Innovating at the Intersection of Psychology and Technology

As the digital world evolves with more velocity every day, businesses turn to behavioral scientists to innovate, develop, model, and design new technologies. With an advanced understanding of how people interact with their environment, each other, and the tools they use to work and live, psychologists are poised to lead the next wave of tech innovation.

Careers at the intersection of psychology and technology are growing quickly; psychologists are at the forefront of AI ethics, mental health startups, UX design teams, customer and market research, and innovation strategy, amongst a constellation of subfields. Those who undertake graduate training in psychology are poised to specialize in areas of study that lead directly to these careers, and to an exciting role in shaping technology’s future. 

Palo Alto University (PAU) has developed a cutting-edge specialization in the field of Psychology and Tech that offers students a fast-track to leadership and development. The program’s unique approach to career pathways allows students to invest in specific skills and mentorship that promise exciting career opportunities for graduates. And as the demand for these positions grows, so does the power of an investment in advanced training.

Psychologists Lead Tech Innovation

Psychology and the behavioral sciences have been at the heart of industry innovation from its foundations. The methods and frameworks that define the field help tech innovators to understand the wants and needs of users, to uncover market opportunities, to define the customer problems their products can solve, and to model new digital technologies on human ways of knowing, doing, and processing information. A deep understanding of user motivation and behavior is key to the success of new products in the field.

The history of Artificial Intelligence is a classic example of the importance of psychologists to tech innovation. In the mid-20th Century, psychologist Daniel Hebb proposed a new model for how the human brain learns new things, based on his scientific work on neuropathways. Fellow psychologist Fran Rosenblatt followed suit, building an electronic model of brain learning called the Perceptron. Today, psychologists in tech observe the emotional and physical processes users experience when programming and using AI; François Chollet, for instance, developed the ARC-AGI test to determine how digital machines can be programmed to think more like the human brain. 

While the possibilities for applying psychology to the world of tech are limitless, three emerging fields are booming, each of which promises opportunities for those with graduate training in the field. The MS in Psychology at PAU prepares those who choose its Psychology and Tech graduate pathway for these possibilities, and many more.

Unique Careers Await Psychology MS Graduates

Mental Health Startups 

Opportunities for founders with advanced psychological training are emerging across the mental health tech landscape. Apps guide patients to find the best resources for their needs, support those who wish to bring more consistency to their lives, and track changes in mood and behavior. As AI and other new technologies emerge, psychologists are poised to anticipate new global changes in mental health and innovate solutions that will bring impact.

In 2023, founder Sarah Adler, a clinical psychologist and clinical associate professor at Stanford’s psychiatry department, raised $6m for her app, Wave Life: a mental health platform designed to support Gen Z teens and young adults who experience high levels of stress, anxiety and depression. Psychologist Dr. Alison Darcy founded Woebot, an app that helps to combat the need for more therapists, insurance roadblocks, and scheduling difficulties to deliver solutions for those who need access. What has made the difference in their success is the way they’ve leveraged their graduate training in psychology to launch their ideas.

In an article published by the American Psychological Association, psychologist Dr. Matt Scult describes the opportunities for trained mental health experts in the field. Scult is a digital mental health consultant who co-leads the nonprofit Therapists in Tech. “I’m still optimistic, because companies are starting to adjust from what they learned in the first phase of digital mental health. People still have trouble accessing and paying for mental health care, so there’s still a need for innovation to increase access to care.” 

UX Design, Research and Writing 

The field of User Experience (UX) and the closely-related practices of Customer Experience (CX), market research, service design, and instructional design, are instrumental to R&D, design, and implementation in the world of tech. Here, behavioral scientists use their specialized skills to deeply understand the needs, emotions and habits of users. In order to do so, they use incisive interviewing techniques, participant observation, and psychological profiling to create user personas and workflows. These methods are just part of the training MS students can choose to learn in the course of the MS in Psychology at PAU.

A UX researcher might conduct fieldwork watching teams adopt a new business tool in their workplace, witnessing users navigate a new cooking app in their home kitchens, or leading a focus group with teens to understand their use of AI in their social media routines. In addition to research, those who design solutions often take on gradient training in psychology. UX, service and instructional designers leverage insight into how humans use information and tools as part of their everyday lives, in an end-to-end journey to get a job done, or to enrich their communication with others across the globe. 

MS in Psychology at PAU students find that their training in concepts such as cognitive load, feedback loops, confirmation bias, and concepts such as Hick’s and Fitt’s laws are essential to tech innovation. They might be placed on an incubator team in a major enterprise tech company, consult on product development for startups, or run a lab to test design concepts with users. These roles are highly compensated and flexible, often involving publications, talks and thought leadership.

Artificial Intelligence Ethics

While the need for AI researchers and developers is well-established, industry is increasingly turning to behavioral scientists who can support AI ethics, adoption and governance. Psychologists have a deep knowledge of what technology can do well, and which tasks require human oversight, creativity, and critical thinking. They mitigate programming bias that causes AI to favor certain populations in loan decisions, for instance, by identifying the assumptions that become baked into algorithms. They think through how personal data should be handled in healthtech and mental health applications, and weigh in on the development of ethical frameworks based in scientific perspective on the effects AI has on human health and behavior.

In the Psychology and Tech career pathway at PAU, graduate students learn and apply unique knowledge of how humans are affected by the technologies they use. They receive specialized mentorship and training in these methods. As the field continues to grow and develop, psychologists will shape new modes in which human creativity interacts with large language models. They will lead policy discussions and develop security guidelines that preserve ethical governance and oversight of these new technologies. Evolving job titles in the field reflect how roles for highly trained professionals are in increasing demand: AI Ethics Officer, AI Risk Manager, AI Compliance Manager, and AI Auditor, for instance.

Behavioral Scientists Imagine New Tech Futures

Innovation in tech is much more than engineering; today, the behavioral sciences help drive all phases of innovation, production, and advocacy, psychologists are in increasing demand; 13,00 job openings await those with psychology degrees in the field, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (.gov)  projects to grow by at least 7% by 2033. In addition to their critical importance to product development, psychologists are also a critical component to imagining expansive technology futures.

Ulf Hannerz, a behavioral scientist who leverages anthropology and psychology to understand innovation, discusses a concept called “cultural swirl”: the need for any innovation team to compose a group with diverse training and backgrounds in order to imagine possibility, think about consequences, and shape products customers will love. Increasingly, tech is recognizing the need for experts in human behavior as a component of innovation at the forefront of the field.

PAU is itself a pioneer in offering the Psychology and Tech career pathway to its graduate students, and in seeing their placement in exciting positions across the tech landscape.  

About the Author

Ali Maaxa, Ph.D. is a professor, a behavioral scientist in the tech sector, and the founder of MaaxaLabs, an agency for customer insights. A pioneer in human-centered approaches to Ai development, she is the author of two books, eleven peer-reviewed studies in global digital anthropology, and has been the recipient of the Mellon, Wilgus and Peacock Fellowships.