What are the different psychology based hobbies that do not require a masters degree?

Hobbies? You don’t need a degree to pursue a hobby. If you try to make “online assessments for fun and unpaid amateur hobby research,” you can do that right here on Fluther. If you try to write books” for fun and profit” you’ll be rebuked as a quack and a fraud. Contact your local community night school for possible info on groups of people who get together and talk on the subject.

A book written in a professional field by an author with no advanced education or demonstrated expertise is not worth the paper it is printed on.

“Psychological research” not done under approved protocols is dangerous and possibly criminal if not careful.

Have psychology as a hobby, read up on it and learn lots, but don’t think of it as a means of “fun and profit.”

@zenvelo My psychiatrist wants me to be a spokesman for mental illness because I am a success story. I would like to get paid for writing and to get independence from social housing the system. A personal story should be ok? Right?

@zenvelo -

A book written in a professional field by an author with no advanced education or demonstrated expertise is not worth the paper it is printed on.

Um, tell that to David Avocado Wolfe. He’s made a career of printing bullshit he’s made up wholesale.

Of course..read any books website and anybody can tell their story regardless of qualifications.
As if life experience is wasted?
Wonder how many people got turned off from writing their stories by small minded friends/acquaintances?
Go ahead by all means to write and keep on writing and telling the World how you see it.
The only hobby..about Psychology is the writing aspect.
Good luck to you and your efforts to express yourself whatever platform you choose.

@RedDeerGuy1 You telling your own story is a completely different ball of wax than doing psychological research as a hobby and publishing it. I would definitely consider buying a book such as that.

@Seek You are right, there have always been charlatans that take a germ of truth and what sounds correct, and use it all to take people’s money.

I think you should start by following your psychiatrist’s advice and tell your story. If people show an interest, you might be able to charge a lecture fee or write a book. By being out in the public, you will make contact with other people. Someone might even offer you a job opportunity.

Tarot reading.

I do tarot reading on a little folding table on the street for extra cash. Tarot has nothing to do with the supernatural; it’s a form of applied psychology. The cards have been designed to be archetypal so that no matter which cards come up, they’ll always say something accurate about every person if they’re interpreted the right way. What I do is read the person, not the cards. I use eye movements, body language, eye motions, and word choices to play a game of “hotter or colder” with the meanings of the cards, reflecting back at the querent exactly what they’re telling me. It’s no different than psychoanalytic reflection, and indeed Carl Jung got much of his model from studying traditional mystic and shamanic practices like tarot card reading.

Tarot works because of a phenomenon called apophenia, which is the tendency for the human brain to find patterns even where there are none. In the absence of a pattern, the brain will actually project one from the subconscious. Tarot is therefore useless for telling the future, but it’s extremely effective and efficient at digging out what’s going on inside someone’s head on a subconscious level.

And the money’s not bad, either.

Have you told your clients the way you operate, or would that spoil things? Couldn’t you do away with the tarot cards and get the same results from just speaking to the person and picking up on their body language?

@LostInParadise I inform all querents how tarot works largely because skepticism actually makes the reading easier. I love doing readings on people who scoff at tarot because their conscious efforts to give nothing away actually makes it incredibly easy to pick up cues from them. Because what I do relies very much on suggestion, it’s important to use the cards and to surround it with all sorts of ritual. Regardless of how logical people think they are consciously, the subconscious is extremely superstitious and is easily influenced.

I recall giving a reading to some tourists once, for example, a middle-aged couple on vacation from the US. The wife was excited about getting a reading done while the husband kept rolling his eyes and shaking his head and smirking. When I had finished with his wife I asked him if he wanted to give it a try, that I wasn’t at all bothered or offended by skepticism. I work by donation and I explained to him that if he got nothing out of it, he didn’t have to give me a penny. It turned out to be one of the best readings I’ve ever done and he got paler and paler as it went on. I accurately described for him the problems he was having at work, his uncertainties about his career, and the fact that the “major decision” he had to make he had already made and was just looking for a way to justify it to his wife.

At the end of the reading he didn’t say a word. He just got up, silently threw down a $50 bill, and left.

stage magician, soothsayer, horoscope writer, pickup artist, scam artist

@Seek Yep, there are plenty of those—in all fields.