Check out the best prompts for getting ChatGPT to help you with your personal development goals.
ChatGPT is the world’s most popular large language model, developed by OpenAI. It is a powerful AI tool and its vast range of applications includes being able to adopt the role of highly qualified psychologist.
But you might be wondering: why would someone want to engage with an AI as their psychologist?
Despite their popularity and impact, many people do not have a psychologist. Whether it’s down to cost, time commitment or other reservations, it just does happen.
So imagine having a tool at your fingertips that’s read all the key texts on psychology, that’s absorbed and retained knowledge from clinical application, and that can provide non-judgmental responses at any hour of the day. ChatGPT can ask probing questions, encourage self-reflection and provide insights you’d never have discovered on your own.
Whether you’re seeking answers, have a personal challenge or are simply interest in the experience, it’s worth seeing what you can achieve with this prompt.
Firstly, let’s just appreciate what ChatGPT is and how it actually replicate the behaviour of a psychologist. ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM), which means it’s a super complex piece of software that’s able to understand and mimic human interaction. So, ChatGPT doesn’t think or have beliefs, emotions, or consciousness, but it can generate text that’s informative, engaging, and even humorous, based on its training.
You can think of ChatGPT as having read a vast library of information; books, articles, web pages, etc. It has learned from all these sources about human dialogue, emotions, goals, problem-solving, and a host of other topics. This extensive reading doesn’t mean it fully understands or experiences these things, but it can generate text about them because it’s seen how humans write about them.
So when you ask ChatGPT to act like a psychologist, it generates responses based on patterns it learned during its training. Through its training data, it knows how psychologist operate; the science they’ve studied, the results they can achieve and methods through which they do it.
I asked ChatGPT itself to summarize what a psychologist is and how psychologists generally help people. Here’s what it said:
Psychologists are professionals who study mental processes and human behavior by observing, interpreting, and recording how individuals relate to one another and to their environments. They apply their knowledge to help individuals, groups, and organizations address mental health issues, improve performance, and enhance personal development.
A psychologist can help people in various ways, including:
Therapy and counseling: Offering a safe and supportive environment for individuals to discuss their feelings and thoughts, psychologists use therapeutic techniques to address mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and stress. They help individuals understand their emotions, develop coping strategies, and work through personal challenges.
Assessment and diagnosis: Psychologists are trained to conduct psychological tests and assessments to diagnose mental health conditions. They use these tools to understand a person’s behavior, personality, and capabilities, which can inform treatment plans.
Research: Many psychologists engage in research to explore complex issues related to human behavior and mental processes. Their findings contribute to a broader understanding of the mind and can lead to new treatments and interventions.
Educational support: Psychologists work in educational settings to help students with learning difficulties, social issues, or emotional challenges. They collaborate with teachers, parents, and other professionals to create supportive learning environments.
Workplace solutions: In organizational contexts, psychologists apply principles of human behavior to improve workplace productivity, resolve conflicts, and enhance employee well-being.
By employing a variety of methods tailored to the individual’s needs, psychologists play a crucial role in promoting mental health and well-being in society.
Of course, there are limitations with ChatGPT as a psychologist. Firstly, it is not a real human with the relevant qualifications and experience with real clients. It’s not licensed or certified and has no formal education or training as a psychologist.
It almost goes without saying then, that you should treat all the advice or guidance received from ChatGPT with scepticism and seek professional help if you require it.
Its role as a psychologist is based on emulating patterns seen in its training data rather than personal expertise. It also can’t remember past interactions unless they are part of the same conversation. This means that each new conversation would start from a blank slate.
In fact, ChatGPT highlighted 8 areas where the tool has potential limitations versus a real life psychologist, summarized as:
In the end, ChatGPT is a tool that can generate text on a wide range of topics, including psychology and things like using ChatGPT for business coaching. However, for a truly purpose built coaching AI or other professional services, our creators’ Coachvox AIs are better than ChatGPT for their audience.
Prompting ChatGPT effectively is both an art and a science. There’s no single right way of doing it, but there are plenty of ways of getting it wrong. Here are two prompts you can use to bring your personal AI psychologist to life. Kind of.
“Adopt the role of a psychologist”
Yes, it really can be that simple.
If you start a conversation with “Adopt the role of a psychologist”, ChatGPT will engage with you in a way that it believes mimics how a real psychologist would.
It can then offer guidance and advice based on these understandings. Here’s an example of how it might play out:
You can see that even with such a simple prompt, ChatGPT will engage as a psychologist. It will seek more context and understand your needs better. This requires additional conversation so there may be more efficient ways to achieve the outcome you’re looking for.
The prompt lacks specificity. It doesn’t provide much guidance on what topics you want to discuss or what kind of psychologist will be more useful to you. This could lead to a more general, and a less immediately useful, conversation.
Providing more details can help to guide the AI’s responses and make the conversation more efficient and effective.
“Adopt the role of a qualified psychologist, with extensive experience in [the area of psychology that would benefit you most]. I’ve been struggling with [describe the problem or challenge you’re facing]. I often find myself [describe some specific difficulties or symptoms of this issue]. Begin a back and forth dialogue as a psychologist would that aims to dig into root causes of my issue. The purpose of this exercise is to help me [describe the change or improvement you’d like to make].”
This kind of prompt gets to the point much quicker, providing context and direction for ChatGPT to provide specific guidance almost immediately. But there’s really only one way to find out how effective it is for you; go ahead and try it!
Beyond that initial prompt, it’s important that you continue the conversation effectively. No language model is able to pick up on your body language, facial expressions or vocal tone so everything you communicate has to be through the words you type.
As you would with any professional or coach, you should be open, honest and clear. You should have no fears being open and honest with an AI. (Although make sure you don’t share sensitive information. Assume everything you enter is publicly available.)
Before hitting send, double check what you’ve written makes sense and cannot be misconstrued. The more detailed and specific you can be, the more the model understands your requirements and can find the most impactful responses.
Remember you can always clarify what you meant in the chat, and take as long as you need to find the right words. If ChatGPT isn’t acting exactly as you’d like or maybe isn’t helping; tell it! Reprompting ChatGPT to fine-tune its approach may be necessary during some interactions.
If you’re looking for a more actionable approach with ChatGPT, try out this ChatGPT life coach prompt.
ChatGPT presents unique opportunities for self-discovery and improvements in our mental health and wellbeing. Its ability to emulate a psychologist, though not a replacement for certified human professionals, offers a readily accessible and non-judgmental space for introspection and guidance. With clever prompting, users can benefit from meaningful interactions about their life challenges, mental blockers and ambitions, drawing on the LLM’s vast pre-trained knowledge bank.
