The Psychology of Prompting

We often treat AI like a search engine: keywords in, results out. But in 2026, models like Gemini 2.0 and GPT-5 respond far better to context and persona.

1. The Persona Effect

Assigning a role to the AI isn’t just a trick; it frames the latent space search.

• bad: “Write a marketing email.”
• Good: “You are a senior copywriter with 10 years of experience in SaaS. Write a marketing email…“

2. Chain of Thought

Asking the AI to “think step by step” forces it to output reasoning tokens before the final answer, which drastically reduces hallucination rates.

Conclusion

Treat your prompt engineering as a form of management. utilizing clear instructions, context, and iterative feedback to get the best results.