Authors
Roy F Baumeister
Publication date
2022/9/15
Journal
Pillars of Social Psychology: Stories and Retrospectives
Pages
308
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Description
I came to psychology in a roundabout and accidental manner. I was a math whiz in high school and chose Princeton because their math department was rated best in the country. My resident advisor pushed me to take an assortment of very different courses, and soon I realized that my math course was the dullest. At Princeton I also met some true math geniuses and quickly realized I was not one of them. Those being the hippie days, I decided I would study the grand issues of religion and philosophy. I spent a year in foreign study at Universität Heidelberg studying philosophy. While there, I happened to read some of Freud, s writings on morality, which impressed me. Instead of analyzing the concepts of right and wrong, as a philosopher would, he relied on data, as to how morality emerged in early societies and how children learned right vs. wrong. Exciting! When I got back, my parents explained that they would not pay Princeton tuition for a philosophy major, because the career and financial prospects for philosophy majors were grim–unless I agreed to go to law school afterwards. I made appointments with some lawyers to explore their career and lifestyle and decided that being a lawyer was bad karma. At a loss for what to do, I suggested psychology as a compromise. I vividly remember my father, s immediate reply:“You, d be wasting your brain!” But to his credit, he did some research. It turned out that at his company (Standard Oil) there were some industrial psychologists whose salaries were higher than his, so he concluded it was possible to make a living in psychology after all. He somewhat reluctantly agreed to pay tuition for a psychology …
Scholar articles
RF Baumeister - Pillars of Social Psychology: Stories and …, 2022