Cognitive Psychology Careers
Cognitive psychologists are interested in what people know and how they acquire their knowledge. They are interested in internal mental processes like memory, knowledge, thinking, analysis, learning, performance, and visual processing. They explore how people gain, process, and store information in their brains.
Primary areas of research include learning and memory, emotion and motivation, cognitive processes of creativity, problem solving and reasoning, attention and executive control, and social/collaborative processes in cognition. While behavioral psychologists are interested directly in behavior, cognitive psychologists are interested in the mental processes that underlie it.
Crucial to this field are research skills like methods, statistical analysis, and experimental design, as these are the ways in which cognitive psychologists examine any topic within their subject.
Requirements: If you hold a bachelor's degree you can find work as a research assistant, but any advanced position requires, logically, an advanced degree. Graduates with a master's or doctoral degree in cognitive psychology most often go into careers in academia or research. They teach at the college level or work for institutes, governmental organizations, research centers, corporations, and hospitals. They develop new technologies, conduct experiments on individuals' brains and mental processes, and write reports on new findings.
Skills: The skills needed to be a successful cognitive psychologist include logical thinking, computer skills, and good research abilities.
Salary: The highest-paying positions in cognitive psychology are research positions, especially for private companies. Working as a college professor tends to result in less money than a research position, although professors often conduct research in addition to their teaching responsibilities. As of 2008, psychologists working in scientific research and development services earned an average of $96,380 per year.
Job Outlook: Job prospects for professionals in cognitive psychology should grow similarly to those of general psychologists, at a growth rate of 11 percent over the next decade. Cognitive psychologists have a competitive advantage in the job market over other psychologists because they are trained extensively in computers and research methods.
Article Resources:
Colorado State University
George Mason University
Hunter College, The City University of New York
University of Pittsburgh
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics