From airport security to highway safety, cognitive psychology can be applied to real-world situations every day, as freshmen in the Science in the District Dean’s Seminar discovered.
Like anyone who has boarded a plane, the students in Associate Professor of Psychology Stephen Mitroff’s freshman seminar Science in the District were all too familiar with the headaches and hassles of airport security. They knew about long lines at checkpoints as passengers removed their shoes and security officers searched through carry-on bags. And more than a few students admitted they had rolled their eyes and wondered if the security employees couldn’t do their jobs a little bit better.
But that was before Mitroff’s class gave them a peek behind the curtain—and they saw airport chaos from a cognitive psychology point of view. During a field trip to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) headquarters at Reagan National Airport, the students trained a watchful eye on the multitude of factors that come into play when thousands of passengers rush through security gates—from the angle and detail of computer monitors to whether an officer got enough sleep the night before. They looked for clues to impaired visual perception. Were the tables too cramped? The alcoves too noisy? Were there too many display screens? Too few?
Read full story: https://columbian.gwu.edu/psychology-and-our-daily-lives
