Travel Psychology
The places we go change how we think, how we feel, and who we become.
I’m Dr. Katie Blake, a social and cultural psychologist who studies what travel does to us: to our thoughts, our emotions, and the story we tell about who we are.
I hold a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Houston and have 20 years of experience teaching in colleges and universities. I’m the founder of The Journal of Travel Psychology, and my work has been featured in AFAR, The Telegraph, and The Economic Times.
The idea
The places we go don’t stay behind. They become part of us.
Our psychology comes down to how we think, what we feel, and how we behave. Travel can touch all three at once. A new city unsettles our routines, an unfamiliar language sharpens what we notice, and a landscape can shift our mood before we’ve had time to name why. Psychology research has studied how people shape us far more than how places do. My work sits there, in how the places we move through shape our minds and, over time, our sense of self.
Psychologie
Why some places stay with us.
My Substack, Psychologie, gathers essays on how the places we go shape how we think, how we feel, and how we see ourselves.
Read on Substack →The Podcast
Conversations on the places we become.
The Places We Become is a podcast on how place, culture, and the way we move through the world shape who we are.
Listen now →The Journal
Research on how travel shapes us.
I founded The Journal of Travel Psychology to publish research-backed essays on the science of travel. Results from the first State of Travel Psychology Survey will be published there.
Read the Journal →Hotels + Brands
Guest experience, through psychology.
I work with hotels and hospitality brands on psychology-informed guest experience audits and brand collaborations, from on-property insight to bylined editorial.
Work with me →Travel Consulting
Trips planned with travel psychology.
Away from the familiar, we notice things about ourselves that home never asks of us. I plan trips that make room for that, from the first idea to the memories you bring home.
Plan a trip →Press
For editors and journalists.
I speak with journalists about travel psychology and the psychology of place, and welcome essay and editorial inquiries. My work has been featured in AFAR, The Telegraph, and The Economic Times.
Press inquiries →Why this matters
We are shaped by where we’ve been. Most of us have never stopped to ask how.
Travel is usually talked about as a transaction: an escape, a reward, a break from real life. Psychology research suggests something closer to a relationship. The places we go leave their mark on us, and we carry them home.
Whether you’re planning a trip or wondering why a place stayed with you long after you left, my work is about understanding that relationship.
Pictured: a sampling of postcards.
The Postcard Société
Stay close to the people you love, wherever you are.
Travel takes us away from the people we love, and the postcard has always been how we bring them along. The Postcard Société is a correspondence box made to go with you: small enough to tuck into a carry-on, ready for a café table in a new city, a card a day to one person or three.
Between trips, it stays on the kitchen table as an analogue practice for home, for writing by hand to a friend you’ve drifted from, a grandparent, or someone just down the street.
Every box begins with your Correspondence Portrait, a few questions about how you write and who you write to. From your answers, I choose your thirteen postcards from independent artists, by hand, for you.
“Katie blends some of my favorite topics: psychology, neuroscience, and travel. Her style is effortlessly authoritative and relatable.”Maggie Hollinbeck, M.A., LMFT