What is Cognitive Psychology? And How Can You Use It?
Cognitive psychology, the study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem-solving, creativity, and thinking, has practical applications in everyday life and business.
Here are five ways you can apply cognitive psychology in your daily life and work:
Memory
One of the key areas of research in cognitive psychology is memory.
Memory is the process by which we encode, store, and retrieve information.
There are three main types of memory:
Working memory (IQ)
Declarative memory
Non-declarative memory (muscle memory),
Working memory is the capacity to hold information in mind while performing a task.
Declarative memory is the ability to consciously recall facts and events.
Non-declarative memory, on the other hand, is the unconscious memory of skills and habits.
Another important area of cognitive psychology is perception.
Perception is the process by which we interpret sensory information from the environment.
It involves both bottom-up processing, which is driven by the sensory information, and top-down processing, which is driven by our knowledge and expectations.
Perception is influenced by factors such as:
Attention
Context
Experience
Effective Communication
Improve your communication skills by understanding the cognitive processes involved in language comprehension and production.
90% of communication is subconscious body language and only 10% is conscious speech and text.
Decision-Making
Apply different decision-making strategies, which will help you get more things done.
Examples include the 80/20 rule, where you limit yourself to the important task that results in 80% revenue, and Parkinson’s law, where you shorten time to completion to get things done quickly and do what you love the rest of your time.
Problem-Solving
Enhance your problem-solving abilities by using different strategies, which involve breaking down a problem into smaller sub-problems and finding a solution for each.
That way you will get a dopamine hit every time you solve a new problem and motivate you to solve even more problems.
Motivation
Understand the cognitive processes behind motivation and apply strategies like goal setting and self-efficacy to increase your motivation and productivity with dopamine.
If you apply these cognitive psychology principles.
You can:
Improve your memory
Decision-making
Problem-solving
Motivation
And by doing that creating a successful and fulfilling life by doing what you love and loving what you do.
Best books & resources
“How To Get People To Do Stuff” by Susan M. Weinschenk, PhD
“LIVEWIRED” by David Eagleman
“100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People” by Susan M. Weinschenk, PhD
“100 More Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People” by Susan M. Weinschenk, PhD
“Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug
“Rocket Surgery Made Easy” by Steve Krug
“The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman