I would like to begin this commentary by conveying that I am grateful and honored to have been chosen President-elect of the STPP, especially during the presidential term of David Goodman, who this year is providing us with exceptionally capable, energetic, and compassionate leadership. I plan to support the perpetuation of David's excellent initiatives during my term next year as president, along with introducing additional ideas to strengthen our voices in the psychological community and to grow our membership. Whether you are a senior member of the division, a relatively new member, or a student member, please do not hesitate to communicate your thoughts to me about how we might continue toward a flourishing theoretical psychology.
The theme of this newsletter asks, “Can psychological humanities include those psychological science neglects?” If the field of psychology is viewed as the historically, culturally, and otherwise contextually situated activity of human agents, the answer to the question is clearly “yes.” In fact, such a perspective leads to the conclusion that even positivistic science can include those who have been neglected in the past, by including researchers from and by studying the lives of people in indigenous and other previously neglected societies.
Thus, the question may be better stated as “Can psychological humanities in principle better include those psychological science neglects?”
Again, taking the view that psychology, like any human activity, is an enterprise driven by values and emotions, I believe we must respond to this question with “it depends.”
Psychology as generally conceived is tasked with investigating phenomena that are constituted or influenced by factors ranging from the biological to the social and historical. The choice of a psychological science versus psychological humanities approach, then, would depend upon the researchers' or theoreticians' goals (perhaps driven by career, institutional, cultural, societal, or ideological agendas in addition to epistemic objectives).
When the intent is to study phenomena that are closer to the biological end of psychology's domain; such as the mechanisms of sensation, perception, or memory; a psychological science approach that does not fail to include a sufficiently broad sample of participants may turn out to be generally more appropriate. Likewise, a psychological science approach may be more successful when studying ways to best implement social policies at a particular point in history.
However, if we want to study the experienced, meaningful lives of persons, including our own selves, then causal models of mechanistic interactions, most STPP members would agree, are inadequate to address our most important questions. Here psychological humanities become necessary. The most insightful and useful answers may be furnished only by psychological methods combined with those of philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, or literature.
Returning to the theme question of this newsletter, then, it is likely that the issues most important to those who have been thus far neglected by psychological science, or anyone who wishes to better understand those persons, would best be addressed by psychological humanities.
Of course, much more than is possible in this brief commentary must be considered in response to the theme question. Most significantly, we must deeply reflect on what purposes we want our psychological investigations to serve. What will we be able to accomplish with the results of our work? Who benefits, and whom might be harmed? To whom will these results generalize? For how long? Who will provide the resources that sustain psychological humanities projects? What structural barriers must be overcome, and who will resist the dissemination of the results?
I very much look forward to the dialogues that will take place within and beyond our division as we confront these challenges. Happy New Year and best wishes to you all.
Author's Bio
Gary Brill received his PhD in Personality and Social Psychology at New York University in 1982 and spent the subsequent 20 years working at Bell Labs / AT&T / Lucent Technologies, and from 2002 to 2017 taught full time as a member of the Rutgers Psychology faculty. For the past several years, Gary's work has centered on viewing psychological inquiry as a practice and drawing out the implications of such a conceptualization.