Careers in
Psychology (in the UK)
Unlike the USA, most academic primatologists in Britain are employed in
psychology departments. Just like in the USA, very few primatologists are found
in zoology departments (which are in fact now mostly called "biology"
here, and very often include no researchers who study whole, live animals).
Joanna Lambert's advice in her piece "
Careers in Zoology" about being seen as an "ecologist" or
"evolutionary biologist" holds good here, too, if you are trying to
get a job in a biology department; and similarly, doing so is very hard. Unlike
in the US, there are few biological anthropology departments in Britain, and
cultural anthropology has no use for us primate researchers! (The contrast is
here between physical and social anthropology, but the meanings and turf
delineation are the same.) Joanna Lambert's advice about getting a career in
anthropology is just as valid in Britain, but the jobs are much scarcer.
Psychology, in contrast, has been something of a boom subject in Britain, led
by buoyant student demand. Literally hundreds of jobs have become available in
recent years. Psychology is a very varied discipline, and primate research
contributes only to one small part of it, so many of these jobs wouldn't have
been available to primatologists-but enough were to make this a good source of
employment. Psychology is now where most UK primatologists work, and that's
especially the case in Scotland.
Obviously, psychology departments are simply not going to accept a researcher
whose major interests are gut biochemistry, plant phenology and wildlife
conservation: even on the most generous interpretation, these cannot be
laundered as psychology. On the other hand, the mainstream of cognitive
psychology and neuroscience is now refreshingly sympathetic to the need to
understand the evolution of the human mind by comparative study of animals, in
particular primates. This is good news, if your main interests are in social
complexity, learning, manual skills, group formation and socioecology, sexual
behaviour, or in fact anything that in humans would come under the broad
umbrella of psychology. And provided that gut biochemistry and plant phenology
can be clearly related to a primate's foraging strategy, social grouping, and
hence to its behavioural interactions, you can still study nutrients and trees
when necessary. ("When necessary" can of course include
"Always"!)
One intriguing difference between the US and the UK is in the acceptability
of certain terms: this is well worth understanding, if you are interested in a
career in primatology within academic psychology. I've noticed that the word
"sociobiology" has polarized people so much in the US that it is now
largely used as an insult: it seems to imply an extreme right wing, absurdly
reductionist, and grossly naive person who tramples over other people's
sensibilities. This has never happened here, and the word still means the
respectable scientific study of the biological underpinnings of social
behaviour. The Benchmark Criteria for a good psychology degree, published very
recently in the UK, mention sociobiology as an important part of the core area,
Biological Psychology. So, by all means point out that your primate research has
relevance to sociobiology! "Evolutionary psychology" in Britain also
seems to have a rather different meaning, a broader one. Here, the term
has been used for quite a few years to refer to a new kind of comparative
psychology, one that has got past the bad-old-days of treating
rat/lemur/monkey/ape as a scala naturae,
and instead takes a broadly comparative approach to behavioural data from
animals, especially primates. Like sociobiology, evolutionary psychology is
listed as part of the benchmark syllabus for psychology in Britain. However, in
the US, an energetic group of researchers who work directly with human data and
basic evolutionary theory (but seldom with animals) have gained rather a
monopoly on meaning for "evolutionary psychology". This narrower
sense, included within the scope of the wider British meaning, is also gaining
ground over here. Psychology departments would likely be interested in an
applicant who studied evolutionary psychology only in the narrow, human
sociobiology sense current in the USA. But in Britain, a much wider comparative
psychology meaning of evolutionary psychology would also be understood as a part
of mainstream psychology: so here, calling yourself an evolutionary psychologist
is a useful umbrella for many ways of studying primates, when the data are
interpreted in an evolutionary way that helps us understand human nature.
