Psychological literacy: from classroom to real world

Abstract

Psychology is being studied by a growing number of people. At pre-tertiary level, it is now the fourth most popular subject, with over 56,000 entries for A-level examinations and 101,000 entries for AS-level examinations this year (JCQ, 2014). According to the Quality Assurance Agency Subject Benchmark for Psychology (QAA, 2010), psychology is one of the most popular subjects for undergraduate study in the UK (at the time of the publication of the Subject Benchmark, it was the second most studied subject overall, and the most popular science subject at undergraduate level). There are currently over 91,000 students studying psychology in UK universities, of whom almost 18,000 are postgraduates (see www.hesa.ac.uk/stats). This implies that there must be an enormous number of people in the UK who have studied psychology in some form, at some stage in their lives, and the numbers can only be increasing each year. It is therefore worth asking what impact the study of psychology has on these individuals, and, in turn, what is the wider impact on society as a whole?