About ICT & Psychology
Introduction to the ICT & Psychology articles on Crossing Domains by Prof. Adam Wierzbicki and Prof. Aneta Brzezicka
The interdisciplinary Ph.D. programme “ICT & Psychology” was established in 2017 as a result of cooperation between the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology (the project leader) and the SWPS University.
It is a response to the changes occurring in Social Sciences and Psychology, which use more and more Information Technology and Data Science methods, as well as in Computer Science, which covers areas at the intersection of Psychology and Social Sciences, for example in the field of research on the design and improvement of user interfaces. However, this is not the only example. Social Informatics, a field of Computer Science that deals with the design of technologies that pursue social goals and use knowledge about social and psychological phenomena or concepts, is a field close to Psychology, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, and Sociology.
Social Informatics is based on the observation that Information Technologies are not neutral. They have an impact (sometimes very strong) on the well-being, mental state, and social functions of their users. Sometimes this impact is positive; unfortunately, we also know some negative examples, which are often the unwanted side effects of poorly designed technologies.
Computer Science and Psychology have more in common than we usually think. The rapidly progressing technological changes that we are witnessing, including, in particular, the development of broadly understood IT tools, have become a significant force shaping our identity, cognitive and emotional processes, as well as social activities in which we engage.
These changes affect not only the frequency of entering into social interactions but also their very essence, for example in video games that allow you to build virtual relationships, often in isolation from the norms and social values of the society in which the player lives. The subject of Psychology as a discipline is literally changing before our eyes: instead of physical interactions, psychologists begin to study relationships mediated by various types of media, sometimes relationships with non-existent characters or in a non-existent, virtual world. Technological development modifies and expands the repertoire of tools used by psychologists — from sensors of somatic reactions (muscle contractions, sweating, eye movements, etc.), through scanners that provide us with precise information about the structure and reactions of the brain, to tools that enable behavior monitoring, both in reality and online.
All of this has changed and is still changing the way we practice Psychology today. This change is most apparent in the way psychological research is conducted. The most spectacular example of the influence of information technologies on the way psychologists collect and analyze data is the area of Big Data. Over the past few years, many centres around the world have begun to collect huge databases cataloging human behavior at an unprecedented level of detail. For example, there are databases that allow detailed studies of the effects of variables such as sleep deprivation, cold, and wealth on very basic phenomena such as working memory, or on complex phenomena such as risk-taking. Such large data sets exist today and should be used by psychologists, but very often psychologists do not have the appropriate training or tools to handle them properly. Hence the need to cooperate with teams that know these techniques — IT specialists.
Ph.D. students of ICT & Psychology conduct research in this extremely interesting, rapidly developing area. Their research work covers a broad spectrum, from Data Science applications in the field of EEG-based research to research into recommendation systems that take into account the cognitive effects of aging.
