The mission of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied® is to publish original empirical investigations in experimental psychology that bridge practically oriented problems and psychological theory.

The journal also publishes research aimed at developing and testing of models of cognitive processing or behavior in applied situations, including laboratory and field settings. Occasionally, review articles are considered for publication if they contribute significantly to important topics within applied experimental psychology.

Areas of interest include applications of perception, attention, memory, decision making, reasoning, information processing, problem solving, learning, and skill acquisition. Settings may be industrial (such as human–computer interface design), academic (such as intelligent computer-aided instruction), forensic (such as eyewitness memory), or consumer oriented (such as product instructions).