Department Chair's Message

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Psychology is a discipline that studies human behaviors and mental processes. Not only bases it on natural sciences, but it also rests upon humanities and social sciences. Psychology principally deals with human beings, thus contributing to the understanding, developing, and changing ourselves, other individuals, and the world. Learning and studying psychology is a way of making the world more tolerable and inhabitable.

As a profession, Psychology includes various practical applications, equipped with knowledge and skills accumulated in many fields concerning human beings.

In Turkey, Psychology has a four-year undergraduate education, but it may extend to five years in some foreign countries. Students may also continue graduate studies in various subfields from academic psychology to applied areas, thus obtain the title of "specialist" with a master's degree.

Let us describe the relationship between undergraduate and graduate studies in Psychology with the following analogy. Imagine for a moment that you want to color a wall in your home. Needless to say, before obtaining your color, you need to do specific preparations that would make the wall ready for coloring. First, you should repair and prime the wall. Then with the proper information, you brew in your mind the color, quality, and suitability of the actual coloring you would apply in multiple layers. Undergraduate studies in Psychology are somehow like such an initial stage to reach the desired result and build a solid foundation. Your color preference comes as a final operation that would reflect your desire and goal. Let's continue with our coloring analogy. So many different colors you can choose from, each of which may open the door to a different world for you.

Regardless of the field, the psychologist's primary purpose is to observe behavior, describe the data obtained through observation, and finally explain them. Establishing a cause-effect relationship on behavior helps the psychologist make prospective predictions and inferences. Thus, for a research psychologist, the ultimate goal is to establish control over behavior or be effective in behavioral processes. Identifying factors that initiate, postpone, maintain, prevent, or cure any behavior leading to a problem provides an opportunity for behavioral change through the psychologist's interference. That is an invaluable contribution to human life.

Human is a biological, spiritual, social, and cultural being. Focusing on human beings, Psychology studies human behavior by considering mutual interactions of all such areas. Our emotions, thoughts, information processing, learning, memory, language use, problem-solving, reasoning, and extravert behaviors result from physical and chemical events in our brains. A human's inner and outer world, the society, and the cultural environment they live in also interact with such events. Psychology at the undergraduate level provides students with primary perspectives for each of its subfields. However, in scholarly practice, sometimes only one of its areas may come to the fore, or a reductionist attitude may be adopted by simplification. Many scientific discoveries have been made in this way. Thus, as a profession or field of practice, psychology benefits from various perspectives in combination or separately.

Finally, we are looking forward to meeting all candidates who are curious, interested, and open to learning. We invite you to explore psychology together with us.