Business And Psychology

Business and Psychology

I came to Drexel University with the goal of earning a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration. My concentration is Finance; I'd like to focus specifically in the banking industry. I chose this field because of my interest in working with numbers, finding errors and deciphering patterns. Drexel maintains a multi-faceted curriculum to ensure that students are well-rounded individuals. Allowing students to access various course subjects ensures that they are being exposed to all options for a professional career. There are countless stories of students who have a set major and then end up changing it after the experience of a liberal course (such as psychology or art history).

My major, Business Administration, is geared towards individuals who are adept to leading people and managing operations. Business majors often start at the bottom of their company and work their way up. Drexel University utilizes this preexisting understanding in allowing students to partake in a cooperative education. The College of Business is successful in giving student the opportunities to network with companies and gain insight as to how an industry operates.

The university introduces core liberal classes into the curriculum to serve for the common good of all students. Core curriculum classes consist of humanities such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and various other studies. Drexel has made this class a requirement for all incoming freshman so that we can be exposed to personality traits and manners of other students.

A course in psychology opens up a world of understanding about the human personality. Psychology, "from the Greek Ð''psyche', (mind) Ð''logos' (study)" is a field of study encompassing all aspects of how our brains work and where our behaviors stem from (St. Andrews, 2007). According to the Princeton Review (2007), it is the second most popular college major. Most often students choose this field to be able to analyze others, and understand how to work their way around people.

A large part of the business major is learning to understand your business's customers. A business is an organization whose goal is to make a profit by providing goods and/or services to others (CRF, 2007). This suggests that in order to efficiently sell a product or offer a service, a manager must first understand who he is trying to sell to. This is the first point in which psychology comes in to play in the business plan. The marketing strategy starts with segmenting the market into groups with specific needs and wants. One of the bases for creating subdivisions is by psychographic variables such as those related to activities, interests, and opinions of consumers (Dutta-Bergman, 2002). They key is to know what qualities of your product appeals to people. In psychology we learn that left-brained people are geared towards logical thinking, and it is more common too see right-handed people. This suggests that the majority of people are logical thinkers. Therefore, when approaching a person it is important to notice what hand he/she writes with, as this is a good sign of which thought process is stronger.

Daniel Pink, a writer for Wired magazine, recently gave an interview for MCNews highlighting the importance of understanding left and right-brain functions. His observations show that advertising industries are focusing on right-brain thinking. Instead of marketing prices, to influence the left hemisphere of the brain, companies such as Target are using the effects of design and conception to arouse the right brain hemisphere. This marketing strategy encourages customer who are left handed (right-brained) to shop in the respective company's stores (2007).

Understanding the psychological aspects of human personality makes it drastically easier to get along with people. As a former bank teller, my