Antoine: Thank you for coming to do the English assignment.
Do you want to start?
Floriane: Yes, no problem ! Why did you choose IO psychology?
Antoine: I chose IO psychology after 1 year of medicine in which I realized that it wasn’t for me, i had no real interest in it so I wondered what could match the things I liked in medicine and the things I wanted to get rid of. And there I came in Psychology. After 3 years in bachelor’s degree I had quite some time to discover the different aspects of Psychology and I’ve been more and more interested in group psychology, and then in organizations, more precisely work Org.
Antoine: If you had to teach students in L1 in IO psychology, what would you choose to present? (favourite theories for example)
Floriane: I will choose to talk about stereotypes, and more specifically about Eagly and Steffen’s Theory which presents the aspect of auto-realization of stereotypes. I choose that because it’s awesome that someone, with social pression, can be led to do something he maybe doesn’t have to do but he is feeling he doesn’t have choice because other’s stereotypes made them think he should do it. It’s like a vicious circle: someone thinks something about another person, this person acts like this because of the first person, so the first person thinks his stereotypes are true because of the action of the second person. It’s the snake biting his tail!
Antoine: Okay, and if you had to change something in this Master, what would you change and why?
Floriane: I think it is too early to think about changing anything but, if I have to choose, I will opt for Angers’ lessons. It’s not about lessons as such but more about the drive we need to make to have these lessons. Most of the time, we have 8 hours of teaching but in fact, it’s like we have more because we need to go more than 1 hour before lesson’s start. So it’s difficult to stay concentrate during 8 hours when we have 1 hour going and coming, it’s so tiresome!
Floriane: To continue on the master’s subject, can you tell me about your master’s research work?
Antoine: That’s a work about empowerment, leadership behaviours and stress. My goal is to show a relationship between those psychological dimensions in order to advise future companies’ ways to manage people.
Floriane: Can you tell me about your internship?
Antoine: Sure. I made my internship at the CHU of Nantes, more specifically in the research team at the work health service. The internship was 6 month long so it was a big opportunity for me. I learnt many things about the position I want to tend to, also how I could use the different skills I acquired with the master (which I didn’t expect to have). I spent hours thinking and adjust different strategies to fulfil the missions that were given to me. But most importantly I worked with 2 nurses and 2 doctors I had to manage for to protocol to be respected.
Antoine: I’ll keep the internship them for my following question, what’s the internship of your dreams?
Floriane: The internship of my dreams? I think, if an internship’s god exist, it would be in the insertion of disabled people in a classical company. I made a discovery internship in a foundation which works on this problematic and this project passions me, and is so important for a lot of reasons. So, it would be a great opportunity to work with this public to allow them to integrate a new company and maybe give to them new opportunities in their lives, like I’ve seen in the foundation.
Floriane: I have two questions about psychology, what is, in your opinion, the first psychological characteristic of the human being? And What do you think about bullying, in school or at work for example?
Antoine: To me, our first psychological characteristic as human beings is that we are full of bias and restricted by our very subjective way of perceiving and understanding our environment.
And… Bullying… It’s a terrible thing that should be avoided. As future psychologists we have to be sure we’re able to detect it and then engage adapted actions to make it stop, or at least try our best to diminish it and protect the bullied people. Others type of actions can be taken such as awareness campaigns.
Antoine: Speaking of the psychologist responsibilities, what is a psychologist for you?
Floriane: To me, a psychologist is a person with a master degree, who has many tools and knowledge to do his job. But, beyond this definition, a psychologist is someone who offers his or her skills to help others with the problems they can’t face alone because they are too implicated/involved. So, the psychologist offers a new perspective on things, offers solutions, helps to implement them… Being a psychologist is more about meeting people, understanding their problem and improving them in their daily lives. It also means having a different perspective on everything around us, because like Paul Valery said: “The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best”. That’s a difficult question!
https://uncloud.univ-nantes.fr/index.php/s/rmnMZ4qiDXk5Tjz