‘Which bits of psychology do I take out of my toolkit?’

What inspired you to write your book?

I think, having taught lots of students over a very long period, one of the things that I recognised was the idea that students were learning a lot of complex psychological theory, research methods, statistics, and qualitative data analysis, but didn't necessarily know what to do with it. I started to think about employability and the idea of psychological literacy – or the ability to apply psychology to achieve your personal, work, or community goals.

Back in 2016 we introduced the idea of psychological literacy into the QAA [Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education] Subject Benchmark Statement but I don't think teaching really changed to enable students to understand that they had this toolkit they could use in their personal lives or communities. We want students to be able to think 'here I am at work or in my community and I have a problem here I want to solve – what can I do with psychology? Which bits of psychology do I take out of my toolkit?'

I started doing lots of work on psychological literacy but that was all aimed at academics and colleagues in psychology. I wrote the book because I realised students needed this toolkit as well… they need to know what they can do with psychology and what they're empowered to do with it. But, importantly, they also need to know about the ethics of using psychology and be aware of the limits of their competence, to recognise when they're experts and when they're not, and when they should ask for some help.

Students and academics often learn psychology in quite a traditional way – they learn some theory and research methods but not so much applied psychology. You might learn complex theories about attentional load and task switching and it's all very complex, then they'll bring in an application, for example 'this is why driving and using your mobile phone is really dangerous because your brain can't cope with doing more than one task at a time'. But I started thinking that's the wrong way around – you shouldn't necessarily start with the psychology, but start with the situation. That's the way the book is structured – it starts with a situation in life and gives ideas of how to use psychology and apply it in that situation.

Could you give me a few examples of some of those situations featured in the book?

When I was thinking about the overarching structure of the book I thought about areas where students might want to use psychology, where it could be useful. Many students come to study psychology with particular questions or problems. They might have chosen psychology because their sister has depression and they want to understand it better, or when they were young they may have had an eating disorder and a clinical psychologist was really helpful. So I thought the book should look at some of the things psychology can do to help us understand ourselves.

The book starts with psychology of the self – who am I? What does the self mean? How am I different to someone else? What are things that affect me as an individual that psychology might help me with? So the book starts with the student in the centre then ripples outwards to learning at university, health, and family and friends.

I also cover employability – how you can use psychology to get a job, apply for a job, find a job and know what you'd like to do with your life. It also explores what to do when you have a job, how you manage a team, how to achieve good work-life balance, as well as the psychology of leisure.

Then the book moves onto community and we talk about the LGBTQ+ community, the online community, the student community, and we ask what it means to be part of a community. Then I discuss the global community and big global challenges like sustainability, terrorism, global peace and security and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The book ends with a reflective chapter – the reader has learned about what psychology can and can't do, what you can do as an individual, what your values are, and the last chapter asks them to reflect on what they've learned, what they'll do as a result and how to monitor their own development.

Is the book mainly aimed at psychology students?

In my 2014 article in The Psychologist I wrote about all of those students who study psychology and then stop, and what they do with that psychological knowledge? This book is for them. It's a book that says 'just because you're not a clinical psychologist doesn't mean you have to stop learning and thinking about psychology in your personal, work and community life.'

I think the book could also be useful for academics. Many academics learned traditional psychology education; they learned the theory and the models, but then we say to them 'here's the subject benchmark statement from 2023 and it says you've got to teach about psychological literacy, inclusion, decolonising, sustainable development goals, employability and entrepreneurship'. I think a lot of people might struggle to do that. The book includes several activities that lecturers and academics could use with their students.

In your teaching, you may have been reflecting on, for example, what messages you portray through your social media profile. We can then start to think about social comparison and the ways people send a message via social media about who they are, and you can ask students to think about the messages they're sending out about themselves. 

You might be posting smiling pictures of your family eating Christmas dinner but it doesn't show that everybody's annoyed and the dog's been sick in the corner! So it could help students think about how they filter their own social media and how they think others filter their own.

Julie Hulme will be speaking about her book at a free in-person event on Wednesday 19 March at Nottingham Central Library between 6pm and 7pm. See more information and register.