What Does Psychology Have To Do With Social Media?

"Psychology is the study of the mind, thought, feeling and behavior"-Wikipedia

My major in college was Psychobiology. For the purposes of this blog, I am not going to talk about biology. But I'd like to discuss different topics in Psychology and how research in this area matters for social media.

Sure, there are many supposed experts in this social sphere. But does their collective knowledge represent all that ever needs to be known about harnessing the mysterious (I'm being facetious) powers of social media?

It surprises me that research findings in Psychology have yet to really interface with the realm of social media. This does take place to some extent. But applying academic research does not seem to be common practice.

Basic Questions in Psychology

The area of psychology is divided into branches. There basic inquiries are very much relevant to online marketing campaigns.

• Cognitive Psychology:  How people solve problems, think, remember, forget and utilize language.

• Perceptual Psychology- How people make sense out of the information they come across

• Social Psychology- "How people think, influence and relate to one another." (socialpsychology.org)

• Psychology of Behavior-What causes people to behave in a certain way?

• Psychology of Learning- How people learn. What factors optimize learning experiences?

Why Research Findings Are Useful

Research experiments involve large numbers of subjects. Therefore the findings are not whimsical guesses. Statistics are used to determine whether or not the outcome of these experiments are due to chance or the variable in question. These two factors help ensure that conclusions are reliable. Reliable conclusions allow us to make predictions on a broad range of situations.

Being familiar with research literature is extremely useful if you want to make better decisions with social media strategies, instead of falling for various myths.