Nine Uses of Psychology in Everyday Life
Psychology in everyday life contributes toward living a better life. Indeed through this discipline and the knowledge that stems from it, it’s possible to better balance your emotions and give your expectations a more realistic perspective, among other aspects.
Another use of psychology in everyday life is in providing guidelines for improving the relationship you have with others. In fact, socio-affective ties are a fundamental part of life so you need to understand their nature and their ups and downs.
If you’re more emotionally balanced and have a better relationship with your environment, you also become more productive and successful in what you do. For the same reason, you’re freer to decide and are more accurate in your choices. Next, we’ll take a look at some of the uses of psychology in everyday life.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”
-William James-
1. Increases motivation
One of the great uses of psychology in everyday life is to help increase motivation. After all, it’s often not enough to simply have a goal and want to achieve it. On some occasions, there are internal obstacles that boycott, limit, or prevent these goals from becoming a reality.
With psychology, you learn to identify the factors that hinder your plans. You acquire a perspective that helps you to persevere in moments of difficulty or lack of interest. Furthermore, you’re able to achieve or amend your proposed objectives and more clearly recognize your progress and achievements.
2. Improves communication
Communication is a crucial factor in everyday life. When you have the ability and serenity to express your ideas and feelings, as well as to understand what others are expressing with their words, gestures, and actions, your relationships flow much more easily.
Psychology helps you to be more conscious of what you express and makes you understand that certain messages that go beyond words. In turn, you gain more assertiveness and have healthier relationships with yourself and with others.
3. Increases empathy
Psychological knowledge and its application help you to better understand others. You discover that, in reality, appearances are deceiving. For example, sadness is often an expression of anger and, in turn, anger is frequently a manifestation of sadness.
Therefore, one of the uses of psychology in everyday life is to help increase your levels of empathy. You achieve this by first better understanding personal feelings and emotions and then applying this knowledge to others. With empathy, not only do relationships improve but your life is greatly enriched.
4. Improves your ability of introspection
Raising your level of self-knowledge is impossible without learning to look at and analyze yourself. The natural consequence of this is that you can better clarify your desires and motivations. Consequently, your decisions have a more solid starting point and you can strive to achieve what you really want and not what others want.
5. Improves your ability to make decisions
As a direct consequence of the above, psychology has a series of techniques and tools that facilitate the decision-making process. Cognitive psychology, in particular, has thoroughly studied this subject. In fact, it’s created methods that significantly facilitate the process of clarifying a situation, being able to see it from multiple perspectives, and choosing the best possible action.
6. Increases feelings of security and self-confidence
The introspection that we mentioned earlier also gives you a stronger picture of who you are and what you’re capable of doing. This decisively affects your feelings of personal security.
Furthermore, greater self-knowledge and personal security also increase your self-confidence. In fact, you have a clearer vision of your strengths and weaknesses. This makes it easier for you to take action with firmness and optimism. Above all, you have more confidence in the results that you’re able to obtain.
7. Helps to solve problems of groups and collectives
Psychology, especially the social and community approach, also intervenes in groups of people (families, communities, companies, etc.) in order to solve or prevent specific problems. In these cases, the professional and the group participate actively to deal with problems and avoid risks that may arise within the group.
8. Avoids overmedication
A psychological intervention gives you resources to manage yourself and overcome your difficulties. In this sense, It helps you to be independent (to the extent that your illness allows) from drugs that only intervene in the chemical processes related to your problem, and don’t get to the root of them.
9. Improves your emotional intelligence
The set of tools that psychology gives you translates into a substantial improvement in your emotional intelligence. You gain the ability to shape your own behavior according to a healthy, empathetic, and assertive emotionality.
Psychology has many uses in everyday life. If we had to summarize them in one sentence, we’d say that it helps people to live in a healthier way. It does this by reducing limitations imposed by the past, misperceptions, and feelings such as fear or anger, which block many of our essential faculties.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Cerezo, J. A. L. (1989). La utilidad de la psicología popular y de seguir hablando sobre ella. Cognitiva, 2(3), 281-299.
- López, A. B., Grau, E. G., & Escolano, A. F. (2002). Eficacia y utilidad clínica de la terapia psicológica. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 2(3), 477-502.
