The connection between psychology and computers is essential for advancing and design of technology with a focus on the user. It’s also a place where many unintentional data processing injuries to people happen. That’s why we need psychologists to play a bigger role in tech development–particularly given that many technology companies change human behavior at scale and profit from behavioral changes, and generally embrace scientific innovation.
Traditionally, psychological research is based on two main methods of data collection which are laboratory experiments and surveys, or interviews [1]. The former focus on a particular aspect in a small, controlled environment; the latter evaluate more general behavior with self-report questionnaires or (potentially structured) interviews. Both have inherent limitations.
Computers, however, are able to store and analyze massive amounts of data at a high speed–and in ways that traditional methods can’t. This is why they are powerful tools for psychologists and opens up a completely new field of study. For example, a new field called Psycho(neuro)informatics is emerging that merges psychology and computer science to develop models of human brains and intelligence. This requires a team of experts: psychologists who have domain expertise, and computer scientists with the skills to build large-scale tracking systems and manage and analyze the resulting data.
However, until recently, there was little collaboration between the fields. Google directors, for example are more likely to have studied computer and computational sciences (29 percent) than psychology (less than 2%). This is likely to have led to psychologists not being a majority in leadership at tech companies–with a result that technology products fail to take psychological factors into consideration.