In today’s world, which would make a more important major?
I suppose “important” is relative. Do you want to know which would be more important for contributing something earth-shaking the changes everyone’s perspective on how to live? Or do you want to know which would be more important for getting a job after graduation?
For both majors I have always been lead to believe that if you want to do anything significant in those fields you need at least a Master’s degree. What exactly are you planning to do with the major? What interests you?
I’m sure philosophy has plenty of strong points that would be applicable to today’s world, how to reason and use logic – things like that. To me personally, I would say psychology is probably more practical.
Of course that’s just my opinion, not a general answer.
Psychology. Philosophy graduates wait tables, but pysch grads can work retail.
Seriously, unless you’re plannig to get a graduate degree in one of these disciplines, it hardly matters. The real world implications of a degree lie in the school that confers it, and to some degree its realm, not the actual major. For instance, an entry level job in a laboratory requires a degree in a laboratory science, but biology or physics will do as well as a chemistry major in most labs – the basic stuff is common to all science majors, and the rest you learn on the job.
Almost any liberal arts major will have learned (should have learned, grumble grumble) to do library research, to write papers, and to reason well. Specific knowledge comes from the employer. The specific knowledge imparted by your major is probably not important to anyone but grad schools.
There are exceptions (like engineering), but it doesn’t look like you’re thinking about anything that specific.
Sounds like a poll or mild debate to me. Neither are good if you want a job based on your degree straight out of undergraduate school. Both are very broad subjects so it is hard to give an exact answer. I designed a custom major in Neuroscience for myself in college but it was based in the psychology department. I didn’t study the same things that people that focused on say social psych did.
A philosophy major can be good if you want to go to law school but psychology works well too. Either are fine for most other professional schools too.
Psychology is the most popular major in the U.S. so you wouldn’t be unique. On the other hand, it is female dominated so if having lots of girls in your class is important to you, then that could be a consideration.
Of course, none of this really means much. You should just major in what you are interested in.
Quite a few people with either degree end up with a job unrelated to either. I was an anthropology major and a psychology minor, and I’m a lawyer now. My friend was a philosophy major, and he’s an IT tech now. You have a greater chance doing something in psychology than you do of signing up with one of the big philosophy firms, but there’s probably an even greater chance you’ll do something that has little to do with your major.
This doesn’t have a factual answer. It’s more a matter of opinion.
Off to IMHO.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
Ditto for some of Nametag’s post. Look at my profile. You do infact need more advanced degree’s if you want to go into psych. I am an instructor at a small liberal arts college, I was not even looked at prior to PhD.
A minor in Philosophy - as I did in Classic Greek - makes you no more marketable in the work force, but slightly more interesting at dinner parties.
Philosophy is an excellent major to prepare you for the intellectual rigors of law school. If you’re not planning to go to law school, it’s an excellent major to prepare you to be the life of an otherwise terribly dry party…
Barry
I majored in Psych, worked in psych for a while as a paraprofessional. Went to grad school.
I wouldn’t recommend it as a way to make a living at the BA level(meaning, you’re going to grad school, right?)
Maybe if you’re into like industrial/organizational stuff and want to work in Human resources or something.
But yeah, if you want to be a clinician, psych. If you want to be a lawyer, philosophy. If you want to be a professor/professional student, either one.
I guess it has more to do with your goals
Which is more important? Either/Neither. I personally think psych is the more applicable to concrete goals than philosophy, but I didn’t major in the latter.
Social work, if you really are interested in what the world needs.
As my philosophy prof told me: It’s no harder to find a job with a degree in philosophy than in any other, but philosophy grads aren’t usually interested in the same kinds of jobs either."
As a philosophy major I haven’t had any worse luck finding employment than anyone else in these times.
I absolutely plan to go back to grad school and get a Ph.D. though, so my job search isn’t as important either.
Bottom line: neither degree is going to make employers jump at the chance to hire you. If you want to practice psychology, go for it. Law school? Philosophy. If you just want something easy, psychology! 
Like most of the previous posters mentioned, it is not very clear what the OP meant. Important in the sense of: helping you make money, or as in: making you more interesting as a person, making you happier and at peace with the universe, increasing your life expectancy, or (what the heck) giving you a BIGGER PENIS?
Oops. That last bit just slipped out. Reading too much MPSIMS, I guess.
For making money I would concur with the previous posters, but it appears the U.S. job market works different then Europe. If you have graduated in psychology over here you can simply work in Human Resources. Only if you want to do psycho-analysis you may have to study further. With philosophy there are practically no specific job opportunities, although you may have the advantage to things like Cultural Anthropology that people at least are interested in what you have done.
I studied philosophy and after that studied law (which is not exactly the same as lawschool), partly for the job perspective and partly because I wanted a bit more practical work (I’m working on my dissertation, though, so it is still an active interest). A friend of mine did the PhD thingy but is now in the difficult years of fishing for post-doc grants in the hope of finally reaching tenure. That is the normal course of affairs, unless you are lucky or brilliant or (referably) both.
With respect to a non-careerist, non-monetary idea of importance I would say, definitely philosophy. The interest of non-philosophers is noticable, people seem to think you have caught a glimpse of higher wisdom (for he on honeydew hath fed/and drunk the milk of paradise) or at least find it an inspiring subject, since it differs from more mundane subjects. Furthermore philosophy is an unparallelled training for the mind.
And oh, studying philosophy does not in itself enlarge your genitals. It can make you a bigger dick, though. 
If you really love arguing on message boards, major in philosophy and be sure to take all of the classes in logic and semantics available to you.
As a philosophy UG degree holder who works with PhDs in psychology, my bias is that my undergraduate degree is superior to their graduate ones. More seriously, philosophy is more likely to help you learn how to really think–it’s about the last major likely to even strive for this.
Actually you do not need to follow lots of logic classes for debating, Bucky. The standard program should give you the proper basics of logic. It is better to follow courses in subjects you want to debate about, so you get familiar with the common fallicies in there and know the arguments against it (like the Cogito-debate, the psychological egoism thesis, etcetera).
Still we don’t know what the OP meant. Is he an aspiring student whom we can still seduce into philosophy? Or is he already past that tender age and trying to confirm his private theory that philosopher’s say ‘have a nice day’ at their first job?
Sorry for leaving my original post very broad. I am 19 and going to college next year. I am very interested in both psychology and philosphy. I am not really worried about a job right now. I’ve heard from most people, doesn’t matter what you major in at college, as long you get out with some kind of degree. I was just wondering which degree would be the more satisfying(sp) for lack of better words I used “important.” But anyway I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who replied, that actually helps me out a little.
I was a philosophy major. I’m the smartest guy at Pizza Hut.
Not really. I went into law. Now I’m a fancy-pants lawyer getting scumbags out of jail and back on the streets where they belong. Most of my fellow philosophy majors followed suit and went to law school as well.
Philosophy’s a fascinating subject. That’s why I majored in it. But it really has limited practical applications. I assume that, if you plan to go into either philosophy or psychology, you’d better plan to go to graduate school.
Just my opinion, natch.
I wound up majoring in psychology, which came as a major suprise (snerk) to me, as I’d intended to study journalism. But my introductory psych course had me hooked from the word go-- I can’t explain it. So I’d have to say the way to go is to just try different classes and see how you like them. You may find that your natural interest in one will make the decision for you. Or you might find your true calling in a subject you never considered before, as it happened in my case.
I’m also of the opinion that most people are much better off pursuing something they are interested in, rather than studying just to get any degree, or studying something that will (supposedly) lead to more money. Ain’t no amount of money gonna make you love what you do if you have no passion for it to begin with. If you’re going to invest several years and several thousand dollars in doing something you’ll hopefully be doing with the rest of your working life, why not make more of it than just to get “some kind of a degree”?
Make sure they tell you about the stats if you decide on Psych
Seems to me that most psych students have no idea the amount of statistical research they would be buried under when they enrolled.
You can do something pratical with a doctoral in Psych. You can’t with philosophy.
PSYCHOLOGY! Damn Philosophy ruined my life!
i’m in the first year of a BA philosophy course at the University of London.
It’s hard but very interesting when I force myself to do the work. More than any other subject I think its scary when you think about what you dont know in it compared with what you do, if I fail this year it will be no surprise, if I pass with a 1st it’ll be the best day of my life but even if I flunke dout I’d be glad i came anyway.
headshrinkers wont teach you nothin son, go with the philosophy massive.