What is the relationship between experimental psychology and human factors?
Human factors is defined as “the application of scientific data to make the world compatible with human abilities, fitting the product to the sensory, information processing, and motor attributes of the user.” As result, human factors experts must be know all three fields. Human factors was not a degree field until relatively recently, so most human factors experts, and virtually all over the age of 45, have their roots in another discipline. The “sensory, information processing, and motor attributes” of people are all topics that most experimental psychologists will have studied extensively, so it is hardly surprising that many human factors professionals are experimental psychologists.
