The Role of Mathematics in Psychology

How much math do you need to know for a career in psychology?  The stereotype seems to be that psychology and math are unrelated, but “surprisingly” I’ve found that many areas of psychology can involve quite a bit of math.  This of course can be good or bad news, depending on your love (or hate!) of mathematics.  Here’s my take, as a former undergrad Computer Science major and now Ph.D. student in Psychology, on a few of the roles one could pursue in psychology, and the probable math involvement of each:

• Therapist:  As a therapist, relatively little math seems required, although some basic statistics might be helpful to be able to understand the results of research articles.
• Clinical / social / experimental psychology researcher:  These areas require some knowledge of statistics in order to correctly design and analyze experiments.  In some cases more involved statistical knowledge is necessary for building more complex statistical models, such as structural equation modeling or mediation / moderation relationship modeling.
• Computational brain modeling:  This is an area I’ve gotten more interested in / involved with lately, and I’ve found that it can require extensive math, as it involves modeling complex physical systems.
• Neuroscientist:  Potentially extensive math, depending on type of research.  At some level, models involve, for example, complex differential equations governing the different mechanisms involved.  Additionally, math can be involved in analyzing brain imaging data, such as data from fMRI.
• General cognitive science researcher:  This is a broad area, but may involve mathematical models of perceptual and cognitive processes, with or without explicit modeling of the brain.