Students’ Motivation in Studying Psychology
Sitti Chotidjah
Department of Psychology, Science of Education Faculty, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Motivation, Reason, Psychology Students.
Abstract: This study was conducted on third semester students enrolled in the Department of Psychology, Universitas
Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI). The research subjects were 85 people. The purpose of this exploratory study was
to figure out the subjects’ reasons for enrolling in the Department of Psychology. To achieve this purpose, a
qualitative approach was employed. The data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire consisting
two questions. The result revealed that 65.9 % of students expressed that psychology was their first choice,
and 27.5% and 7.5% said that it was their second and third choice respectively. They decided to be majored
in psychology based on their personal free-will. Data of students who chose psychology as their first choice
were analyzed following a grounded theory framework using open coding, axial coding, and selective coding
method (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). It was revealed that there were five categories of students’ reasons for
choosing psychology: (1) personal interest, (2) desire to understand human behavior, (3) future career
opportunities, (4) the significance of psychology in everyday life (5) others.
1 INTRODUCTION
Psychology is a study of interest to many students in
Indonesia especially in the last 15 years. Therefore,
many of both public and private universities start to
offer an undergraduate degree program in psychology
to fulfill the demand. Indonesia Association of
Psychology Higher Education Providers (AP2TPI),
as the coordinator and organizer of annual
psychological colloquium in Indonesia, notes that
113 undergraduate psychology programs become its
members (ap2tpi.or.id, accessed in 2016).
UPI is one of many public universities to seize the
opportunity by offering an undergraduate program in
psychology since 2004. The Department of
Psychology of UPI was just accredited B by the
National Accreditation Board for Higher Education
(BAN-PT) in 2015. Although this program is only 13
years old, but the number of applicants to this
program is always increasing from year to year and
outperforms some older programs offered by UPI. In
2016, the number of applicants was ranked third after
Economics and Business and Communication
Science. One had to compete with other 4,364
applicants in order to be granted admission to this
program. This condition is satisfactory because it
shows that this program has been widely
acknowledge and has earned public trust.
And it raises a question as to why they decided to
enroll to this program. According to Schiffman and
Kanuk (2006), motivation is a driving force of an
individual to take an action. This action stimulates
response towards a behavior and provides a specific
goal.
Motivation has three aspects: (1) driving: a force
that makes an individual to act in a specific manner,
(2) orienting: an individual’s behavior is oriented to a
certain goal, and (3) supporting.
Motivation comes in two types: intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is
frequently defined as performing an action out of
individual interest. For example, a child plays football
because he just wants to. On the other hand, extrinsic
motivation refers to behavior driven by external
rewards. As case in point, a child plays football
because he wants to make his parents happy or to be
a champion (Reiss, 2012).
So, motivation is an individual driving force to do
something to achieve a certain goal. This force is
actually not only initiating, but also persisting a
behavior. This force could come from within
(intrinsic) and outside (extrinsic).
A study conducted by Ho et al. (2016) shows that
a cultural factor in a certain setting influence student
in choosing a career path. Students in Hong Kong,
China, and Taiwan choose to be a librarian because
314
Chotidjah, S.
Students’ Motivation in Studying Psychology.
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 2, pages 314-317
ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

this career path provides security, stability, and
comfort.
The reasons why students choose the Department
of Psychology at UPI have already been figured out
through informal interviews. Based on initial
interview results, they chose to study psychology
because they wanted to help others, wanted to be a
psychologist, wanted to work in a human and
resources department in a company, wanted to be a
better individual, and so on.
This study was conducted to collect more accurate
evidence to complement the results of interviews. The
researcher wanted to know what were students’
motivation and reason for choosing this program and
if they chose it based on their personal free-will and
interests or under influence of parents.
To date, no study has investigated students’
motivation to take psychology especially in the
Department of Psychology of UPI. This topic is
interesting to be studied considering that the
Department of Psychology of UPI is a relatively new
compared to other programs, but has earned ever-
increasing applicants.
2 RESEARCH METHOD
The research population were students enrolled in the
Department of Psychology of UPI in the 2016/2017
academic year, from which 85 samples were taken.
The study employed an exploratory qualitative
approach in order to conduct a deep analysis about a
certain phenomenon. Therefore, the researcher
developed an open-ended questionnaire consisting of
two questions: (1) was the Department of Psychology
your first choice? and (2) what was your reason for
choosing this program? The research subjects were
given sufficient time to answer these questions in
accordance with their natural condition. They could
freely answer the questions without any pressure from
any party.
The reason for using an open-ended questionnaire
among others are: (1) open-ended questions give the
respondents the freedom and space to answer in as
much detail as they like, (2) open-ended questions
enable the respondents to tell their actual response,
(3) open-ended questionnaire enable the researcher to
develop the questions according to the needs and
objectives of the research, and (4) open-ended
questionnaire enables a relatively high research
participation in a short time (Hayes, 2000).
The data were then sorted. Data of respondents
who chose psychology program as their first choice
were the only data analyzed in this study. Every
sentence unit of their statements were analyzed. The
data were then categorized following a grounded
theory research framework using open coding, axial
coding and selective coding (Strauss and Corbin
1990).
3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The research subjects were 85 students enrolled in the
Department of Psychology of UPI. 65.9% of them
said that psychology was their first choice, and 27.5%
and 7.5% said was it was the second and the third
respectively.
Those who chose psychology as their first choice
said that this program was what they wanted and
nobody forced them to enroll in this program. What
follows is two examples of students’ statements
regarding this matter:
“I always chose psychology, be it in the National
Selection for Entrance to State Universities
(SNMPTN), the Joint Selection for Entrance to State
Universities (SBMPTN), and Independent Selection
(SM). There was no other major I was interested in.”
“So, here’s a deal. I participated in the SBMPTN
twice. The first time, I didn’t know there was UPI, so
I chose another state university. The second time, I
just knew that there was UPI. So, I wrote psychology
as my first choice, but I didn’t pass. Then, I took UM,
and then I was given admission.”
The researchers then categorized responses to the
second question. It was revealed that there were five
categories of students’ reasons for choosing
psychology. Table 1 presents examples of students’
responses to the second question.
Table 1: Examples of students’ responses to the second
question.
Theme of
Response
Example of Response
Personal
Interest
“I chose to study psychology because I
am interested in this study, and
psychology can help me understand
people around me”
“I did not have specific reason for
studying psychology. However, since
psychology is associated with the study
of human behavior, I am slightly
interested in it. And it turns out that it fits
me”
Desire to
understand
human
behavior
“[I need it] to study human [behavior]
thoroughly, to be more emphatic, to
socialize better, and specially I want to
learn how to read human gesture”
Students’ Motivation in Studying Psychology
315

The
significance
of
psychology
in everyday
life
“Studying psychology is very beneficial
in real life for myself and others”
“Based on experience and phenomena
occurring around me, I feel I need to
study psychology for self-improvement
and to help others”
Future
career
opportunity
“... and the job opportunity [in the field
of] psychology is widely open. When I
am a psychologist, I can offer
[counseling and psychological services]
at home so that I can pursue my career
without losing much time for family.
Others
“Actually, I was not interested in
psychology. I was more into
mathematics or chemistry and planned
to choose chemistry education or
accounting in the SNMPTN. However, I
was not allowed [to choose those
programs by my parents]. I am here
because my parents wanted me to.
The number of responses for each category is as
follows:
Table 2: Theme of response.
Theme of Response
Personal Interest
35
Desire to understand human behavior
21
Future career opportunity
14
The significance of psychology in everyday life
13
Others
3
Total
86
This response categorization shows that most
students chose to enroll in the psychology program
due to their personal interest in the study. As many as
35 students provided such responses. They chose the
psychology program because they were interested in
the study like personality theories and felt that this
program suited them. Most of the students expressed
their interest in being accompanied by their desire to
better understand human behavior, self or others.
As shown in Table 2, 21 students expressed their
interest and desire to study human behaviors because
they had to interact with other in everyday life.
Future flexible career opportunities, especially for
women, became another reason for studying
psychology. As many as 14 respondents were noted
to provide such responses. It is understandable
because most psychology students are women who
will have to balance their role as a wife and a mother
in the future and their career.
The fourth response category was the significance
of psychology in everyday life. They expressed that
psychology could help them the quality of life. There
were 13 responses for this category.
Some students even expressed their experience of
dealing with people who needed psychological
services. Personal experience or observing that
people benefit from psychological services intrigued
them to pursue a career as a psychologist.
This is in line with the opinion of Ho et al. (2016)
that personal experience of being involved with a
certain profession influences one’s career choice.
Such experience allows them to study what career
suits them and to develop the skills required to pursue
the career in question in the future.
Sometimes, they joked that the reason for
studying psychology was ‘berobat jalan’ (It is a
common joke among Indonesian psychology
students. It literally means being an outpatient, so
studying psychology allow them to receive
psychological treatment during lesson).
There were three responses that did not belong
into the above four categories.
The researcher did not find a reason associated
with financial income they could get once the work in
the field of psychology or with career security and
comfort. It implies that they had intrinsic motivation
in choosing the program. This is very important to the
success of their academic study. As a study conducted
by Martin et al. (2014) suggests, personal motivation
is a contributing factor to an individual success
because when one decides what he wants to achieve
in his life, he will think that nothing can stop him.
According to Schunk et al. (2008), intrinsically
motivated students have curiosity and are focused on
their study, and extrinsically motivated students are
more into external rewards, ranking, etc., rather than
their academic works.
Intrinsic motivation can predict student
participation in academic works (Froiland and
Worrel, 2016) and has correlation with self-respect
(Topcu and Leana-Tascilar, 2016).
Therefore, it can be concluded that students found
the relevance between their interests and personal
needs and saw a career opportunity in the field of
psychology.
Although, student’s responses can explain the
existing phenomenon, this study has a limitation in
how the data were collected. The researcher did not
carry out interviews and observation to obtain richer
data.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Based on the result of study, it can be concluded that:
ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences
316

1. Students chose the Department of Psychology of
UPI based on their personal interest and free-
will.
2. The reasons why they chose this program were
their personal interest in the field of study,
desire to understand human behavior, the
significance of psychology in everyday life, and
future career opportunities.
The researcher recommends that as the program
organizer, the Department of Psychology of UPI:
1. enrich or design a special course to optimally
improve students’ social life skills apart from
their academic skills,
2. revise the curriculum in order to provide
students with a more practical experience in
providing psychological services, and
Improve instructional facilities that can be used by
students to improve themselves.
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