Psychoinformatics

Abstract

Psychologists live in an increasingly data-rich world, and our ability to make continued progress in understanding the mind and brain depends on finding new ways to organize and synthesize an ever-expanding body of knowledge. In this article, I review current research in psychoinformatics—an emerging discipline that uses tools and techniques from the computer and information sciences to improve the acquisition, organization, and synthesis of psychological data. I focus on several areas where the application of informatics approaches has already paid large dividends, leading to advances including novel data-collection approaches, the adaptation of computational techniques and insights, the enhanced aggregation and organization of psychological data, large-scale data mining and synthesis, and improved research and publication practices. I argue that in the coming years, informatics approaches are likely to play the same instrumental role in shaping psychological research that they have already played in other fields, such as genetics and neuroscience.