There are many psychological insights that have contributed to modern society, research in psychology has saved many lives as we learn more about how the brain works and, especially, mental illnesses. We are more educated on how to get the best results of work and more jobs have been created, as we discover more about the functions of the brain. However, these psychological insights are not all used for the best cause like how people’s behaviour can be manipulated by using psychology and how social media designs their apps in a way that makes their users want to keep scrolling.

Psychological insights have been beneficial to modern society because, without the knowledge that we now have, doctors would not have been able to find ways to help people’s mental health. Therapies have been created from the knowledge that we have discovered, for example, cognitive behavioural therapy. Aaron Beck suggested that depressed people feel the way that they do because their thinking is biased towards negative interpretations, so they have negative views about themselves, their future and the world. Beck used this information to come up with CBT, which is widely used today for people with mental health illnesses. Research has shown the using CBT alone is 50-75% effective for overcoming depression and anxiety after 5 to 15 sessions. Furthermore, research has also shown the depression increases the risk of suicide compared to those who do not suffer from depression, and about 60% of people that do commit suicide suffer from some sort of mood disorder. Therefore, as we learn more about the mind and mental illnesses, we are more able to help those suffering, which will in turn save lives.

Another reason that psychological insights have been beneficial to modern society is because, with more research, people are able to find out and use the best ways of learning things for them. For example, schools are aware of the most effective methods for students to achieve the highest grades that they can. Jeffrey Karpicke did a study on retrieval practice. There were four conditions of people, one group studied a list of words once, another studies the list until they had successfully recalled each word once, another studied until they could recall each word three times consecutively and another studied until they had recalled each word three times but spaced throughout a 30 minute learning session. After a week, the researchers tested the students on the words again, they found that students who had used the last condition over 30 minutes to learn the words remembered 80% of the words, whereas the students in the other conditions only remembered 30% of the words. This is a good example of a study where we have used psychological knowledge to discover what the best and most efficient way to learn is, which is beneficial for students now.

Psychological insights have been beneficial to modern society because more jobs have been created. As we are still learning more and more about psychology and how the brain works, there are more people that are needed to discover and carry out more research to find out more. As there is still a lot of things that we do not know about the brain, there is a lot of research that still needs to be done. There is also a lot of research that would now be outdated, as it was done years ago and, since then, there has been more research done that would change the conclusion of some studies. Consequently, more jobs are made available as we have more capacity and the facilities to fuel higher end research.

Psychological insights have been beneficial to modern society because, in more recent years, the Government have been using psychological research with Covid and lockdowns. The Government used psychology to make people more susceptible to doing what the government were telling them to do, for example, making people stay inside. Alongside this, the media were making people more scared of Covid than it possibly might have been. For example, when there was a toilet roll shortage, at the beginning of this, there was not that much of a shortage of toilet roll, however as the media began covering this, more people were scared that they would run out, so they bought more toilet roll, therefore causing a shortage. When people started wearing masks and they were optional, more and more people were conforming to wearing them, even when they didn’t want to because they did not want to be the only ones that were not wearing a mask, this is due to normative social influence. The most central emotion present in the pandemic was fear, and fear is what makes threats appear more imminent, which consequently gave the Government and the media a chance to use this fear to their advantage and get people to stay inside.

Psychological insights have been detrimental to modern society because the findings can be used against us. People’s behaviour can be manipulated by using psychology, we can learn to use body language to our advantage. For example, when people have open palms or speak with open palms, this creates a sense of trust. If people know about this, and want someone to be more trusting towards them, then they could use this trick and possibly use it against them, making them more trusting, when they possibly should not be. An example of people being aware of this is Legoland workers who are not allowed to point when giving directions, instead they offer directions by using upwards facing hand gestures, which creates a bigger sense of trust. Obviously, this can also be used in a positive way to make people more trusting of you, however, if people with poorer intentions know about these small psychological tricks, then they could contribute to something worse. For example, if someone is trying to kidnap another person and is trying to get them to trust them, these psychological tricks could be used to manipulate the person’s mind and put them in danger.

Psychological insights have been detrimental to modern society because social media uses psychology to keep their users addicted to their apps. A study done by Harvard University investigating the effects of social media on the brain. They found that self-disclosure on social networking sites lights up the same area of the brain that also is lit up when someone takes an addictive substance. When someone experiences something rewarding or uses an addictive substance, the neurons in the main dopamine producing areas in the brain are activated and dopamine levels rise. This means that the brain receives a ‘reward’ and associates the drug or, in this case, social media activity with positive reinforcement, so we want to carry on doing it. When we get a social media notification, we get a rush of dopamine from the brain and we feel pleasure. Since social media provides an infinite amount of immediate rewards, which is attention from others, which we get from a relatively small amount of effort, we want to carry on with what we are doing, which causes us to receive more positive reinforcement through social media. People in charge of social media are aware of this, and use it to their advantage, by providing more ways to like other’s posts, being able to repost, and reacting to posts, which keeps the users entertained because of the dopamine rush that it gives us. As this carries on, and social media becomes more addictive, the brain rewires itself through the positive reinforcement, making us want more and more likes, reactions and comments on our posts. This is a never ending cycle, but it is how social media are keeping us addicted to their apps, which is how they are getting money.

Overall, there are many ways that psychological insights have contributed to our modern society, some being very advantageous to us, like learning more about mental health so that more people in need of help can be helped, more jobs are provided, the more that we delve deeper into psychology and we are learning the most efficient ways to learn the most amount of knowledge that we can. However, some psychological insights can be damaging to modern society because this new psychological research that we are discovering every day, can be used against us in a harmful way, and social media platforms would use psychological knowledge to keep their users hooked on their apps, which is good for the people that run social media platforms, but not good for us as users.