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Ziyuan Chen

Professor Marie Webb

Linguistics 12—MW 11:00am

14 January 2019

A Different Culture Changed My Mind

Before entering UCSB, I was influenced by stereotypes in China about learning

psychology. However, Professor Fridlund and the culture here really convinced

me that psychology is a science rather than something useless. Therefore, I was

not unsure anymore and decided to be a glorious psychology major.

—Ziyuan Chen

Last March, I got accepted by UCSB as an undeclared major. It was only half a year left

before entering college, and I still had not decided my major. I could not find anything I wanted

to devote all my life to work on. Later on, I read a book discussing principles of psychology. I

was attracted by the author’s explanations, thus becoming a little interested in psychology.

Therefore, I went to see my best friend Samantha, whom I met in high school in China and

played with every day, to ask for her viewpoint about majoring in it. Sitting on her couch, I

asked, “Recently, I read a book discussing psychology, and it was really interesting. What is

your opinion about being a psychology major?”

With expectation, I wanted to hear something supportive and encouraging from

Samantha’s answer. Nevertheless, her reaction shocked me; she stood up, with astonishment in

her eyes, shouting out that it was unbelievable to hear me ask that question. She replied, “Are

you insane? Why do you want to learn such a useless thing? I am not discouraging you, but what

psychologists usually do is just sitting behind desks, listening to awful things happening on the
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so-called patients, and then saying something to cheer them up. This is useless to learn because

everyone can cheer people up.” Her point was that devoting myself to just learning to comfort

people for four years was ridiculous. “Psychology does not deserve it,” she said. She also argued

that psychologists could easily become to psychopaths because they would meet lots of people

with mental diseases and finally could not stand listening to their depressing stories. Then

Samantha reminded me of our classmate Dave’s mother, who had worked as a psychotherapist

for ten years. “Every time I see her, I feel so fearful,” Samantha said, with her body shaking

deliberately. The main reason was that Samantha thought Dave’s mother interacted with

psychopaths every day for years, watching the onset of dreadful mental illnesses, even suicides

of people, and listening to thousands of depressing stories. Therefore, according to Samantha, his

mother had probably been affected by those patients in the long term, making her mentally ill

just like her patients. For instance, Dave’s mother spoke loudly when communicating with

people. Samantha believed this behavior resembled the behavior of psychopaths, who loved

speaking loudly, meaning that patients had probably affected her to behave like them.

True, what Samantha said is the typical stereotype of psychology in Chinese society. In

our culture, psychology is still underdeveloped and immature. Most people do not regard

psychology as a science, do not respect psychologists as respect scientists in other fields, and do

not consider students majoring in psychology aspirant people in that they claim psychology is

only about saying something to comfort people, a useless thing that everyone can do, and only

idle men will want to learn.

I have to admit that I hid a little. The reason why I asked Samantha for her opinion was

that I subconsciously conformed to the same stereotypes like her as well, which made me unable

to be determined to learn psychology even if I was interested in it. Being fearful of interacting
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with psychopaths and learning something useless, I decided not to change my major and stayed

undeclared before going to college.

However, after I came to UCSB and experienced the culture here, everything changed. I

soon discovered that psychology is so popular and acceptable in American culture. Americans do

not have stereotypes as Chinese people since they regard psychology as a science instead of

something useless.

Trying to figure out why American culture holds such a positive view toward

psychology, I chose a psychology course, Introduction to Psychology, at the beginning of my

college career. Then I found out I was wrong; Samantha was wrong; and people holding

stereotypes in China were all wrong. Professor Fridlund and my classmates here made me

believe that psychology is a science related to brain, and psychology helps people in a scientific

way. It is not as useless as what Chinese people thought.

The day that shocked me and changed my mind was a lecture which discussed depression

and mood disorder. Prior to that lecture, I held the same stereotype toward depression like

Samantha. I thought depression was just a mood that could be easily changed to happiness and

did not believe depression was a sort of disease. Even though some people had severe

depression, I still thought they only had problems with their mentality, and the symptom had

nothing to do with their brains. I was convinced that people became depressed because they

experienced something miserable and were tortured for a long time, yet it was absolute that as

long as they were suitably comforted by other people and time, they could recover and become

happy as before. Nonetheless, when that day came, my recognition of depression and psychology

was overturned. Standing on the stage of Campbell Hall, well dressed in an ironed pink shirt and

leather shoes, Professor Fridlund gave us a lecture as usual. This time he introduced the mental
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disease, depression. He pointed out that depression was associated with a loss of gray matter,

which can process information, in our brain. To make this process clear, he invited several

students, including me, to go on the stage and acted as gray matter in a patient’s brain. He

required us “gray matter” first stood together and explained, “Now the person is healthy.” After a

few minutes, we were separated by Professor Fridlund, who said, “Now the person is sick, so his

gray matter lost, and a part of you guys should come out from the brain.” Professor Fridlund

made everything so clear by asking us to simulate the situation in a patient’s brain. He was very

enthusiastic, even participating in our performance on the stage, but he never told jokes related to

depression because it was a sign of respect. He designed a vivid animation to teach us how

patients take medicine to adjust their gray matter level so that their brains can return to normal,

which truly disproved my stereotype that patients can recover by simply listening to “agony

aunts” and be comforted. I started to realize that people with depression do have problems with

their brains. They cannot easily recover by just saying something cheerful because their brain

structures have changed. Pills are needed.

Apparently, I was wrong. The stereotype in my culture convinced me that psychologists

are just there to encourage patients to be happy. However, in fact, they are supposed to diagnose

patients through biology, spotting which parts of patients’ brains cannot function well and

prescribing correct medicine. This is absolutely a scientific procedure. Additionally, if

psychologists focus more on what is going on with patients’ brains, they will be less likely

affected by patients’ mood, let alone become insane. Thus, it is impossible for psychologists to

become psychopaths.

Another thing which struck me at the same day was that after Professor Fridlund finished

teaching the mechanism of depression, among all students in the class, only I was shocked.
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Although my classmates took notes as well, we wrote down extremely different things. They

focused on specific knowledge of gray matter, whereas my notes were, “Depression is related to

brains.” In my culture, psychology has nothing to do with brains, but I was surprised to find out

that all my native classmates had already known depression was about biology because they

were not shocked at all. When I asked my American classmates how they knew it, they could not

believe what I asked. Obviously, they had already known this fact from their life experiences.

These life experiences had engraved in their minds, letting the fact that psychology is a science

be their cultural value, so when someone like me asked how they knew it, they were surprised.

I could say that in the past year, 2018, I experienced a change of attitude towards

psychology due to differences between cultural values. Immature views of psychology in

Chinese society made me uncertain about being a psychology major since I did not want to spend

my whole college life learning to be an “agony aunt.” Nevertheless, after coming to UCSB, I

realized from Professor Fridlund and my classmates that psychology is not that simple. It is a

science, and the culture here also regards it as a science. It scientifically cures patients through

observing brains, not merely using beautiful and encouraging words to comfort people. I

changed my mind, dropped my worries, and was determined to chase my instinctive interest. As

a result, with honor, I became a psychology major.

Professor Fridlund and my classmates let me realize that psychology is a science. They

were a beacon illuminating my tour of psychology. By taking class with them, I experienced

different cultural values, and they disproved my stereotypes of psychology. Now, in my little

fantasy world, I always imagine the day when I become a psychologist. Facing people who are

mentally ill, I can be objective and check their brains with respect. I will say to them, “Don’t be

afraid. You’ll be fine. I’m here to help you.”

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January 26, 2019

Ziyuan Chen
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Dear Ziyuan:

I hope that you are doing well. Apparently, discarding those stereotypes once you had toward
psychology really changed your life. From a naive girl with no idea about her major even at the
beginning of her college career to a mature student who firmly chose to be a psychology major,
everything happened within one month after coming to UCSB. You were fortunate to experience
a tolerant culture, which lead you to set out on a journey of studying psychology. After making
this decision, it is important to learn psychology easily as well as happily. Thus, in order to
succeed in academics and make the dream of being a psychologist come true, I have already
made you a plan for future study. It is crucial for you to study in a more comprehensive way and
master the skill of applying theory to practice. From my viewpoint, having an ambition motivates
people, but making it achievable is of the same importance. Therefore, you are obliged to
achieve your dream, becoming an excellent psychologist, step by step. I have set some goals with
feasible strategies for you.

Psychology is a practical science. Thereby, conducting experiments to test or propose theories

will be in your normal daily life. One of the goals is that when doing experiments, if something
unexpected happens, you are able to learn from the inside, not just the outside, of your
experiments. Learning from the inside is helpful in that when unpredictable results occur after an
experiment, you can still analyze it by using an insider’s perspective. For instance, when you
conduct an experiment to test the theory about mental effect brought by fake caffeine, it is
supposed that participants who drink “coffee” with fake caffeine should be wide awake.
However, if they are sleepy, you will be confused since the expected result does not occur. Yet if
you have the ability to use the perspective of participants, such as how participants view the
“coffee,” you may discover something which can make strange results reasonable. A
geobiologist Hope Jahren has studied plants for years. Sometimes she might encounter tough
situations in which she has trouble explaining behaviors of plants, which thus pushes her to find
out ways to understand plants more. One effective way illustrated in Jahren’s book Lab Girl is to
engage in an insider’s perspective (75). Jahren believes that imagining herself as plants and using
plants’ view to study are great strategies to figure out how plants work (76). The essence of
Jahren’s argument is that researchers usually view the results of their experiments with an
outsider’s perspective. This is a fact, and no one considers it wrong. Results tell people
everything. Yet it is unavoidable that you may encounter the situation that the results are strange,
containing information you do not expect with an outsider’s perspective. Being bewildered, you
are supposed to learn more in order to explain those strange results. When learning as an outsider
does not work, the only way left is to study from the inside. Jahren learns from the inside by
treating herself as plants. She asserts, “I tried to visualize a new environmental science that was
not based on the world that we wanted with plants in it, but instead based on a vision of the
plants’ world with us in it” (76). In making this comment, Jahren’s point is that she imagines
herself as plants and tries to experience the growth of plants to lend creativity so that she can
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figure out why there are unexpected returns. As a psychology experimenter, you can also learn
from the inside by regarding yourself as a participant, or even by becoming a participant, to
experience thoughts of them and to visualize their world with researchers in it.

This goal of studying from the inside is completely achievable with the strategy that I have come
up with for you. You should first participate in the experiments with other subjects, and then
learn together with your research partner. In other words, my plan for you is to work as both a
participant and a researcher when you conduct experiments. In order to do this, you will need to
play the role of a researcher first. Come up with a general idea in designing your experiment with
your partner, and then be blind about the details. That is to say, let your partner design details in
the experiment alone. Experiments in psychology often used as testing hypotheses about
mentality, which require a lot of details, such as the control of variables, designed by researchers.
For instance, if you carry out an experiment to determine how light affects people’s mood, you
should come up with details about which type of light to use and how various light intensity
should be applied. Participants have no access to those details in that once knowing the details,
their thoughts may be distorted, and the results will not be objective. Therefore, after proposing
the general idea, without knowing the details, you should start to work as a participant. When the
experiment is over, you can ask your partner about those details designed by them. Finally, you
analyze the results together with your partner, with the role changing back to a researcher. This
procedure enables you to work both inside and outside the experiment. When you act as a
participant, you can experience feelings of participants, which cannot be predicted by
researchers. When analyzing results with your partner as a researcher, you can work as an
outsider who knows the induced details and thus estimate the expected results. If something
unexpected occurs in the results and cannot be interpreted by adopting an outsider’s perspective,
you can still explain it because you have the experience as an insider. You and your partner can
use the perspective of an insider to make clear explanation. You can definitely be successful
since there is no reason a scientific explanation comes from neither the outside nor the inside.
With this strategy, you can comprehensively understand experiments, therefore psychology,
which will make you closer to achieve academic success.

During the years of studying at college, you will learn plenty of theories of psychology through
attending lectures. In the future, after beginning your career as a psychologist, you will use those
theories to treat real patients. Consequently, it is important for you to master the skill of theory
application, which is also another goal I set for you. Guy Boulet is a specialist who has studied
learning for years. As a learning expert, knowledge and skills have different meanings for him.
Boulet emphasizes, “Skills are developed through practice, through a combination of sensory
input and output.” Basically, Boulet’s point is that sensory input such as receiving knowledge is
insufficient; you still need to have sensory output to master skills. For example, swimmers learn
a wealth of theories about swimming containing how to breathe correctly underwater and what
actions to perform to swim fast. Yet if only remembering those theories and seldom trying to
apply them by practicing to swim in a pool, swimmers will never master the skill of swimming in
that they do not even know what water feels like. Thus, only learning by combining theories with
practice and application can you eventually become skillful.

In order to skillfully diagnose and cure patients when you become a psychologist, you should
begin to train yourself and combine theories with practice from now on. Here are a few strategies
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I made for you to enhance your ability of application. First of all, you can intern at local hospitals
or psychological counselling rooms on weekend. Even just watching other professional
psychotherapists diagnosing patients is extremely useful. When a patient comes in, you and your
instructor chat with them, receiving information such as symptoms of the patient. Then you
recall what you have learned in lectures to spot a particular theory of mental disease which
connects to their symptoms, making a diagnosis. After listening to your instructor’s diagnosis,
you check with yours and determine whether you are right or not. If your expectation is wrong,
do not be frustrated; instead, find out which step you have made is wrong, remember it, and
avoid making the same mistake again in the future. Another way to train yourself is to fix a time
each week to watch videos of psychology experiments which correspond to psychological
theories you have learned that week on YouTube and TED talk, so that you can have a better
understanding of how the theories are tested and applied. For instance, if you learn Milgram
study on obedience in a week, then leave yourself an hour on Saturday afternoon to search for an
experiment on YouTube which tests Milgram study. Remember to take a picture of the end of
the videos every time you finish watching and collect them in a box every month to showcase
your persistence. It is certain that you will eventually make progress in applying theories, thus
approaching academic success more.

Again, psychology is a practical science. Mastering the skill of learning from the inside provides
you with a more comprehensive way to study psychology. Being able to apply theory to practice
is exceedingly helpful for you to diagnose patients correctly as a psychologist in the future.
Achieving these two goals can absolutely make you become more professional in learning
psychology and help you gain greater success with your academic and literacy skills.

Sincerely,

Ziyuan Chen
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
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Works Cited

Boulet, Guy. “The Difference Between Knowledge And Skills: Knowing Does Not Make You

Skilled.” eLearning INDUSTRY, 17 Oct. 2015, https://elearningindustry.com/difference-

between-knowledge-and-skills-knowing-not-make-skilled. Accessed 26 Jan. 2019.

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. Vintage Books, 2017.