How Psychology Can Help You Shape How People Learn
Whether our goal is to inspire others to change behaviours, communicate information, share knowledge or tell a story, as speakers, we all share a common underlying goal when we address an audience. Our content differs, but our goal ultimately remains the same: create as much of a lasting change as possible in the lives of those who listen to us. Deep down, what we strive for is teaching them something that matters enough to us that we’re willing to step on a stage to communicate it.
But if we want to be as effective as we can be as speakers, shouldn’t we make sure that deep down, we understand how it is that people actually learn? Let’s consider that for just a moment. What does the act of “learning” even mean?
While there are many ways to define learning, at its very core, the learning process is understood as a relatively permanent change in behaviour, resulting from experience. The process is not always the same, but it generally goes like this: you experience one thing, you learn another thing from it. You experience another thing, you learn yet another thing from it. Each piece builds on top of the previous one. Simple, right?
Well, as it turns out, there’s a bit more to it than that. Behavioural psychologists are not only interested in how learning occurs in the human brain, but they also pay a lot of…
