Essay On Technology In Psychology

The thought of having a meaningful, worthwhile, substantial conversation with a sentient robot who may efficiently give you mental treatment intrigues a mass amount of people. This is why there is a prevalence of technology in today’s psychology. Research and trials are being held to see how far one can use technology to solve and discover the mysteries of the mind. The use of technology in therapy and psychology has increased abundantly in the past years, causing psychologists to fervently advance this technology for the future. The first instances of the use of technology being applied to psychology were with the mapping of the brain through electrical stimulation. Psychologists’ goal was to understand the brain and everything that went …show more content…
In exposure therapy a phobic is very slowly exposed to what they are afraid of. The goal is to try and make the phobic stay calm and eventually have no reaction to their phobia. This is all done under the supervision of a therapist to ensure that the patient stays safe. Virtual reality exposure is meant to be put the phobic in contact with their phobia without being directly there. When the patients are put in contact with their phobia they have anxiety; however, their anxiety will settle as they stop sweating and have a slower heartbeat. As the patients are exposed to their phobias they slowly get less anxious the more they are exposed. Through virtual reality psychologists can help people who are too scared to come in contact with their phobia. This done by creating a virtual world in which the phobic is exposed to their fears instead of doing it in vivo, in life, therapy. Hunter Hoffman, a member of the Human Interface Technology Lab research group, has treated over twenty phobics with virtual reality therapy and has a success rate of eighty five percent. This means that eighty five percent of those who were treated with virtual reality exposure therapy will never have problems with their phobias again