How would you go about building improved models of human psychology so that you can better help people? It might seem nearly impossible at first, but data about psychology is all around us, and there are numerous approaches you could take to discover new insights.
Here are 24 different methods you could use to better understand the way humans work. In each case, I use “trying to figure out new things about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)” as an example. What techniques am I leaving out here?
- Papers: Reading academic studies (e.g., from social psychology, consumer psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, etc.)
Example: reading the newest academic papers on treatments for PTSD.
- Products: Carefully examining products and apps that have been successful (as well as, potentially, those that have failed) to understand what human needs they were or weren’t satisfying and why they succeeded or failed.
Example: looking at what mental health apps related to PTSD are popular in the app stores.
- Outliers: Investigating extreme case studies of real-life events (e.g., case studies of people with extreme psychological conditions who may have been reported about in the news or true stories about what actually happened when people were placed into really extreme conditions).
Example: reading about cases of extreme cults and whether or not each cult produced PTSD-like symptoms in its members.
- Society: Examining the large-scale trends and organization of societies, including potentially human cultures around the world (American culture, traditional cultures, etc.) and how they are similar or different, and which societal structures tend to be created and what the effects of these structures are, etc.
Example: investigating which sort of societies PTSD appears to be much more prevalent in.
- Conversations: Talking to smart and insightful people about what they think is true of human psychology. You can also show them the models or theories you have so far to get their criticism and suggestions for improving them.
Example: asking really smart (non-experts) who had PTSD what their current theories about PTSD are.
- Reading: Reading books, blog posts, media articles, etc., containing information from smart or insightful people about psychology (including potentially writing from life coaches, relationship experts, marketers, thoughtful bloggers, user experience designers, game makers, etc.)
Example: seeing what theories bloggers have proposed regarding PTSD that many academics may not have considered.
- Experts: Reaching out to experts and talking to them to understand their models of psychology (e.g., psychologists, psychiatrists, game developers, etc.). You can also show them the models and theories you have so far to get their criticism and suggestions for improving them.
Example: talking to world-class experts in PTSD.
- Textbooks: Reading academic textbooks about psychology, cognitive science, etc.
Example: Linehan’s textbook on DBT and thinking about possible applications of DBT in PTSD treatment.
- Models: Looking at what models or frameworks of psychology others have created (e.g., in social psychology, theoretical cognitive neuroscience, gamification research, persuasion research, etc).
Example: looking at the model of PTSD that is used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy treatment.
- Intuition: Our own intuition for what’s true about humans (presumably based on our first-hand experience interacting with others, as well as our first-hand, ingrained experience of just being a human).
Example: We may have the intuition that after experiencing a traumatic event, people will tend to start having frequent disruptive thoughts about that event, even when doing unrelated things.
- Interviews: talking to individuals or groups about their thought processes, feelings, behaviors, etc., to understand their individual psychology and then attempting to extrapolate that knowledge to humans more generally.
Example: interviewing 20 people with PTSD about what their experience of it is like and what does or does not seem to help them.
- Application: attempting to put into practice a psychological theory (e.g., by coaching individuals using a psychological technique or by trying to build an app that implements it) and paying attention to the ways it seems to work or not work.
Example: creating a tool for people with PTSD and making it publicly available, then monitoring how people respond to it.
- Anecdotes: psychologically surprising or interesting anecdotes that we’re confident actually happened (e.g., because they happened to us or were reported on by a trustworthy source) that may have a bearing on human psychology.
Example: a story a friend told you about how they (believe) they fully cured their own extreme PTSD in a matter of days.
- Self-observation: careful (and honest) observation of our own thoughts/beliefs/behavior/emotions and internal processes.
Example: observing the mental processes in your own mind that seem to occur after a very upsetting event has happened.
- Self-experimentation: simply trying techniques and paying close attention to what effects they appear to have and what it feels like to apply them.
Example: try the technique of writing down for a week every upsetting thought that you notice yourself having, as well as writing down everything you observe or learn about the experience of doing this.
- Deduction: combining propositions we already believe to produce new propositions we didn’t realize before that may be true.
Example: knowing that women with PTSD are much more likely to have associated depression than men with PTSD, and knowing that depression is a strong risk factor for attempting suicide, we might predict that women with PTSD are more likely to attempt suicide than men with PTSD (even though they may not be more likely than men to actually commit suicide).
- Experiments: Conduct your own online randomized controlled trials, surveys, longitudinal studies, or fMRI studies, etc.
Example: looking at which variables that don’t seem obviously PTSD related are, in fact, strong predictors of whether someone has PTSD.
- Statistics: looking up known statistics about a phenomenon.
Example: looking up whether younger people or older people are known to be more likely to get PTSD in any given 12-month period.
- Data: finding existing data sets (e.g., large longitudinal surveys or government data sets) and running your own statistical analyses to test hypotheses.
Example: measuring whether it is true that after someone gets a pet, they are more likely to recover from PTSD than similar people who do not get a pet. Running studies can also be a good way to search for new hypotheses. For instance, examining which of many variables in the data are most associated with a rapid recovery from PTSD.
- Literature: looking at portrayals of psychology in literature, art, myths, stories, philosophical writings, etc.
Example: What hypotheses do Kafka’s novels give us about the nature of trauma?
- Crowdsourcing: Request suggestions for hypotheses on a social media platform like Facebook or X or on a question-answer site like Quora.
Example: posting to Facebook asking people to suggest theories for why PTSD sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t happen after extreme trauma.
- Social experiments: bringing a group of people together under a new set of chosen social rules or guidelines and observing what happens.
Example: getting a small group of people together with the idea that it will be a time to discuss traumas that members of the group have experienced.
- Evolution: considering what possible evolutionary function different psychological phenomena might have.
Example: consider ways that aspects of PTSD responses might be evolutionarily adaptive.
- Practitioners: examine how people “in the field” who benefit from being able to understand this aspect of psychology do their work.
For example, at veterans hospitals where rates of PTSD are high, investigate what techniques and approaches the therapists have developed to work successfully with their patients.
This piece was first written on November 16, 2017, and first appeared on my website on July 22, 2025.
Comments