The Psych Diaries

Are we the ones in the Skinner box?

One of the first theories taught in undergraduate psychology is operant conditioning. In first year, we watch videos of rats pressing levers for pellets and learn how consequences shape behaviour.

Ironically, it’s this very same principle that fuels the rising rates of burnout in the field.

Disillusioned by a system that preaches empathy yet rewards competition, bright-eyed students who enter with dreams of helping others soon face a quiet dilemma:

to care for others, they first have to stop caring for themselves.

Before the budding psychologist can sip their coffee and save the world with the DSM-5 by their side, they have to survive STAT1103. Each of us must prove, again and again, that out of hundreds of fellow dreamers, we deserve the golden ticket to postgraduate placement. Late nights, bloodshot eyes, and obsessively checking citations become an accepted part of the journey — a necessary cost.

And we’re rewarded for it.

Each high distinction or placement position becomes another pellet dropped into our own Skinner box. Proof that exhaustion leads to success, and that success equates to worth. It’s easy to preach about work-life balance and self-care from a PowerPoint slide, but as the saying goes, the proof lies in the pudding. Or in operant-conditioning terms, the proof lies in the reward. And when the normalised narrative insists that overworking leads to results, there’s little motivation to think otherwise.

Over time, this builds a strange kind of cognitive dissonance in the psychology student’s mind.

“Mmm, that sounds like it must have been really hard. Thank you so much for sharing.”

I’m never going to make it.

“Having a growth mindset is beneficial for building resilience. Why don’t you try taking a strengths-based approach when you face challenges?”

I’m barely scraping through statistics. I’ve always been bad at math. Everyone else is better equipped than I am.

“Make sure you take care of yourself — we can’t pour from an empty cup. Have you tried mindfulness? I can teach you some breathing exercises to help regulate your nervous system.”

I don’t remember the last time I woke up without that little knot of dread in my stomach.

Bachelors. Honours. Masters. That’s… how many years again? What’s the minimum WAM cutoff? There are only dozens of postgraduate spots for hundreds of us — one in twenty odds?

And it doesn’t end there.

Fully registered psychologists and healthcare workers face staggering rates of burnout. The self-proclaimed “helpers” often struggle to believe they deserve help themselves. The hustle-over-health mentality bred during undergraduate years seeps into professional life, permeating the culture itself. What starts as sacrificing a few nights of sleep in first year soon evolves into a more concerning mindset: the dream over the dreamer. The mark over mental health. The title over free time.

The field will always be competitive — and rightly so. The work is intimate, and regulation is essential.

But the reality is, the beliefs we’re taught at the foundational level are quietly setting psychology students up for exhaustion later down the line.

Maybe, alongside p-values and operant conditioning, we could teach these bright-eyed students how to keep their spark.

How to embody the advice they dream of giving others.

How to not just study empathy, but live it.

Even in a cut-throat system.

But then again, what would I know?

-T.