#beyondAcademia: turning research into “actionable insights” (and a job)

Once you’ve decided to make a transition out of academia, and you’ve considered what kind of new career field you’d like to enter, how do you find a job in that field? Our respondents shared four routes by which they found their first jobs after academia: through programs to transition academics to industry positions, through […]

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#beyondAcademia: Work-life balance

During the first part of our #beyondAcademia digital event on careers outside academia, we introduced our respondents in their professional contexts. Today, we reconvene our digital event to address the following questions in the posts during the remainder of the week:   What should you consider when choosing a non-academic career path? How do you […]

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#beyondAcademia: Gratitude, surprises, and ambition

Today’s post, the last in this week’s digital event on “What is it like to be an experimental psychologist working in academia?” is a combination of gratitude journal, book of secrets, and five-year plan. We asked our respondents, introduced here, what they most appreciate about their new career, what surprised them most about having a […]

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#beyondAcademia: “I can get … a lot of … satis-fffaction”

After experimental psychologists leave academia, how satisfied are they with their new careers? And how do the positives and negatives compare to their experience in academia? Our respondents, introduced here, shared the upsides, and the downsides, of pursuing a non-academic career. Intellectual Satisfaction If there’s one thing academia is known for, it’s for the pursuit […]

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#beyondAcademia: What skills can experimental psychologists offer?

The experience that experimental psychologists acquire during their academic careers proves to be extremely useful outside of academia. When we asked our respondents, whom we introduced at the beginning of the week, what knowledge and skills from academia they use most often in their new careers, Katie Rotella summed up the group’s views: “pretty much […]

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#beyondAcademia: What are the motivations for a career switch out of academia?

We introduced our respondents yesterday. Their motivations for leaving academia fell into four broad themes: lifestyle factors, scarcity, curiosity, and impact. Lifestyle factors Most respondents cited the need for increased control over their careers and where they lived as important reasons for their career switch. Being a young scientist in academia involv­es stress and uncertainty. […]

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(The good) life beyond academia

According to 2015 estimates, the average psychology PhD graduate is 31.2 years old and has spent the last seven years in graduate school. What’s next? Approximately 32% plan to complete a postdoc, and 23% have definite employment lined up. This employment is more likely to be in non-academic sectors—industry, government, or non-profit—than in academia. Then […]

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When too much inhibition freezes ducks and bunnies into their perceptual place

Our perception of the world is flexible and depends on our expectations, our experience, and on cues around us. Ambiguous images, whose identity can change depending on our interpretation, offer a striking illustration of this flexibility. Perhaps the best-known and best-studied ambiguous image is the rabbit-duck, first brought to psychologists’ attention by Jastrow in 1899. […]

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