Social Scientists
Sadly, no, social scientists are not those who study how to be social, rather, they are the scientists who study society. There are a number of different specialties within social science itself such as sociology, history, anthropology and so on, including some we’ve discussed elsewhere, like economics. But the essential point of all of these sciences is to try and understand that most complex of creatures, the human beings, and the societies created. To do this requires good knowledge of both the subject itself and also of statistics: for it is always important to be able to work out whether a finding is in fact important or not, is it a “real” finding or is it merely a product of chance working upon the sample?
These professions require the highest educational achievements of any: a simple college degree is only enough to get to the first stage, working possibly as an assistant. A further college degree, a Master’s, might get a teaching job in a community college, or in some private sector jobs, but for all of the real jobs a third college degree is necessary, a Ph.D. That’s a minimum 7 year investment before you can even start climbing the tree to a professorship. However, while not noticeably well paid for such a clutch of college degrees ($50-$60,000 a year), it does indeed suit those that do it. For they tend to be motivated by the opportunity to do research, to think, rather than by money.
As to our EQSQ personality tests, this is one of those jobs where anyone from the empathizer to the systemizer can join in. For within the “social sciences” there are places for everyone. We might put the economists at one end, the systemizers or male brain types, and the anthropologists at the other, the female brain or empathizing type.
March 8th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Perhaps the biggest draw to potential students of the social sciences was covered in the opening paragraph of this post, but it was done so too modestly. The social sciences draw on virtually every field within the humanities. With so far-ranging a gamut of disciplines to draw upon, any serious student with good emotional intelligence and a willingness to do proper, hard-nosed research could find a unique niche within the social sciences.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Sam, I’d agree with you, the bits and pieces of intelligence from my own forays in economics (my original training and the subject of a lot of my professional writing) lead me down that path. I tend to be interested in three things, evolution, the environment and the micro parts (the incentives for example) of economics. I’m thus able to be very happy pottering about at the intersection of those three things.
Those with other interests can find similar suitable niches within the social sciences. I know one person who had the intelligence to combine his historical research with his love of food and cooking. One paper of his was on the regional distribution of sausage recipes in the UK. He love doing the field research to see how things varied over distances.
March 10th, 2007 at 5:28 am
What’s interesting to me about the social sciences it that they study the same thing as the humanities—that is, humanity—but they do so using the scientific method. I studied psychology as an undergraduate and found that approaching human experience through the scientific method took a certain bit of mystery out of understanding existence. So, I got my master’s in poetry. What’s great about the social sciences, is now I could combine my two interests and go back for a PhD studying the impact of the literary arts.
March 16th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I haven’t got the intelligence to go for a Ph.D. myself but I do take your point about the joys of the social sciences. I often think we’ve missed a trick in the way that we’ve allowed them to become so discrete, separated. It seems that sociologists have completely different views about what motivates humans than do economists for example. But both are really trying to answer the same question: what is it that makes humans tick?
Very much the same could be said for your own two subjects, psychology and poetry. Both are trying to peer into the human “soul” or character and it would seem to be a mark of intelligence that everyone moved around a little more between these areas.