The Diploma in Psychology Studies at Temasek Polytechnic

What is psychology?

A lot of people have misconceived notions of what psychology actually is. Some think it's about lying down on a couch and talking non-stop. Others get paranoid about psychologists being able to read minds or judge personality just by looking. I only wish that were true. Psychologists would be superheroes!

The most common assumption is that psychology is the discipline that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia. However, this isn't entirely true. One branch of psychology, called abnormal psychology or clinical psychology, does train psychologists who help patients suffering from those types of disorders. Counselling psychology also produces therapists who can guide you through rough patches in life, like breakups or exam stress. But psychology is so much more than that.

My favourite area in psychology is industrial-organisational psychology. I/O psychologists are like consultants, helping companies to improve their work processes so that they can get the best out of their employees. For example, I/O psychologists may recommend changes to the compensation and benefits structure, or design new learning and development programmes to optimise the job performance of the workers.

Regardless of what branch of psychology you are referring to, all of them share one important principle: empiricism. In other words, everything that psychologists do must be backed up by research evidence. Don't be fooled! Psychology is often found in arts or humanities schools, but it is actually as scientific as the real hard sciences like chemistry or biology in terms of approach.

Psychology @ TP

This explains the rigorous training in research methods and statistics that forms the backbone of the psychology course at TP. One of the key selling points of the course is that by the end of your three-year stint, you would have completed three full-scale research projects, working in teams of four to six and with guidance from the lecturers. This is excellent experience to take into university-level psychology studies, which are research-intensive.

The TP website tells you more about the course and so on. But since I just graduated from it, let me give you my personal take, for those of you who are thinking of applying for the course.

A word of caution

Think about:

• How good are you with numbers? We use calculators and computer software to crunch data, but you will still need to spend hours staring at walls of data. If you absolutely hate maths or your head spins when trying to process stats, beware!
• Do you despise reading? Part of research involves reading work done by other scientists. These are published as articles in journals like Psychological Science. They are often very long and filled with complex sentences. If you don't like the sound of that, reconsider your options!
• Why do you want to study psychology? Make sure you know what you're going in for. Perhaps you are kind-hearted and want to help people in distress feel better. Counselling or social work would be more directly relevant. Maybe you were inspired by those cop shows on TV. Sure, we do get to pick a couple of electives on criminal psychology, but you'll have to study for a degree (4 years) AND a Masters (2 years) in order to become a forensic psychologist... or any other kind of psychologist, for that matter.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, you need to go in with your eyes open to the realities of psychology studies. We don't learn how to talk someone out of jumping from the top of a HDB block, or track down a psychopathic serial killer using fancy behavioural techniques. Certainly not at diploma level anyway. Maybe after you get your Masters, you might stand a chance against the likes of Ted Bundy. But for now, there's just a lot of sweat and tears (the good news is there isn't any blood) over the computer, slaving away at your next literature review, statistical analysis, or research report. It's unglamourous, exhausting, and at times frustrating.

But wait, surely something positive came out of it...

There sure was! Let's see, where do I even begin...

The three years I spent on it really sharpened my analytical and critical thinking skills, and broadened my worldview. By being exposed to lots of examples of how words (smashed vs. hit) and even numbers can be used to paint a certain picture, I no longer am as gullible as I was before, less likely to take everything at face value. Furthermore, being more aware of mental biases like the availability heuristic has allowed me to improve my own decision-making process, and even critique those of the government (*snickers*)! In cognitive psychology, the availability heuristic states that we often base our impressions on a small handful of examples that come readily to mind. This can result in many erroneous judgments. For example, we can easily recall plenty of incidences where airplane travel went horribly wrong, because such events are widely reported in the news. As such, we might conclude that air travel is extremely dangerous, even though in actual fact, we are statistically less likely to die in an air crash than, say, get killed by a car when crossing the road. In this case, the availability heuristic has caused us to inflate the perceived risk of dying in an aircraft. If we get so scared, we might even choose to avoid travelling by air entirely! Are you (my Singaporean readers) seeing any parallels here with the decision to completely isolate the entire public service from the internet? I'll just leave this here...

It even taught me to be a better person, not to judge people too quickly. In social psychology, there is an effect called the fundamental attribution error. It refers to our tendency to attach greater meaning to others' personality and innate characteristics and underestimate the influence of situational factors. For example, if a guy rushes past and bumps into you on the way to the check-in counter at the airport, you might be tempted to brand him an "impatient @#$%^&". But take a step back and calm down. There are many reasons why he might be behaving this way. Perhaps he is frantically trying to get back to his hometown, where his sick mother lies dying.

A bit more on the subjects

Trust me, you are going to do A LOT of research. Let me make it clear: Google IS NOT research. Research involves the entire process of reading up about a topic, thinking of an extension to the topic that hasn't been explored before, coming up with questions and predictions about your chosen topic, designing a survey or experiment to test your predictions, gathering data from your study, crunching the numbers and making sense of them, and finally reporting your findings so that others can build on them. You will go through this process three times, in Applied Psychology Research Project A (APRP-A), Applied Psychology Research Project B (APRP-B), and Major Project. The difference between APRP-A and APRP-B is that in APRP-A, you will design a survey whereas in APRP-B, you will need to design an experiment where you need to control variables. For Major Project, whether you do a survey or experiment or even exotic types like focus groups and interviews depends on the topic you get.

To be fair, the course is not all about research. It also covers the various branches of psychology, like child and educational, counselling, abnormal, I/O, social, and cognitive psychology. I've already talked a bit about I/O psychology, and given short examples of concepts in social and cognitive psychology. Electives allow you to learn about how psychology is applied to areas like human resource management and special needs education. These subjects are much more interesting and you will be able to easily apply what you have learnt to real life, more so if you manage to secure an internship in a related field. Internships are compulsory and possible placements include teaching aide at Pathlight School for children with autism, research assistant at universities in Australia, and recruitment or other business-oriented activities like what I had.

Assessments are mainly test- and exam-based, with some group projects and individual assignments thrown in. Projects and assignments usually require you to write essays or give a presentation on a topic. Being able and willing to memorise lots of facts is essential if you want to score good grades.

In summary...

I don't regret the three years that I spent on this diploma, as I have gained so much useful knowledge that I otherwise wouldn't have if I had gone to junior college (due to the competitive cut-off, all the students in this diploma are JC-qualified). It has imparted me with skills I will need in the university. Given another chance, I wouldn't change a thing. BUT! I would definitely advise caution to those who are considering the course. BE VERY SURE you know what you're signing up for. Like I said, if you want to become a psychologist, be prepared to read journal articles for the next ten years of your life.

Or you could always take this diploma as a foundation, and switch to another social science discipline like social work or human resource management at degree level. This is a good and viable option as the skills you will learn during the course are transferable to most general courses of study (i.e. not requiring specialised skills like engineering or medicine) in the universities, and there are plenty of choices of relevant university degrees now with the recent opening of SUSS and SIT, in addition to those offered by private institutions.

Personally, I'm probably going to jump over to another area of social science which is more skills-based and "real-world application" in nature. I don't think I want to make a career of psychology. It can be too theoretical at times, and research isn't easy or fun for me and I can't envision myself spending another six years or more of my life doing it just to get two pieces of paper. And I question the job prospects of psychology majors in Singapore, especially for those who stop at the Bachelor degree level like I plan to do. They seem pretty dim to me. Most local employers look for degrees which are related to the job opening. Degrees in human resource management are sought when recruiting for positions in HR, mass comm majors for PR roles, and so on. Since I hope to join the workforce as soon as possible, this is the route I will most likely take.

---DISCLAIMER---
I took the course from 2014 to 2017. This post is based on my experiences from that time. By the time you see this, things may have changed (particularly if you found this post through a Google search)!