Thread: Public Relations Psychology

I was thinking of going back to school to study psychology for Public Relations and influence people "ethically" through marketing.

Are their courses for this? I don't know where to start looking for the course, if it exists. Where do I start?

The fact that you are thinking about this must mean you have seen one of their subliminal advertisements for just such a course. Just think what billboards you have passed recently. :wink:

Seriously though, this is not rocket science. It took me three seconds to decide the best google search might be 'marketing psychology degree' since - duh - that is what you were interested in. That gave me 83,000 hits. The first two pages alone had several items that should meet your needs.

Good luck with it, but you do need to work a little on basic creativity.

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

The fact that you are thinking about this must mean you have seen one of their subliminal advertisements for just such a course. Just think what billboards you have passed recently. :wink:

Seriously though, this is not rocket science. It took me three seconds to decide the best google search might be 'marketing psychology degree' since - duh - that is what you were interested in. That gave me 83,000 hits. The first two pages alone had several items that should meet your needs.

Good luck with it, but you do need to work a little on basic creativity.

Na I did the same marketing + psychology + degree + "my city" but no courses. Since I posted this I have found some excellent college courses through my city's local PR Association, I will hit a few local university's as well.

In the mean time if anyone has some suggested readings they found helpful in the psychology of the collective consciousness of man I would be interested. I am reading Bernays Propaganda now, it is fascinating. Interesting Bernays (Freud's nephew) changed the name of "propaganda" to "counsel of public relations".

Peace and thanks

Kev

My immediate reaction is to ask you why you don't consider actually studying Public Relations... instead of studying psychology. In my mind, that makes the most sense if you're trying to get into this to earn a living.

http://www.google.com/search?q=public+relations+degree


If that's not what you want, and you're interested more in learning about the human mind with just a flavor of PR, you might consider instead studying human perception and human cognition (as these combine both psychology and neuroscience), and just take some marketing classes from the business school as electives.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by inow

My immediate reaction is to ask you why you don't consider actually studying Public Relations... instead of studying psychology. In my mind, that makes the most sense if you're trying to get into this to earn a living.

http://www.google.com/search?q=public+relations+degree


If that's not what you want, and you're interested more in learning about the human mind with just a flavor of PR, you might consider instead studying human perception and human cognition (as these combine both psychology and neuroscience), and just take some marketing classes from the business school as electives.

Good luck.

Thanks inow,

The real reason is to effect good change, and to do this you have to do this from the inside. This is why I said "ethical" in my first post. I have seen the wicked marketing over the years that has controlled me, it effects us all.

It was after watching the documentary "The Corporation" I have understood that there are no real limits on what psychologists working for Corporate PR Firms can do when it comes to the psychological component of the collective mind. If I can understand it perhaps I can effect good change and help enforce limits and use the knowledge to help people, and not harm people, and that is what psychology is supposed do in the first place, it is medicine not marketing.

It is not about making money, it is about helping people.

Not to change the topic but is there a form of psycology that deals with the brain from a biochemical perspective, I loved reading the book from the link below but what type of psychology is this?? She doesn't tell you in the book.

Here is the link of the book I read http://www.drleaf.net/osc/ it is not a plug for the book, but was an excellent read, what type of psychology is this?

Thanks

Ethically - the corporation is Not an individual and Marketing is Not Free speech

It's been a while since I was in school, but my first thought was for neurobiology and psychochemistry.

Also, try to keep in mind that the documentary you watched is hardly objective. It definitely called attention to some very important issues, but they're telling a story, and it's important to recall that the characters they used in the telling of their story don't represent accurately the entire population. They've only shown light on a subset of the population. Some corporations do great work. I happen to work for one. :wink:

Originally Posted by inow

It's been a while since I was in school, but my first thought was for neurobiology and psychochemistry.

Also, try to keep in mind that the documentary you watched is hardly objective. It definitely called attention to some very important issues, but they're telling a story, and it's important to recall that the characters they used in the telling of their story don't represent accurately the entire population. They've only shown light on a subset of the population. Some corporations do great work. I happen to work for one. :wink:

"The Corporation" the documentary did a psychological profile of the corporation and it was labeled a psychopath, do you agree with that? or is it a bigger issue than I understand, more likely than not it is bigger than my understanding. I have never worked for a corporation that cared about me or anyone for that matter other than the share holders and CEO's, and I have worked for many. My experience with the corporation has been, like life once it don't need ya it spits ya out, but that is only my experience, I can't speak for anyone else, only myself, and I am not all truth, not yet at least, lol

This documentary provoked a strong emotional reaction for me, but I know when I feel a strong feeling from viewing media that it is doing it's job to convince me of it's truth. Today I feel it and not try to react but understand it and understand the other side, it is not about convincing the other person to believe in my view, for me today it is about understanding your take on it. Please let me understand more about the good side about the corporation, I seriously need to see some good that corporations do, I mean real good, not a simple food drive or close for the homeless but real sacrifice that the corporation, it's CEO's and share holders perform (not the poor employees sacrifice, since Unions are all but gone) to prove to me that the corporation can be responsible, this is all I need, please I would really like to know your take and understand it, I will NOT FLAME OR CRITICIZE, I am not here to Judge but to learn.

You rock inow thanks for your feed back

Kevin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvUuj...layer_embedded

That's one example. Note, it's not my employer.