Anyway to combine these two interests into a career?

[EightBitGnosis]

I have a love of Experimental Psychology and a love of Experimental psychology. Yet I have no idea how I'm going to combine these. I love math, and I really want to be on the edge of both of these fields where new and unconventional thought is needed to make advances.

I'm torn between a love of both of these, yet I'm not sure if I can combine these. Even if I had to attempt a double PhD to make this work I'd do it.

 

[Jikx]

you listed the same thing !

 

[theFuture]

I'm going to step out on a limb and say you mean physics and psychology. Check this paper out.

http://unism.narod.ru/arc/p96/p96.htm

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

you know there is a rather new subject called "cognition science" as far as i know you can incorporate maths with psychology (but I am not sure about this, you need to check more about this science.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

btw your last remark made me think, do anyone of you guys and gals know someone that has done two phd theses for two different uncorrelated subjects?

 

[BoulderHead]

I recommened a little more Experimental Psychology to help round things out.

 

[EightBitGnosis]

Well damn, I feel stupid. Oh well, it happens

And yes, I did mean Psychology and Physics.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I recommened a little more Experimental Psychology to help round things out.

ok, I know I shouldn't laugh - but Boulderhead you're cracking me up!

 

[Moonbear]

Well damn, I feel stupid. Oh well, it happens

And yes, I did mean Psychology and Physics.

Absolutely! Well, as long as you are willing to consider neuroscience as an approach to psychology and don't mean sitting around talking to people about what they are thinking.

There are a lot of newer imaging technologies, continual improvements in things such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). There are amazing studies that can be done using this technology to learn about what parts of the brain are functioning during different tasks and processes, and there's a lot of work still to be done to continue improving resolution of the instrumentation, which is still pretty coarse right now. Working with this instrumentation is very computationally demanding, and designing it certainly is within the realm of applied physics. This would apply to any field of science, actually. You need to understand what it is you want to measure in order to develop the technology to measure it. Though, it wouldn't be so much a pure physics degree as perhaps an engineering degree that would help most.

 

[WORLD-HEN]

You could study psychology on your own time and study physics and math for your career. It would be quite hard to do it the other way around. And there's no point in doing a Ph.D in psychology AND Physics, because a Ph.D is mostly for getting you better career options. So you can do a Ph.D in the subject you want as a career and practise the other subject or even do research in it on your own time. A good example is Roger Penrose, he was trained as a mathematician and physicist but has done research in cognitive sciences and he also put forward some serious theories about the working of the brain.

 

[Gonzolo]

btw your last remark made me think, do anyone of you guys and gals know someone that has done two phd theses for two different uncorrelated subjects?

I had a professor who had two Ph.D.'s, probably both in science (two chemistry I think). I know someone who is doing a second in physics, but in a quite different subject than his first. And I believe a famous French author (Albert Jaquard) has 3, which I believe are anthropology, genetics and sociology or something like that. I'm also aware of people with M.D. and Ph.D. (in physics), (and even someone who is both a dentist and a doctor).

Oh, and one of the characters in the film Armaggedon (Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck etc.) has "a double-Ph.D. in geology and chemistry from MIT". In the context of the movie, I think he works has a researcher for a petroleum company.


As for combining psychology and physics :

- Neural networks, artificial intelligence (creating artificial decision making systems and simulating thought and "minds")

- Imaging: MRI, Nuclear medicine (finding out where chemicals, hormones etc. go inside the brain as a function of feelings, mood etc.)

- Education : researching what are the best ways to teach various areas of physics to various groups of people

- Modelling societies : Applying statistics, calculus, chaos theory, or any mathematical methods to model how population groups (human or animal) behave, feed, move, reproduce, consume etc. Although, this is not so individualized as a psychologist might like (unless you call it "mass psychology").