brain learns, recognizes, stores, utilizes data, and the overall function of the brain.
Very often they are seen to specialize in a particular area of the human brain., e.g., attention, memory, learning, learning disabilities, language development, problem-solving, pressure management, etc.
2. Community Psychologists:
Their work involves researching the community health issue. They opt to bring out positive changes at both community and individual levels. They often work on prevention programs and tend to educate the entire community.
Put simply. they work to find out the social problems, to solve the problems, promote health and wellness, and to set up policies that result in improving the people’s lives.
3. Aviation Psychologists:
The name tells it all. Their work involves things concreted with aviation. They study the thinking process and behavior of pilots and crew members. They also study about airline safety and tend to develop new process and equipment for more effective training. They also do the work of select suitable employees, be it pilots and or members.
This way they ensure employees that can cope up with critical conditions. They are often seen to work with the engineers in designing the aircraft aking human psychology into account.
4. Biopsychologists:
You may know them as physiological or biological psychologists. They try to understand the biological factors that influences the way a person thinks, perceives, recognizes, reasons, and acts.
Basically, they research on the human brain and behavior. They try to find out how brain disease and injury influence behavior. When the impact and other facts are known, better ways to treat, prevent, or manage serious brain illnesses and trauma may come to light. This is what the believe and work.
5. Clinical Psychologists:
As mentioned earlier, they are known for diagnosing people’s mental illness. They work on assess, diagnose, and treat the mental distress an illness that an individual experiences.
They can do private practice or work at hospitals and mental health clinics. Some of them are specialized in a particular area such as geriatric mental health, adult mental health, or children’s mental health.
Note: Usually they do not prescribe medications, yet sometimes they do.
6. Comparative Psychologists:
They study the behavior pattern of different living beings. They do it to find out how animal and human behavior differs. That’s why they are called as such; they do a comparative study.
The work on the principle that “some things may hold true for all species”. Thus, studying the behavior of animals, such as rats and dogs may result in finding out something that can give insights into human behaviors as well.
Based on this observation there have been a lot of od experiments. Such a Skinner’s work with pigeons, Pavlov’s experiment on dogs, or Thorndike’s work on cats.
Note: They make an average of $92,000 per year being second to only institutional-organizational ones.
7. Consumer Psychologists:
They research consumer behavior in order to develop effective marketing policies to boost business. Actually the help businesses to understand what will result in more sell by attracting more customers.
They study marketing messages, decision-making strategies, and research on what role emotions play in purchasing choices. Thus, they develop new marketing strategies, marketing messages, and identify target audiences. Besides, they also develop products to attract specific consumers.
8. Counseling Psychologists:
These professionals provide psychotherapy to people who are mentally distressed and badly experiencing behavioral problems, psychological disturbances, stress, , emotional difficulties and related issues.
Note: These professional can easily make an average of $85,000 per year. They work with clinical psychologists, and provide psychotherapy, as a resutt they identify them as licensed psychologists.
9. Cross-Cultural Psychologists:
They study the difernces of people across various cultures and the influences of cultural affiliations on their behavior. They often opt to find out the differet aspects of behavior based on different cultures.
Take for example, they may study how parenting styles vary between the individualists cultures versus collectivists cultures.
10. Developmental Psychologists:
They research on human development in throughtout the lifespan. Some of them specialize in particular periods, e.g., infant, early childhood, childhood, adolescence or adulthood, even old age.
They may do tasks like analyzing a child that has a developmental delay or disability. Or investigating issues associated with learning with aging, and studying how one acquires language skills.
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