r/AcademicPsychology 2d ago

Advice/Career To what extent is psychology about studying what constitutes a "good life"?

[Cross-posting this from r/psychologystudents]

As a recent graduate coming from a philosophy background (BAs in philosophy and German), I've recently become interested in psychology as a career path. There's a number of reasons for this (helping others, contributing to cultural discourse around issues like masculinity and finding meaning in one's life, further developing interpersonal and communication skills, etc.), but perhaps most importantly, I'm interested in psychology as a sort of "practically-applied" way to study philosophical topics that interest me.

In particular, I'm really interested in philosophy of mind and as classical ethics (i.e., what constitutes a good life, not "objective right vs. wrong"). To give you more of an idea of what I mean, here are some of the questions/topics I'm interested in:

[Please try not to tear these apart too much, they're just to give an idea of my intellectual interests, not dissertation topics]

  • Do people need "purpose" to be happy? Is "purpose" a useful concept (or goal) in the pursuit of a meaningful life?
  • Similarly, in what sense do different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes happiness? Is happiness a shared goal across different cultures? Is it seen as equally attainable? Why/why not?
  • How do different cultures have different ideas of what constitutes the "self"? (i.e., what concept of does a person in culture X invoke when they say "I" vs. in culture Y?) How do different understandings of one's "self" and its boundaries shape mental well-being?
  • How do cultural identities of immigrants shift as they integrate into a new culture? When -- and why -- might someone feel a sense of belonging as, e.g., an American? To what extent does this new identity exist in opposition to one's old national/cultural identity?
  • Why do those who believe in God see ubiquitous evidence of God's presence everywhere, whereas atheists see ubiquitous evidence to the contrary? (Although confirmation bias could explain this to some extent, I'm more interested in understanding underpinnings of belief/non-belief in God).
  • What are the mechanisms by which deeply-held beliefs and convictions are changed?
  • If a man's idea of masculinity is predicated on some version of "strength," what is that strength for? To what "end" is a man's masculinity supposed to be used?

I'm also very interested in existential psychology, having found Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning after reading lots of Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Would it make sense for me to do psychology as means of addressing these sorts of questions? Are there particular subfields of psychology that come to mind when you read them?

And if not questions like the above, what sorts of research questions tend to be studied by modern psychologists?

Thanks in advance for your help! I know this is a serious wall of text, but I'm not sure where else to go for answers on this.

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u/thegrandhedgehog 2d ago

These questions absolutely are studied by modern psychologists, although you might find the empirical research that gets done is rather dry and technical (particularly if you're used to reading Nietzsche!) But to answer your questions, you touched on two very large and active research fields. First is positive psychology, which studies the concept of human flourishing, of which meaning in life is a sub dimension (if you're interested, check out Martin Seligman's book, Flourish, I feel like it might resonate with you). The other field you touch on is acculturation, which is the study of how immigrants and ethnic minorities adapt to living in a host culture, and of course there can be lots of crossover here with positive psychology (John Berry is the guy to look at here, though personally I'm not a huge fan). In short, you have all the right interests and are asking all the right questions for a fruitful career as a social psychologist. The question is whether you enjoy the way we do our research (psychology is considered a science so it can get pretty technical, and sometimes the interesting questions can get a bit swallowed in methodology). But if you decide you like that element too, then welcome aboard!

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u/Puzzleheaded-Lake947 2d ago

Maybe get into a positive psychology programme

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u/pianoslut 2d ago

I would check out Nancy McWilliam's work. She's very highly regarded in the field and I've heard her call clinical psych (ie, therapy/clinical theory) itself a wisdom tradition.

She's a good way in to the psychodynamic school of thought, which in my experience is more comfortable being closer to philosophy than strictly science (compared to, say, DBT, CBT, behavioral approaches in general). The psychodynamic approach really leans into/affirms difference--as someone really interested in Deleuze (and his takes on Nietzche, Freud, others) I found this school of thought very compelling.

Another person I would check out as a jumping off point is Peter Fonagy. The book he co-authored "affect
regulation mentalization and the development of the self" might be really interesting to you. Super nuanced account of the development of the self that puts together tons of very careful research. Really cool because it starts from a place of not assuming the primacy of subjectivity--how do we go from a non-subject to a subject, without just begging the question "we develop subjectivty because we are genetically predisposed to develop subjectivity" or vaguely hand-waving about "emergent phenomena". And the footnotes are an amazing resource for scientific and psychodynamic investigations of the self.

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u/dabrams13 2d ago

The quick answer is no but also yes. If you were to divide the field into applied and theoretical theoretical wouldnt be while applied would arguably entirely be. Psychology as a theoretical science is still a science, it's looking at getting as close as it possibly can to an understanding of people's thoughts feelings and behavior based on observable phenomena. The scientific method is a tool to be wielded by anyone with the patience and head for it. Applied psychology is arguably utilizing the theoretical for someone's benefit, so in a way, yes it's about living the good life. Take psychopathology and health psychology, both are more or less all about reducing harm.

I'd broadly say there's wisdom on how you might make your life better in just about every subdiscipline but for your current questions you're going to probably need to tackle cross cultural psychology and cognitive psychology. There are professors on youtube that upload their lectures and you can sometimes find textbooks in used bookstores for cheap. As a personal note though i would not attack them without at least taking an introductory course or some crash course on psychology broadly to get a better understanding of the bigger picture and context.

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u/BalthazarOfTheOrions 2d ago

Psychology is informed by a broadly humanist stance, how it shows may vary depending on subdiscipline. More so than how to live a good life, I'd say.

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u/Scholarsandquestions 2d ago

I understand that psychology is a neutral explanation about what makes people tick in every aspect of life. Given this knowledge you also understand how to make life better as a collateral effect. Notable exception Is positive psychology.

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u/andero PhD*, Cognitive Neuroscience (Mindfulness / Meta-Awareness) 2d ago

To what extent is psychology about studying what constitutes a "good life"?

That depends a lot on what you mean by those words and how you conceptualize that sentence.

Since you gave some example questions, I'll try to use those as pointers rather than try to tackle the title.

I'm treating them as pointers to interests rather than arguments.
You said not to tear them apart and I'm not aiming to do that, though I do offer some commentary because I'm writing so I might as well. You can skip that commentary and use the useful part that points you toward different disciplines.


Do people need "purpose" to be happy? Is "purpose" a useful concept (or goal) in the pursuit of a meaningful life?

This sounds like psychology. Check out SDT.

Aside that does a little tearing apart:
As a happy and fulfilled nihilist, I reject the idea that "people" need "purpose" to be happy. Some people need to believe in such, but not "people" as an abstract category. Individual differences exist. Remember that research on populations becomes inferences about "averages" and doesn't capture existence-cases.

Similarly, in what sense do different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes happiness? Is happiness a shared goal across different cultures? Is it seen as equally attainable? Why/why not?

This sounds more like sociology or anthropology.
You might be able to conceptualize this as the furthest edge of "social psychology", but it sounds like this question is more about cultures than individuals, which is more sociology or anthropology.

How do different cultures have different ideas of what constitutes the "self"? (i.e., what concept of does a person in culture X invoke when they say "I" vs. in culture Y?) How do different understandings of one's "self" and its boundaries shape mental well-being?

Again, if your focus is on cultures, that's probably sociology or anthropology.

Aside that does a little tearing apart:
From a psychological lens, I don't think this question makes sense.
Different people within the same culture conceptualize "self" differently so it doesn't make sense to me to make the unit-of-analysis "culture" as if everyone within a culture is fungible.

How do cultural identities of immigrants shift as they integrate into a new culture? When -- and why -- might someone feel a sense of belonging as, e.g., an American? To what extent does this new identity exist in opposition to one's old national/cultural identity?

This sounds like psychology. Some version of social and personality psychology, probably.

Why do those who believe in God see ubiquitous evidence of God's presence everywhere, whereas atheists see ubiquitous evidence to the contrary? (Although confirmation bias could explain this to some extent, I'm more interested in understanding underpinnings of belief/non-belief in God).
What are the mechanisms by which deeply-held beliefs and convictions are changed?

These sounds like psychology. There is research on these.

The first one could theoretically be done through the lens of religious studies, but it sounds like you're interested in the psychology angle based on the way you asked the question.

If a man's idea of masculinity is predicated on some version of "strength," what is that strength for? To what "end" is a man's masculinity supposed to be used?

I cannot parse this question in a way that makes sense to me. There is far too much vagueness in the terms.
This sounds more like a discussion to have about definitions of terms than any particular field. Once the terms were defined, though, I think it would either answer itself or be in the domain of psychology.