Ask HN: How can I learn human psychology?

3 points by BevanR 9y ago ↗ HN

I want to understand how humans think. Mostly to help me make software products more understandable to more people (usability and UX), also to fathom solutions to problems like climate change (which I think are now primarily psychological problems), and also to understand my own psychology to better harness my potential.

I have no background in psychology. I am a software engineer and team leader in a successful 50-person software company. I have been interested in how other people think only for a few years. "How to win friends and influence people" was very influential for me.

After thirty-something years I think I understand my own psychology pretty well. At least, I no longer find it deeply interesting. I am acutely aware that I am just one example of humans, and I am not like others; If you could measure individual's psychologies in a single dimension, I think my own psychology would be just outside the standard deviation.

I tried reading about Freud's id, ego and super-ego on Wikipedia, but quickly realised I had thrown myself in the deep end.

Where is a good place for me to start learning about human psychology?

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BevanR 9y ago ↗

My psychologist friend recommended Freud's 1923 paper on "Id and the ego".

Wikipedia's exegesis about the paper [1] was easier to understand than the article on the topic [2]. But still not useful or even very meaningful to me.

However I discovered that what I am interested in seems to be called "human behaviour" or "behavioural science" rather than "psychology".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_the_Id

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego

DavidParmelee 9y ago ↗

I have a few suggestions at the intersection of psychology/neuroscience and UX.

I found Universal Principles of Design to be a good read that talks about human-computer interaction with some examples of psychology. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychology book that often gets quoted in interaction design theory. Another one I’ve read is Emotional Design.

While About Face and Designing for the Digital Age are more general interaction design books, these have an extensive discussion on user goals, which I've extended a bit in the ebook I'm writing.

While I haven’t read it yet, Dr. Susan Weinschenk wrote 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People. She’s a behavioral scientist who has worked in UX for over 30 years. Her site is at http://www.theteamw.com.