Big Data: Strapping Psychology to a Rocket
As an entrepreneur and a psychologist, I find myself uniquely positioned to assess the readily blooming opportunities at the intersection of these two fields. To be more specific, I believe that the symbiotic relationship between advances in big data, and the advances in psychological metrology offer a potential reality of both research and business opportunities that represent nothing short of a final frontier into understanding--and developing tech in response to--the human mind.
The Association for Psychological Science [reported](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/what-big-data-means-for-psychological-science) back in 2014 that the estimated amount of relevant digital data available was in the thousands of exabytes--that is, 10 to the 18th power in bytes. A single exabyte is over 4,000 times the amount of information within the Library of Congress, so yeah you get the picture. Just two decades ago, to conjure a psychological study wherein there were a million participants or more would have been the stuff of pure fantasy. In 2019 however this a reality that is being concurrently plaid out minute by minute, due to the issue of personal data being willfully or unwillfully leaked at just about every turn within our digital lives.
This means that for the first time in human history, we will be able to parse and identify aspects of human meta-behavior that have until now been viewed as a locked room of the science. The potential for revelation here is what is reviving the push for true sentience in artificial intelligence, and consciousness mapping projects--as both of these were areas of psychology previously limited by our ability to obtain the ridiculous amounts of data needed to mirror or recreate the psychological processes therein.
I won’t go into the moral and ethical issues at play here where behind the scenes your personal data and your deepest darkest secrets are being exhaustively mined and turned into data points; because in my view, when you have virtually limitless data on everyone, the information of the individual becomes all but meaningless. This stance, however, is assuming there are not specific objectives in this data mining designed to isolate and identify outliers--that would be a slippery and terrifying slope--one that may be the unfortunate reality with the exposure of breaches in ethics like that between insurance companies and 23andMe. Rather within the scope of this article, we will explore the reality fast approaching of increasing interplay between data science and psychologists, and what that means for the entrepreneur community.
Where is Psychology Headed?
One of the greatest criticisms of psychology in the modern age of science is that it is unable to put forth a cohesive and universal theory. In reality the greatest psychologists in history have all been in relatively grave disagreement with each other--with each viewpoint becoming less and less reconcilable the further one proceeds into a specific doctrine. What is hopefully on the horizon then is the ultimate rebuttal of this fatal flaw, that is a truly universal and statistically valid psychological principle of human behavior.
Michael N. Jones of Indiana University Bloomington states, “Each little piece of data is a trace of human behavior and offers us a potential clue to understanding basic psychological principles, but we have to be able to put all those pieces together correctly to better understand the basic psychological principles that generated them.” And herein lies the greatest challenge we will face in the upcoming revelations within the science i.e. contextualization.
One of the greatest shortcomings of psychology is the potential for totally contradicting interpretations of data and phenomena to be equally valid and reliable. This is where there is a call for the entrepreneurial spirit. We are desperate need of revolutionized technology for parsing and interpreting big data. Considering the pitfalls we have seen in psychology with even small sample size, the last thing we want is the same problems to play out but in the scale of big data--such could spell pure doom for the field.
This is why big data represents a wealth of opportunity both for psychologists and the data-minded entrepreneur. According to a [report](https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2013/01/big-data) from the American Psychological Association, psychologists' ability to interpret numbers and human behavior makes them key members of many industry analytics teams, says Suzie Weaver, PhD, a psychologist and senior analytic consultant with Epsilon, a global marketing and analytics company. "Analytics is at the core of everything we do, whether it's in research, the academic sphere or the business world." And this model is one that is sweeping the American economy in other industries as well.
Companies like [Moxpage](http://moxpage.com) are upgrading the capabilities of logistics companies, who rely on inventory management software capable of dealing with the increasingly massive amounts of inventory and data points that such companies manage. So as an entrepreneur how do you get involved in this booming area of the economy?
How to Get there
The most irrevocable qualification to jumpstart your career within these markets is a command of the field of statistics, full-stop. Unfortunately there is just no substitution here, and while you may be able to employ creativity or ingenuity to connect existing frameworks, or position new ideas, it is an increasingly competitive field. With the biggest companies in the world representing the greatest areas of need for these professionals, it shouldn’t be surprising the compensation packages are also bringing forth some of the nation’s most capable professionals to bid on these positions.
But here is exactly where preparation and education can springboard you ahead of the pack. Specialization is the name of the game here, and if you are able to attend an educational program wherein you can pursue a degree specializing in big data industrialization, then you your prospects will be both quality and many. An example of an ideal degree for a psychologist would be an MS in Industrial-Occupational. Many programs offer avenues for further specialization where the more entrepreneurial can apply their unique strengths of business, abstract analytical thinking, or software development--just to name a few which are of particular benefit to the field of big data.
As an entrepreneur and psychologist, I only wish that I seen the large wave forming ahead of time, so that I could have better prepared myself to ride it to shore. While the newness of the field may be intimidating to professionals and entrepreneurs who are just beginning their careers, there is no better time to obtain the required specialization, which is much more difficult for those of us who are already more established in our careers.
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