What is the main focus of cognitive psychology?

Cognitive psychology primarily examines the processes involved in acquiring, processing, and storing information. This includes how we think, learn, remember, and solve problems. The focus is on understanding how our mental processes influence our behavior, which encompasses a wide range of topics such as perception, attention, memory, language, and problem-solving.

While the study of emotions and feelings is more relevant to other psychological domains, such as affective or clinical psychology, cognitive psychology specifically delves into the workings of the mind—how thoughts are formed and how they affect our actions. Similarly, social interactions and genetic influences on behavior are important areas of psychology, but they fall under social psychology and behavioral genetics, respectively, rather than cognitive psychology’s focus on mental processes.