The first reaction you get from people when you tell them you are a psychologist is “oh, so what am I thinking now?” This reflects not only the ubiquity of human narcissism – yes, most people’s favourite topic of conversation is themselves – but also the common misperception of psychologists as mind readers. Sadly, this Freudian inspired view of psychology is incorrect. As it turns out, psychologists – especially academic ones – are no more intuitive about people than other professionals are (ok, maybe we are better than accountants and software engineers, but I’ve not found any data to support this, so I’m just being intuitive here).
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