Beyond a Dream: The Practical Foundations of Disconnected Psychology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2020.2740Keywords:
knowledge, ethics, method, research, meta-psychologyAbstract
Disconnected psychology is a form of psychological science in which researchers ground their work upon the main principles of psychological method but are detached from a “field” consisting of other psychologists that comprises connected psychology. It has previously been proposed that combining the two forms of psychology would result in the most significant advancement of psychological knowledge (Krpan, 2020). However, disconnected psychology may seem to be an “abstract utopia”, given that it has not been previously detailed how to put it into practice. The present article therefore sets the practical foundations of disconnected psychology. In this regard, I first describe a hypothetical disconnected psychologist and discuss relevant methodological and epistemological implications. I then propose how this variant of psychology could be integrated with the current academic system (i.e., with connected psychology). Overall, the present article transforms disconnected psychology from a hazy dream into substance that could eventually maximize psychological knowledge, even if implementing it would require a radical transformation of psychological science.
References
Ajzen, I. (1988). Attitudes, personality, and behavior. Dorsey.
Amabile, T. M., Hill, K. G., Hennessey, B. A., & Tighe, E. M. (1994). The work preference inventory: Assessing intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(5), 950–967. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.66.5.950
Anseel, F., Duyck, W., De Baene, W., & Brysbaert, M. (2004). Journal impact factors and self-citations: Implications for psychology journals. American Psychologist, 59(1), 49–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.59.1.49
Assiter, A. (2017). Transferable skills in higher education. Routledge.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice Hall.
Barbour, J. (2001). The end of time: The next revolution in physics. Oxford University Press.
Bartlett, R. (2013). Tolstoy: A Russian life. Profile Books.
Bar-Yam, Y. (1997). Dynamics of complex systems. Perseus.
Benjamin, D. J., Berger, J. O., Johannesson, M., Nosek, B. A., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Berk, R., Bollen, K. A., Brembs, B., Brown, L., Camerer, C., & et al. (2017). Redefine statistical significance. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(1), 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z
Bering, J. M. (2006). The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(5), 453–462. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x06009101
Bloch, E. (1986). The principle of hope. MIT Press.
Boring, E. G. (1953). A history of introspection. Psychological Bulletin, 50(3), 169–189. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0090793
Bridges, D. (1993). Transferable skills: A philosophical perspective. Studies in Higher Education, 18(1), 43–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079312331382448
Budge, G. S., & Katz, B. (1995). Constructing psychological knowledge. Theory and Psychology, 5(2), 217–231. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354395052003
Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 116–131. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.42.1.116
Campbell, J. O. (2015). Darwin does physics. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Campbell, J. O. (2016). Universal Darwinism as a process of Bayesian inference. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00049
Choi, I., Koo, M., & Choi, J. A. (2007). Individual differences in analytic versus holistic thinking. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(5), 691–705. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206298568
Clark, D. A., & Beck, A. T. (1999). Scientific foundations of cognitive theory and therapy of depression. John Wiley.
Csiszar, A., Gingras, Y., Power, M., Wouters, P., Griese-mer, J. R., Kehm, B. M., & et al. (2020). Gaming the metrics: Misconduct and manipulation in academic research. MIT Press.
Cutler, I. (2014). Cynicism from Diogenes to Dilbert. McFarland; Company.
De Rond, M., & Miller, A. N. (2005). Publish or perish. Journal of Management Inquiry, 14(4), 321–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492605276850
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a minor literature. University of Minnesota Press.
Department for Education. (2015). Employment and earnings outcomes of higher education graduates: Experimental statistics using the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data: Further breakdowns. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/471350/BIS-15-408-Employment-and-earnings-outcomes-of-higher-education-graduates-experimental-statistics.pdf
Department for Education. (2016). Graduate outcomes (LEO): Employment and earnings outcomes of higher education graduates by subject studied and graduate characteristics in 2016/17. [Online] Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/790223/Main_text.pdf
Deutsch, K. W. (1966). On theories, taxonomies, and models as communication codes for organizing information. Behavioral Science, 11(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1002/bs.3830110102
Dickinson, E., & Ward, T. V. W. (1986). The letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press.
Eidelson, R. J. (1997). Complex adaptive systems in the behavioral and social sciences. Review of General Psychology, 1(1), 42–71. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.1.1.42
Emerson, R. W. (1982). Nature and selected essays. Penguin Books.
Extance, A. (2018). How AI technology can tame the scientific literature. Nature, 561(7722), 273–274. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06617-5
Fenigstein, A. (2009). Private and public self-consciousness. In M. R. Leary & R. H. Hoyle (Eds.), Handbook of individual differences in social behavior (pp. 495–511). Guilford Press.
Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(4), 522–527. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076760
Feynman, R. P. (1998). Cargo cult science. The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design, 55–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-075067062-3/50008-x
Fletcher, G. J. O. (1995). The scientific credibility of folk psychology. Erlbaum.
Fortin, J.-M., & Currie, D. J. (2013). Big science vs. little science: How scientific impact scales with funding. PLoS ONE, 8(6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065263
Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press.
Freud, S. (1962). Civilization and its discontents. W.W. Norton.
Gandhi, M. K. (1997). Hind swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press.
Goldman, A. I. (1993). The psychology of folk psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16(1), 15–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00028648
Green, C. D. (2017). Publish and perish: Psychology’s most prolific authors are not always the ones we remember. The American Journal of Psychology, 130(1), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.130.1.0105
Gutland, C. (2018). Husserlian phenomenology as a kind of introspection. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00896
Haslam, N., & Koval, P. (2010). Predicting long-term citation impact of articles in social and personality psychology. Psychological Reports, 106(3), 891–900. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.106.3.891-900
Hegarty, P., & Walton, Z. (2012). The consequences of predicting scientific impact in psychology using journal impact factors. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(1), 72–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611429356
Held, L., & Ott, M. (2018). On p-values and bayes factors. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, 5(1), 393–419. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-statistics-031017-100307
Heller, A. (2015). Renaissance man. Routledge.
Holbrook, M. B. (1997). Romanticism, introspection, and the roots of experiential consumption: Morris the epicurean. Consumption Markets and Culture, 1(2), 97–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.1997.9670295
Hong, S.-M., & Faedda, S. (1996). Refinement of the hong psychological reactance scale. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 56(1), 173–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164496056001014
Hume, D. (2003). A treatise of human nature. Dover.
Hunt, V., Prince, S., Dixon-Fyle, S., & Yee, L. (2017). Delivering through diversity. McKinsey & Company. [Online] Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/people%20and%20organizational%20performance/our%20insights/delivering%20through%20diversity/delivering-through-diversity_full-report.pdf
Huxley, A. (1954). The doors of perception and heaven and hell. Harper & Row.
Ilieva, J., Killingley, P., Tsiligiris, V., & Usher, A. (2019). The shape of global higher education: International comparisons with Europe. British Council. [Online] Available at: https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/k006_02_the_shape_of_global_higher_education_in_europe_final_v5_web.pdf
Janosov, M., Battiston, F., & Sinatra, R. (2020). Success and luck in creative careers. EPJ Data Science, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-020-00227-w
Jung, C. (1968). The archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed.) Bollingen.
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (2001). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge University Press.
Kant, I. (1997). Prolegomena to any future metaphysics. Cambridge University Press.
Koch, S. (1981). The nature and limits of psychological knowledge: Lessons of a century qua "science." American Psychologist, 36(3), 257–269. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.36.3.257
Krpan, D. (2020). Unburdening the shoulders of giants: A quest for disconnected academic psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(4), 1042–1053. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620904775
Larson, R. C., Ghaffarzadegan, N., & Xue, Y. (2013). Too many PhD graduates or too few academic job openings: The basic reproductive number r0 in academia. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 31(6), 745–750. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2210
Leible, S., Schlager, S., Schubotz, M., & Gipp, B. (2019). A review on blockchain technology and blockchain projects fostering open science. Frontiers in Blockchain, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2019.00016
Levitas, R. (1990). Educated hope: Ernst Bloch on abstract and concrete utopia. Utopian Studies, 1(2), 13–26. https://doi.org/www.jstor.org/stable/i20718993
Lin, Y.-G., McKeachie, W. J., & Kim, Y. C. (2003). College student intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivation and learning. Learning and Individual Differences, 13(3), 251–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1041-6080(02)00092-4
Liu, L., Wang, Y., Sinatra, R., Giles, C. L., Song, C., & Wang, D. (2018). Hot streaks in artistic, cultural, and scientific careers. Nature, 559(7714), 396–399. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0315-8
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2005). Goal setting theory: Theory building by induction. In K. G. Smith & M. Hitt (Eds.), Great minds in management: The process of theory development (pp. 128–150). Oxford University Press.
Locke, E. A. (2007). The case for inductive theory building. Journal of Management, 33(6), 867–890. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307307636
Loftus, G. R. (1996). Psychology will be a much better science when we change the way we analyze data. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5(6), 161–171. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep11512376
Madigan, R., Johnson, S., & Linton, P. (1995). The language of psychology: Apa style as epistemology. American Psychologist, 50(6), 428–436. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.50.6.428
Maltseva, K., & Lutz, C. (2018). A quantum of self: A study of self-quantification and self-disclosure. Computers in Human Behavior, 81, 102–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.12.006
Manley, R., & Sloan, M. (1997). Self-made worlds: Visionary folk art environments. Aperture.
Maslow, A. H. (1965). Eupsychian management. Richard D. Irwin.
Maul, A., Torres Irribarra, D., & Wilson, M. (2016). On the philosophical foundations of psychological measurement. Measurement, 79, 311–320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2015.11.001
McCrae, R. R. (1987). Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(6), 1258–1265. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.6.1258
Moghaddam, F. M. (1989). Specialization and despecialization in psychology: Divergent processes in the three worlds. International Journal of Psychology, 24(1-5), 103–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207594.1989.10600036
Moghaddam, F. M. (1997). The specialized society: The plight of the individual in an age of individualism. Praeger.
Moher, D., Naudet, F., Cristea, I. A., Miedema, F., Ioannidis, J. P., & Goodman, S. N. (2018). Assessing scientists for hiring, promotion, and tenure. PLOS Biology, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004089
Morowitz, H. J. (2018). The mind, the brain and complex adaptive systems. Routledge.
Neel, R., Kenrick, D. T., White, A. E., & Neuberg, S. L. (2016). Individual differences in fundamental social motives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 110(6), 887–907. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000068
Newton, I. (1687). Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica. The Royal Society.
Nosek, B. A., & Bar-Anan, Y. (2012). Scientific utopia: I. opening scientific communication. Psychological Inquiry, 23(3), 217–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840x.2012.692215
Nosek, B. A., Spies, J. R., & Motyl, M. (2012). Scientific utopia: II. restructuring incentives and practices to promote truth over publishability. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(6), 615–631. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612459058
Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (1998). Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring. Nature, 393(6685), 573–577. https://doi.org/10.1038/31225
Pais, A. (1982). ‘Subtle is the Lord. . . ‘: The science and the life of Albert Einstein. Oxford University Press.
Pascarella, E. T., Wolniak, G. C., Seifer, T. A., Cruce, T. M., & Blaich, C. F. (2005). Liberal arts colleges and liberal arts education: New evidence on impacts. ASHE Higher Education Report, 31(3), 1–148. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/aehe.3103
Paulus, F. M., Rademacher, L., Schäfer, T. A., Müller-Pinzler, L., & Krach, S. (2015). Journal impact factor shapes scientists’ reward signal in the prospect of publication. PLOS ONE, 10(11). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0142537
Pier, E. L., Brauer, M., Filut, A., Kaatz, A., Raclaw, J., Nathan, M. J., Ford, C. E., & Carnes, M. (2018). Low agreement among reviewers evaluating the same NIH grant applications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(12), 2952–2957. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1714379115
Plato. (2007). The republic. Penguin Classics.
Pluchino, A., Biondo, A. E., & Rapisarda, A. (2018). Talent versus luck: The role of randomness in success and failure. Advances in Complex Systems, 21(03n04), 1850014. https://doi.org/10.1142/s0219525918500145
Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. Hutchinson.
Popper, K. R. (1963). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Routledge.
Pronin, E. (2009). The introspection illusion. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 41) (pp. 1–67). Academic Press.
Rahula, W. S. (1974). What the Buddha taught. Grove Press.
Rand, A. (1963). For the new intellectual: The philosophy of Ayn Rand. Penguin.
Rauhvargers, A. (2013). Global university rankings and their impact: Report ii. brussels. European University Association. https://eua.eu/downloads/publications/global%20university%20rankings%20and%20their%20impact%20-%20report%20ii.pdf
Rich, D. L. (2005). Amelia earhart: A biography. Smithsonian Books.
Roediger, H. L. (2003). Focus on academia: The complete academic. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/focus-on-academia-the-compleat-academic
Rosnow, R. L., & Rosenthal, R. (1989). Statistical procedures and the justification of knowledge in psychological science. American Psychologist, 44(10), 1276–1284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.44.10.1276
Roughgarden, T. (2010). Algorithmic game theory. Communications of the ACM, 53(7), 78–86. https://doi.org/10.1145/1785414.1785439
Rumelhart, D. E. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 33–58). Erlbaum.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.68
Rynasiewicz, R., & Renn, J. (2006). The turning point for Einstein’s annus mirabilis. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 37(1), 5–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsb.2005.12.002
Sabine, G. H. (1917). Philosophical and scientific specialization. The Philosophical Review, 26(1), 16–27.
Safer, M. A., & Tang, R. (2009). The psychology of referencing in psychology journal articles. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(1), 51–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01104.x
Sawyer, R. (2005). Social emergence: Societies as complex systems. Cambridge University Press.
Segen, J. C. (1992). The dictionary of modern medicine. Parthenon Publishing Group.
Shrout, P. E., & Rodgers, J. L. (2018). Psychology, science, and knowledge construction: Broadening perspectives from the replication crisis. Annual Review of Psychology, 69(1), 487–510. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011845
Sinatra, R., Wang, D., Deville, P., Song, C., & Barabási, A.-L. (2016). Quantifying the evolution of individual scientific impact. Science, 354(6312). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf5239
Skinner, B. (1948). Walden two. Prentice Hall.
Stanford, P. K. (2015). Unconceived alternatives and conservatism in science: The impact of professionalization, peer-review, and big science. Synthese, 196(10), 3915–3932. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0856-4
Stanley, S. (2012). Intimate distances: William james’ introspection, buddhist mindfulness, and experiential inquiry. New Ideas in Psychology, 30(2), 201–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2011.10.001
Sternberg, R. J. (2017). Psychology 101 1/2: The unspoken rules for success in academia. American Psychological Association.
Stojmenova Duh, E., Duh, A., Droftina, U., Kos, T., Duh, U., Simoniˇc Korošak, T., & Korošak, D. (2019). Publish-and-flourish: Using blockchain platform to enable cooperative scholarly communication. Publications, 7(2), 33. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020033
Swan, M. (2012). Sensor mania! the internet of things, wearable computing, objective metrics, and the quantified self 2.0. Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks, 1(3), 217–253. https://doi.org/10.3390/jsan1030217
Swan, M. (2013). The quantified self: Fundamental disruption in big data science and biological discovery. Big Data, 1(2), 85–99. https://doi.org/10.1089/big.2012.0002
Teo, T. (2009). Philosophical concerns in critical psychology. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Critical psychology: An introduction (2nd ed.) (pp. 36–54). Sage.
Tijdink, J. K., Verbeke, R., & Smulders, Y. M. (2014). Publication pressure and scientific misconduct in medical scientists. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 9(5), 64–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1556264614552421
Trafimow, D. (2009). The theory of reasoned action. Theory and Psychology, 19(4), 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354309336319
Trafimow, D. (2012). The role of auxiliary assumptions for the validity of manipulations and measures. Theory and Psychology, 22(4), 486–498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354311429996
Trafimow, D. (2014). Considering quantitative and qualitative issues together. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(1), 15–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2012.743202
Trafimow, D. (2021). A taxonomy of major premises and implications for falsification and verification. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 33(4), 211–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/02698595.2021.1964845
Trapnell, P. D., & Campbell, J. D. (1999). Private self-consciousness and the five-factor model of personality: Distinguishing rumination from reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(2), 284–304. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.2.284
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117(2), 440–463. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018963
Tshitoyan, V., Dagdelen, J., Weston, L., Dunn, A., Rong, Z., Kononova, O., Persson, K. A., Ceder, G., & Jain, A. (2019). Unsupervised word embeddings capture latent knowledge from materials science literature. Nature, 571(7763), 95–98. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1335-8
Usher, A., Ilieva, J., Killingley, P., & Tsiligiris, V. (2019). The shape of global higher education: The americas. British Council. https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/k006_03_the_shape_of_global_higher_education_americas_final_web.pdf
Vachelard, J., Gambarra-Soares, T., Augustini, G., Riul, P., & Maracaja-Coutinho, V. (2016). A guide to scientific crowdfunding. PLOS Biology, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002373
Valentinuzzi, M. E., Ortiz, M. H., Cervantes, D., & Leder, R. S. (2016). Nikola tesla: Why was he so much resisted and forgotten? [retrospectroscope]. IEEE Pulse, 7(6), 61–68. https://doi.org/10.1109/mpul.2016.2606472
Watson, R. (2019). Predatory journals and the pollution of academic publishing. Journal of Nursing Management, 27(2), 223–224. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12739
Wells, I. B. (2020). Crusade for justice: The autobiography of Ida B. Wells. University of Chicago Press.
Yaden, D. B., Kaufman, S. B., Hyde, E., Chirico, A., Gaggioli, A., Zhang, J. W., & Keltner, D. (2018). The development of the awe experience scale (awes): A multifactorial measure for a complex emotion. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 14(4), 474–488. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1484940
Zinsser, J. P. (2007). Emilie du Châtelet: Daring genius of the enlightenment. Penguin.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Dario Krpan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.