What Is Cyberpsychology? 3 Things To Know About This Important Field of Study
This brief overview describes the field of cyberpsychology and also explains WHY this realm of study is so very necessary in today's wired world.
About
Mayra Ruiz-McPherson, MA, MFA
(doctoral student ... Media Psychology PhD in progress)
Wherever human performance and well-being is ethically enhanced by computing machines is where I want to be.
Hi 👋🏽, my name is Mayra and I'm both a media psychologist and a cyberpsychologist passionate about:
1) creating humane and benevolent interactions between users and a wide range of cybertechnologies
2) fostering positive media experiences, and deepening media literacy, for audiences and populations
3) designing ethical and facilitated experiences to improve processes and outcomes wherever humans and machines collaborate
Topics I enjoy writing about:
When You Pair Image and Narrative Psychology with Behavior Design, You Get Prevagen® Commercials
This detailed post fully breaks down, step-by-step, how the Prevagen® brand pairs elements of image and narrative psychology with behavior design to market its brain supplements.
5 Positive Psychology Elements of Facebook’s Interfaces and Platform Infrastructures
As social media users log in and out of their social apps, they are generally oblivious to the positive psychology-influenced elements social platforms weave into their interface designs.
Why I do what I do 🙏🏽
- Humans will continue to further enmesh their daily lives across the gamut of cybertechnologies.
That means people like me are increasingly needed to ensure that human-centeredness and wellbeing remain at the essential forefront of cybertechnological innovations and progresses. - Immersive media experiences, like those derived from virtual reality (VR) and the pending metaverse, will continue shaping and shifting societies, democracies, and global populations.
In such a world, people like me will play increasingly vital roles as mediated experiences (and persuasive technologies) influence and impact human flourishing in varying degrees. - Given the above contexts, interaction designs across cybertechnological interfaces will need to more than usable and useful.
Humane technologists with benevolent interaction design experience (like me) are needed to ensure system designs combine aesthetic elements and communicative qualities with psychological and ethical factors.
And perhaps, most importantly:
- The enigmatic complexity of who we are as abstract human beings, with our many layers of subjective valuations, cannot simply be boiled down into binary ones and zeros, no matter how much Big Tech and their advocates claim and try.
In other words, our vibrant and emotional species, and our unique, individual histories and contexts need preservation and cultivation in an algorithmically-dominant world insisting we can be "copied-pasted" into reductively-convenient and modular digital formats.
"Luminous Beings Are We, Not This Crude Matter.”
Nope, I'm not averse to algorithms, AI, or technology. Just the opposite, really. I love technology and fully recognize its long history as an instrumental and collaborative part of everyday human life across centuries.
But for as much as I truly do enjoy and respect technology, and appreciate its positive derivatives, I absolutely love humanity even more. As a media and cyberpsychologist, I'm all about improving and expanding our meaningful relationships with technology in relevant, psychologically-sound and ethical ways that preserve (and promote) our humanity at their very core.