Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology essay
In this essay I will discuss three topics on Cognitive Psychology in relation to three everyday phenomena, while also exploring how useful Cognitive Psychology is in predicting these everyday phenomena. Another aspect will be applying cognitive psychology to these matters and identifying how it can be used to improve them.
Decision Making
The first topic I will discuss is decision making, which cognitive psychology has developed many definitions and theories in order to explain and predict the process and outcome of it. Attention is one of the cognitive processes most heavily linked with decision making, as is memory and learning. Attention tends to be used in decisions from description such as when information in numeric or graphic form is provided. Memory and learning is used in making decisions based on past experiences, where trial and error are used and people become better at making decisions when they are more aware of the process and of the potential outcomes. These attributes can be described in a scientific and methodological form, but it must also be noted that decisions are made by humans and so are subject to human error and irrational decisions. Despite this, Cognitive Psychology has developed some useful theories on decision making.
One of these theories is heuristics, which is a ‘simple and efficient rule of thumb that works well in most circumstances’ (Madigan, 2012). Here memory and experience is relied on heavily to make sense of the events in question. This is not difficult, however the process can be easily flawed. People can make mistakes when using these methods or bias can influence their decision making. An example of this would be the availability heuristic where a quick decision can be made through an initial reaction, however a problem with this might be not taking more time to investigate into what the best decision might be, as a biased decision may feel like the right one to make, but it could just be
In this essay I will discuss three topics on Cognitive Psychology in relation to three everyday phenomena, while also exploring how useful Cognitive Psychology is in predicting these everyday phenomena. Another aspect will be applying cognitive psychology to these matters and identifying how it can be used to improve them.
Decision Making
The first topic I will discuss is decision making, which cognitive psychology has developed many definitions and theories in order to explain and predict the process and outcome of it. Attention is one of the cognitive processes most heavily linked with decision making, as is memory and learning. Attention tends to be used in decisions from description such as when information in numeric or graphic form is provided. Memory and learning is used in making decisions based on past experiences, where trial and error are used and people become better at making decisions when they are more aware of the process and of the potential outcomes. These attributes can be described in a scientific and methodological form, but it must also be noted that decisions are made by humans and so are subject to human error and irrational decisions. Despite this, Cognitive Psychology has developed some useful theories on decision making.
One of these theories is heuristics, which is a ‘simple and efficient rule of thumb that works well in most circumstances’ (Madigan, 2012). Here memory and experience is relied on heavily to make sense of the events in question. This is not difficult, however the process can be easily flawed. People can make mistakes when using these methods or bias can influence their decision making. An example of this would be the availability heuristic where a quick decision can be made through an initial reaction, however a problem with this might be not taking more time to investigate into what the best decision might be, as a biased decision may feel like the right one to make, but it could just be