One of the reasons that so many people are drawn to psychology, whether or not they’re studying it, is that the ways in which it affects our everyday lives are easier to grasp than the ways in which other fields affect our everyday lives. Psychology can affect us in ways that are overt or ways that are more subtle. This article will briefly discuss some of the ways that psychology influences everyday life and offer suggestions for anyone interested in further reading.
Education
Let us begin with education. As education often involves developing minds, it would be impossible to run a school without considering psychology. This is why schools have to have psychologists, or at least mental health counselors. Psychology is particularly important in schools when addressing bullying, which is one of the major problems faced by young students everywhere.
Suggested reading: In 2010, Chipman wrote an overview of how cognitive science research has been used in education in the United States over the last few decades. At one point, the author relays the story of a high school physics teacher who used a cognitive science approach to overcome common misconceptions that his students had about physics. This is just one example of the topics discussed in this paper.
Marketing
Perhaps the most obvious applications of psychology are in advertising and marketing. For example, everyone knows, or can at least guess, why ads only show attractive people using their products. However, there are more subtle cases too, like fashion brands taking steps to keep their products out of the hands of people who are considered undesirable so as not to diminish the brand.
Suggested reading: In a 2017 paper, Lapierre et al. examined how companies advertise to children. In this paper, they began by discussing the fact that over the last “~100 years, marketing to children went from a severely frowned upon practice to an integral part of growing up as companies came to realize that investing in marketing to children and adolescents provides excellent immediate and future dividends”. The end of the paper even includes tips for Clinicians and Providers to help them discuss these effects with parents and tips for Educators to inform children of the factors influencing them.
Politics
It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that the vast majority of political messaging is based on psychology, with many political ads playing on emotions such as fear or anger.
Suggested reading: In a 2016 paper, Jenke & Huettel examined the ways in which people choose how to vote. They specifically discussed how voters choices are influenced by the competing factors of policy and identity. Interestingly, the authors suggested that identity factors can influence the act of voting itself, specifically that “participation rates are driven more by demographic factors than by the likelihood that one’s vote will turn a competitive election”.
Pseudoscience
Unfortunately, because of its accessibility, there is a lot of pseudoscience involving psychology out there. This is in no way a mark against valid psychology research, but it is important to stay vigilant for pseudoscience trading in false psychology facts. One example of this is so-called “dark psychology”, which is mostly the domain of people trying to sell books on how to manipulate and influence people. Along with being unseemly, it does not consist of any actual psychological research, but is pretty much solely the result of someone trying to sell books and doing whatever that takes.
Suggested reading: You can search Amazon for “dark psychology” to see the sort of gross nonsense I am talking about.
User design
Finally, psychology is an important consideration in user design. This can range from a video game publisher trying to get you to spend more money on a game, to a website trying to get you to spend as much time on it as possible. Since user design is all about the person who will end up using a certain product, it makes sense that psychology is a relevant factor in user design.
Suggested reading: If you want to learn about how psychology is specifically considered in user design, Ramos wrote a 2017 paper detailing the design of an electronic consent user interface for use in an HIV clinic. The paper includes visual examples of the graphics used in the user interface to help give you an idea of the experimental process.
Wrapping up
Psychology is used in everyday life in a wide variety of ways, and these five are only a very small sample of those ways. Refer to the suggested reading yourself if you want to learn more about those papers and the topics at hand, since that is always the best way to learn. Psychology affects our everyday lives in visible and invisible ways, but knowing is half the battle.
References
Chipman, S.E. (2010). Applications in education and training: a force behind the development of cognitive science. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2(3), 386-397. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2010.01098.x.
Jenke, L., Huettel, S.A. (2016). Issues or Identity? Cognitive Foundations of Voter Choice. Trends in Cognitive Science, 20(11), 794-804. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.08.013.
Lapierre, M.A., Fleming-Milici, F., Rozendaal, E., McAlister, A.R., Castonguay, J. (2017). The Effect of Advertising on Children and Adolescents. Pediatrics, 140(Supplement 2), S152-S156. doi: 10.1542/peds.2016-1758V.
Ramos, S.R. (2017). User-Centered Design, Experience, and Usability of an Electronic Consent User Interface to Facilitate Informed Decision-Making in an HIV Clinic. Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 35(11), 556-564. doi: 10.1097/CIN.0000000000000356.
