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At this point, we have interviewed plenty of psychology professionals about how they first became interested in the subject, but we didn’t have a student perspective – until now. Eric is a rising sophomore at a four-year university in upstate New York. He hasn’t officially declared as a psychology major, but he is strongly considering the track. So when we asked him to pen a short piece on why he was interested in psychology, he was more than happy to oblige.It was hard for me to think of anything that stuck out as a prominent interest I could use for a major. That was, until I realized that I had always found myself being drawn to people. Not so much the people themselves, but their behavior. Like people becoming embarrassed when they accidentally make eye contact with a stranger on the subway. I wondered why some people with disorders act so dramatically different while other disorders are far more subtle. I am a very sociable person, so that’s what drew me in to wondering about behavior and human interaction. Now, ever since I started learning more about psychology, I start picking out events in reality and seeing them through different lenses. For example, I might see something about a historical event, like World War II and think about how ethnocentric the world leaders were and what psychological factors drove those leaders to make their impactful – and often catastrophic – decisions. Or it might also be something much smaller, like I might notice someone consistently being scared of something and my mind would immediately be thinking about whether that person has some sort of a phobia.

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