<p>Note: If you feel this is too much text, please scroll down and dedicate more attention to the questions in bold. Thank you!</p>
<p>After so many years of indecisiveness, I came to a conclusion that I want to pursue Psychology, research Psychology to be specific, in more depth. However, since Psychology is such a vast and diverse field, there is another question: what subfield?
For now, I only have a vague idea that I want to study “the human understanding”. So I thought this means “Cognition” and when i looked it up online, I have learned that this can be done in so many different ways: Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Cognitive Neuroscience (just to name a few that hit close to home but not exactly). I am simply overwhelmed with the information and feel quite lost on where my interests lay exactly. I don’t know what questions I should ask myself either.<br>
I want to look both at behavior and processes in brain, and if possible, also integrate Philosophy in it, too. Obviously, I want something interdisciplinary, and I am not sure if this track exists already, and if it does, what its name is.
I have talked to a Developmental/Evolutionary Psychologist who currently researches “Motivation” and, obviously, he told me that I have to specialize in some branch of existing Psychology before moving on to do interdisciplinary things. He also pointed out that many Psychologists lack scientific knowledge on humans which he finds important in understanding the behavior so he was pushing for more scientific background (but mentioned that he may be biased due to his scientific background). </p>
<p>The reason I am posting this here is because I need an advise on choosing my second semester courses.
I am enrolled in a three-year liberal arts and sciences college in Europe with a special curriculum. The school does not have a specific majors like in the US (like English major or Math major) but rather, it awards degrees in Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences, respectively, and students can have a ‘focus’ within those areas (such as Math focus, History focus etc). I am in my first year now, and since we spend only three years in college, we have to plan our schedules very carefully in order to get into our desired graduate programs as soon after graduation as possible. My adviser studied Humanities and she does not know much about Sciences; I tried to talk to my Psychology teacher and that did not help at all because he did not even have time to listen to my queries.
So I turn to you, CC community, in hope that you can help me. I would particularly appreciate your help on:</p>
<p>1) Explaining **the differences between Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience. **
- While I know that Neursocientists look a lot at the processes in the brain and hormones, but is that all they do?
How much ‘science’ does Cognitive Psych. integrate?
I heard Cognitive Science is not exaclty a “Science” and there is too much philosophizing - how true is that? *</p>
<p>2) Cognitive Psychology - **how much, and what kind of Science background do I need? **
- And also, what subjects? Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Anthropology or…? *</p>
<p>I need to decide on my schedule soon and it is important for me to decide whether I will need more Science background or Social Science background in order to study “cognition and behavior” at graduate level. (Do you advise major in Science and minor in Social science? Vice versa? A double-major?) </p>
<p>Any help on these topics would be greatly appreciated, even if it meant posting an useful link. Thanks! :)</p>