STAFETTEN - PIA INGOLD

Af Josefine Bechgaard Lisse, stud.psych.

Illustration af Anna Sofie Andersen, stud.psych.

Stafetten er Indputs faste indlæg om fakultetets ansatte, hvor de svarer på vores spørgsmål om sig selv og derefter sender stafetten videre til en anden ansat efter eget ønske. Denne gang har Xuan Lia givet Stafetten videre til Pia Ingold.

Why did you choose to study psychology?

In high school, I was intrigued by a pedagogy subject that included Developmental Psychology theories. This was the first time I encountered theories on psychology at all, and I was fascinated by these theories, and later, by understanding human behaviour in interpersonal interactions.

If not psychology, what would you have studied/done?

Admittedly, despite my early fascination with psychological theories, I had a hard time choosing my study subject, as I had many interests. Positively put, my vocational interest profile in Holland’s RIASEC model was, and is, a dream for any career advisor. Specifically, I was torn between Arts, Business Administration, English Literature, Law, and Psychology. First, I started with English Literature (great reads, but not sufficiently applied for me in the long run), History of Arts (great art, but I did not feel like learning Latin and Greek in my first semester) and Law (not my cup of tea, I outsourced that in my family) and changed to Psychology as a major after a year. As I appreciated the insights from different disciplines and wanted to explore more subjects, I finally studied for a double degree in Business Administration and English Literature. During my studies, I was fascinated by the encountered variety in theorizing, methodological approaches, and standards of different disciplines, and, also, by how different students and lecturers dressed, behaved, etc. In hindsight, I can interpret my choice of doing a Ph.D. in the applied field of Work and Organisational Psychology as bridging psychology and business adminstration with a sufficient emphasis on social interests.

As some of you might know by now, I have this second identity as practitioner in Work and Organizational Psychology. I went applied after finishing my PhD at the University of Zurich and learnt a lot about the ”real” working world outside the so-called academic ivory tower. During this time, I also learnt a lot about myself. After a week of working in an applied setting, I started missing thought-provoking interactions with students and colleagues. My need for cognition and autonomy was not satisfied during this time, so I worked on research in my leisure time and then decided to return to the university for a postdoc position. I truly appreciate having made this experience, as this knowledge catalyzed my decision to strive for an academic career with an ambition to create and translate relevant knowledge from WOP to people at work.

How would you describe the development/change of psychology from when you studied until now?

The biggest change in comparison to psychology, as I knew it as a student, concerns the replication crisis. As a reaction to the replication crisis, the open science movement had a big impact on how psychology research is conducted and what standards are applied to research, including the procedures for data sharing, transparency, peer reviews, relevance of replication studies, etc. As visible in many psychology educations including ours at KU (e.g., in Social Psychology, in Quantitative Methods), this is also reflected in the teaching of psychology students. Even though I think some subdisciplines in psychology are more advanced when it comes to open science than Work and Organizational Psychology – where authors can sometimes still encounter requests to add hypotheses or to replace theories etc. – there has certainly been a lot of improvement in the last decade concerning the standards being applied to research.

In Work and Organizational Psychology, in parallel to other subdisciplines, I lately also see more engagement for research on less “POSH” samples, for instance, research on challenges of refugees in the work context, and calls for communicating WOP knowledge using the UN sustainable development goals.

What do you expect the study/discipline of psychology to look like in 20 years?

Okay, let me try a prediction with high uncertainty on what will change (while I wish a crystal ball was among my favourite daily things). I expect research on psychology to be more intertwined with different disciplines. Currently, I see a lot of AI- and LLM-related publications in peer-reviewed journals in psychology and an increase in computer scientists co-authoring research at Work and Organizational Psychology conferences. For instance, my current Carlsberg project on recruitment with job advertisements is interdisciplinary such that we, that is Berit Heling from our psychology department and me, collaborate with Isabelle Augenstein and Siddhesh Pawar who are LLM researchers from the Department of Computer Science at KU. At the same time, and that might be my personal bias, while I expect a persistent emphasis on methods in psychology, I cannot imagine the psychology of the future without theories and theory building as building blocks.

What are your favourite three things in your everyday life?

My cargo bike, since it allows me to still get to know the city (and, sometimes, how to dress in every weather) better and be everywhere in ”no” time, including kids’ “legeaftale”-pick-ups or ”smørrebrød”-lunches on Sundays.

This way, I also have more quality time for my family and friends, a visit to an art exhibition from time to time (Louisiana is still my favourite), and a bit of sports.

If I am allowed to understand ’things’ to cover interactions with humans, I thrive on interactions with relevant others, at work with my colleagues, collaborators, and students, at home with my family. Even though, I also need my office to be closed for focus time regularly, I think psychology could not be my discipline if you were supposed to conduct research in solitude.

If you had the chance to go back to when you were a student, what advice would you give yourself?

While I also had to learn a lot for my studies and felt very busy, I would advise my past self: In addition to learning the state-ofthe-art knowledge in psychology, do not forget to follow your own interest and curiosity as you are the author of your studies and career. This means, also, to allow yourself to think outside the box (e.g., in terms of readings, interdisciplinary treatment of a topic, additional qualifications). I would also recommend to add extra-curricular or voluntary experiences that will help you to grow, decide upon and qualify for your future career. Personally, I feel a lot of voluntary choices helped me to find my path and own my career (e.g., my work experience as student tutor in Finance and English Literature taught me that I enjoy teaching, my Erasmus semester in Wales added to my openness for international experiences). So, maybe: Own your career with a curious mindset.

Who shall receive the baton from you?

Let’s hand it over to my new colleague Jia Li. We are very happy that she joined last fall. She complements our WOP teaching group so well with her relevant expertise in Organizational Psychology. For instance, she offers novel topics in terms of research (e.g., on teams and robotics) and teaching.