When I started my first psychology course I couldn’t understand the separation between the different subjects, or disciplines, in psychology. Developmental psychologists aren’t that much different from cognitive psychologists – they both study mental events and processes – but one almost never refers to the other. Why?
Continue reading “Unity in Psychology: The Search Starts Here”
Thank Kihlstrom (2004), some clarity. I’ve just been reading his response to Henriques’ proposals for a unified psychology, and the man talks a lot of sense. Although he’s not totally dismissive of what Henriques’ has to say, he thinks that psychology has, in effect, already been unified, to the extent that it’s possible, by the cognitive revolution.
London is currently the centre of world attention as security forces claim to have foiled a terrorist plot to bomb a number of civilian aircraft. In response the media has gone into special-event overdrive which usually involves: a) endless repetition of the same sketchy information and b) pointless graphics attempting to cover up for a lack of cold hard facts. Not that I’ve been watching or reading any of it – I don’t see the point.
Continuing my investigation of unity in psychology – whether it’s possible, why it’s not there already, what can be done about it – I’ve discovered another supporter of the institutional/organisational hypothesis of psychology’s woes.
Katzko (2004) points out that psychology is a ‘federation of sub-disciplines’ and that diversity is not problem, instead it is psychology’s disorganisation that needs addressing. Katzko (2002) argues that this type of disorganisation is actually created by a discontent about the methodological basis of psychology.
A recent request by a researcher to help generate participants got me thinking about the rise of psychological research over the internet. The web can be tantalising for psychological researchers – access to millions upon millions of participants, reaching beyond the standard undergraduate pool to specialised groups, cheap online implementation and the resulting data already in electronic form. All these are acknowledged advantages but how many investigators are aware of some of the major pitfalls of online research? Birnbaum (2004) examines some of the problems researchers will face.
Continue reading “Rise of Psychological Research on the Internet”
The greatest enemy of unity, or even just some kind of organisation in psychology, is complacency. Hayes (2004) argues that Henriques’ attempt to (re)define psychology is essentially redundant as it won’t result in any practical benefits. Hayes points to how his own house (behaviour analysis) is apparently in good theoretical order and has no need of these over-arching meta-theories. Further he wants to say that there is no way of knowing what benefits will accrue from developing a unified view of psychology – apparently coherence has no proven benefit.
For me it’s very difficult to understand what psychology is really about and what it consists of. Everyone seems to have different ideas which are often mutually exclusive. Not only that but psychologists seem to make little effort to bridge the enormous gaps that have been obvious for decades, or even centuries. Formally, psychology is a disaster zone.
Nowadays efficient people-smart multi-national corporations are on the rise while local businesses go to the wall. If these smaller concerns misunderstand the psychology of the marketplace as fundamentally as my local optician then it’s no mystery. Here’s what happened…
While Sternberg & Grigorenko’s (2001) view is extremely attractive and practical, it is nevertheless a bottom-up approach that assumes that fixing the research process will also seal higher level theoretical fissures. Henriques’ (2003) contrasting, although not necessarily contradictory, view is that extra levels of explanation or insight are required to link together theoretical models from the top downwards. Henriques is not just aiming to unify psychology here, but also to unite the natural and social sciences. In his view, psychology provides just such a bridging point.
Since psychology’s split from philosophy around the turn of the last century, much talk has focussed on how the discipline should model itself on the natural sciences. Wilhelm Wundt, the godfather of experimental psychology thought psychology should look towards physics for its inspiration. Physics and psychology are, of course, very different disciplines, but, despite this, they do still have one common goal.
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