Dangerous Curves in Knowledge Construction within Psychology

Psychology has become divided by its methodological fixations, largely overlooking the centrality of its phenomena. The alienation of methods from phenomena results in skirmishes between preferred methodological styles (e.g. qualitative vs quantitative). This defies the integrative nature of science that functionally links theoretical and empirical facets of the research process in a methodology cycle. This integration was called for by C. Lloyd Morgan a century ago in the form of integrating the researcher’s introspective and extrospective experiences on the way to creating general knowledge. In contrast, our contemporary fragmentation of the discipline is compounded by forces of social canalization—it becomes controllable by different social interest groups. What kinds of questions are asked by researchers, to whom, and with what kind of focus becomes a task of negotiation between science and the given society. The increasing social control over the domain of ‘research ethics’ in psychology is an example of the social canalization of psychology’s knowledge construction. As a result, many basic questions are no longer addressed. To return to the creation of basic knowledge, psychology needs to reverse the fragmentation of its methodology and to assert the relative autonomy of its research practices from the control of social institutions.