Research Topic · Peer-Reviewed

Thinking

Thinking is the active manipulation of mental representations to reason, solve problems, form judgments, and reach decisions. As a psychological construct it spans deliberate analytical reasoning, conceptual understanding, motivation-driven goal pursuit, and the emotional and social cognition that frame how people i…

Curated from this journal's research 📚 12 peer-reviewed articles cited Cited 44× across the literature 🔖 ISSN 2644-1101 🗓 Reviewed July 2026

Overview

Thinking is the active manipulation of mental representations to reason, solve problems, form judgments, and reach decisions. As a psychological construct it spans deliberate analytical reasoning, conceptual understanding, motivation-driven goal pursuit, and the emotional and social cognition that frame how people interpret situations. Thinking is studied both as an individual capacity and as a process embedded in culture, language, and interpersonal context. Scholarship in this area addresses how motivation shapes engagement in learning and the actions students take to pursue success, and how affective states such as frustration are appraised and self-regulated, for instance among individuals performing demanding tasks. Complex social phenomena are also analyzed through the lens of thought: work examining hatred as a multi-faceted construct treats it as cognitive, emotional, and motivational, while studies of ethics and emerging technologies consider how reasoning traditions inform judgments about artificial intelligence. Therapeutic and educational applications recur as well, including rumination-focused cognitive-behavioral approaches that target maladaptive patterns of repetitive thought and pedagogical methods that restructure how learners process information. Across these contexts, thinking is examined for its mechanisms, its susceptibility to bias and distortion, and its central role in behavior, well-being, and adaptation.

Research published in this journal

12 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.

How this research is being cited

The 12 articles above have been cited 44 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.

A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Thinking, linking to each citing work.

Editorial oversight

Curated from peer-reviewed research published in Human Psychology (ISSN 2644-1101).

Journal editorial board
Christopher Mesagno · Australia Larkin Lamarche · canada Giuseppe Lanza · Italy

This page summarises published research for orientation; it is not medical or professional advice.