How cognitive science can help your business

Mimma Mason is a cognitive scientist at Pearson. She discussed how cognitive science as a branch of study is relevant to HR and how leaders can benefit from it.

“It brings together insights from psychology, from neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, even AI, to test our ideas about how humans think and how we know that they think and learn,” explained Ms Mason.

A report by constant mentor listed the cognitive sciences as follows and explained how each is integral to business:

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Anthropology
• Philosophy
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Education
• Linguistics

Relating how her study in the area has translated to work and life, Ms Mason said: “The lessons that I learned in my cognitive science degree I've used in marketing, in education, in business development, in raising my kids, in managing.”

Using the analogy of thinking of people’s minds as ‘machines’ to be understood, Ms Mason said: “Any time there's ‘people’ change, all of these opportunities, you need to know the machine that you're working with. You need to know what you're working with, it certainly helps.”

Pearson has used mind sciences to educate and equip their leaders with the knowledge to better manage staff.

Ms Mason said: “[At Pearson] we ran a bunch of conferences called the ‘Mind/brain education conference’, and it gave our learning leaders perspectives on how they teach, why they do the things that they do. It gives you an insight, if you understand how the human works and how the thinking works, it gives you a better insight into how you manage designing a learning environment and preparing lessons.”

Explaining how an understanding of cognitive science can help diffuse an emotional situation, Ms Mason said: “If you understand how they [people] think, then you're more likely to understand how they behave, and when things go wrong, understand how to do something about it. How to manage it,” said Ms Mason.

Ms Mason shared: “… the way that the brain processes information, for instance, it always goes through an emotion filter before it hits your actual cognitive layers where you're thinking about something and solving a problem. So, people react to things and the world around them long before they can think about it and make sense of it.”
To help alleviate this emotional response, Ms Mason said: “You don't just tell; you coach, and the first step in coaching is to make sure that everyone feels right. Everyone feels safe, feels like they belong. The environment of a workplace is so important.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full conversation with Mimma Mason is below.