Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray? (PB)

359 Pages·2.202 MB·English

by  Aaro Toomela, Jaan Valsiner

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:
IAP—INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING A VOLUME IN:
P.O. BOX 79049 ADVANCES IN CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY:
CHARLOTTE, NC 28271-7047
WWW.INFOAGEPUB.COM CONSTRUCTING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Methodological
Thinking in Psychology:
60 Years Gone Astray?
A Volume in
Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development
Series Editor:
Jaan Valsiner
Clark University
Advances in Cultural Psychology:
Constructing Human Development
Jaan Valsiner
Series Editor
Living in Poverty: Developmental Poetics of Cultural Realities (2010)
Edited by Ana Cecília S. Bastos and Elaine P. Rabinovich
Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray? (2010)
Edited by Aaro Toomela and Jaan Valsiner
Relating to Environments: A New Look at Umwelt (2009)
Edited by Rosemarie Sokol Chang
Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically (2009)
By Per Linell
Innovating Genesis: Microgenesis and the Constructive Mind in Action (2008)
Edited by Emily Abbey and Rainer Diriwächter
Discovering Cultural Psychology: A Profi le and Selected Readings of Ernest E. Boesch (2007)
By Walter J. Lonner and Susanna A. Hayes
Otherness in Question: Development of the Self (2007)
Edited by Livia Mathias Simão and Jaan Valsiner
Semiotic Rotations: Modes of Meanings in Cultural Worlds (2007)
Edited by SunHee Kim Gertz, Jaan Valsiner, and Jean-Paul Breaux
Trust and Distrust: Sociocultural Perspectives (2007)
Edited by Ivana Markova and Alex Gillespie
Transitions: Symbolic Resources in Development (2006)
Edited by Tania Zittoun and Neuchatel
Becoming Other: From Social Interaction to Self-Refl ection (2006)
Edited by Alex Gillespie
Challenges and Strategies for Studying Human Development in Cultural Contexts (2005)
Edited by Cynthia Lightfoot, Maria Lyra, and Jaan Valsiner
Methodological
Thinking in Psychology:
60 Years Gone Astray?
Aaro Toomela
Tallinn University
Jaan Valsiner
Clark University
INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.
Charlotte, NC (cid:129) www.infoagepub.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Methodological thinking in psychology : 60 years gone astray? / edited by
Aaro Toomela and Jaan Valsiner.
p. cm. -- (Advances in cultural psychology)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60752-430-4 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60752-431-1 (hardcover) --
ISBN 978-1-60752-432-8 (e-book)
1. Psychology--Research. I. Toomela, Aaro. II. Valsiner, Jaan.
BF76.5.M465 2010
150.1--dc22
2010000945
Cover Design by Soraya Jesus Salomão
Copyright © 2010 Information Age Publishing Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, microfi lming, recording or otherwise, without written permission
from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Preface .................................................................................................vii
1. Modern Mainstream Psychology Is the Best? Noncumulative,
Historically Blind, Fragmented, Atheoretical ................................1
Aaro Toomela
2. Questions, Patterns, and Explanations, Not Hypothesis
Testing, Is the Core of Psychology as of Any Science ...................27
Stellan Ohlsson
3. The Quantity/Quality Interchange: A Blind Spot on the
Highway of Science .......................................................................45
Joel Michell
4. Studying the Movement of Thought .............................................69
Alex Gillespie and Tania Zittoun
5. Understanding a Personality as a Whole: Transcending the
Anglo-American Methods Focus and Continental-European
Holism Through a Look at Dynamic Emergence Processes .........89
Tatsuya Sato, Kosuke Wakabayashi, Akinobu Named,
Yuko Yasuda and Yoshiyuki Watanabe
v
CONTENTS vi
6. Metaphors in Psychological Conceptualization
and Explanation ..........................................................................121
Hans Dooremalen and Denny Borsboom
7. Remembering Methodology: Experimenting with Bartlett .........145
Brady Wagoner
8. Refl ections on Some Neglected Ideas About Psychological
Measurement from the Personalistic Perspective of William
Stern (1871–1938) ........................................................................189
James T. Lamiell
9. Qualitative Developmental Psychology .......................................209
Günter Mey
10. The Role of Observational Methodology and the Application
of Film in Early American and European Developmental
Psychology ...................................................................................231
Kurt Kreppner
11. What Would Be Gustav Theodor Fechner Legacy For
Psychology In The 21St Century? ................................................261
Arno Engelmann
12. Forgotten Methodology: Vygotsky’s Case ....................................267
Nikolai Veresov
13. Vygotsky’s Methodological Approach: A Blueprint for the
Future of Psychology ...................................................................297
Holbrook Mahn
14. General Conclusion: Have Sixty Years Really Gone Astray?
Back to the Future .......................................................................325
Aaro Toomela and Jaan Valsiner
Contributors .........................................................................................339
PREFACE
This book is about progress in psychology. Or—maybe— of its absence. Of
course, the verdict here depends on the point of view—and the pragmatics
of one’s social position. When evaluating one’s own context of activity we
are not patient observers looking at it from afar, but passionate participants
in the ongoing efforts to understand what it is that we are doing. And, what
we are doing here is making sense of how knowledge in psychology has
developed, develops now, and which directions it might move in the future.
Often stories about science are told as if our knowledge always accumu-
lates, newer inventions are better than what was left behind, and old ideas
are no longer important. This naively optimistic view may work well with
politicians who need to fund a science, or for public opinion that looks
for good news in amidst news about natural disasters, pandemics, and eco-
nomic crises. Yet such a picture—nice as it is—cannot be real. History of
the human mind cannot be characterized by steady accumulation of knowl-
edge and understanding. It means the law that everything newer is better or
more developed than old is wrong. The history of science and technology
has its ups and downs—periods of rapid advancement, of long stays in a sta-
ble state, declines, new advances, and so on. One fundamental step down,
for instance, characterizes the medieval age. Le Goff (1992) gives a large
number of examples how the time before medieval age, that began “on the
ruins of the Roman world” (p. 9), especially Hellenistic Greece was techno-
logically and culturally far more advanced than medieval Europe. Decline
characterized practically all aspects of human civilization—economy, law,
Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray?, pages vii–xii
Copyright © 2009 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. vii
viii (cid:129) A. TOOMELA & J. VALSINER
technology, agriculture, church, philosophy, sciences, etc. In contrast, the
decade of the French Revolution of 1789 brought with it very rapid break-
throughs in a society—that reverberated in the following century all over
Europe.
That development is a non-linear process is no big news for developmental
scientists. The history of psychology as a science is not an exception; there is
increasing evidence that theories and methodology of psychology, especially
that of Continental Europe, were far more advanced 60 years ago than what
is considered to be our contemporary “mainstream” psychology. Of course
the representatives of the latter would vehemently disagree with such
evaluation—their interests entail the need to demonstrate that psychology
is always on the narrative track of monotonic progress. We disagree—and
in some sense the present book is about the mythical emperor who had no
clothes, despite the consensus of the courtiers who saw him well dressed—
maybe into fashionable brand clothes.
Aside from opinions—those anybody can have—there are major
disputes that divide scientists in contemporary psychology. In recent years
an increasing dissatisfaction with methods and thinking in psychology as
a science can be observed. The discipline is operating under the tension
between the traditional quantitative and the new qualitative methodologies
(e.g., see Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung at http://www.qualitative-
research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm). New approaches emerge in different fi elds
of psychology and education—each of them trying to go beyond limitations
of the mainstream. Psychology is becoming global—contributions from all
over the world, not just from North America and Western Europe become
major players in the advancement of science. All these new approaches,
however, tend to be “historically blind”—seemingly novel ideas have
actually been common in some period in the history of psychology. Digging
them up to help us all innovate our discipline is a noble goal—rather than
nostalgia for the past.
Knowledge of historical trends in that context becomes crucial because
analysis of historical changes in psychology are informative regarding the
potential of “new/old and forgotten” approaches in the study of psyche.
Some approaches in psychology disappeared due to inherent limitations
of them; the others disappeared due to purely non-scientifi c reasons.
Before World War II two general schools of thinking in psychology, North-
American and German-Austrian, could be differentiated. The latter was
considerably more sophisticated in its theoretical and phenomenological
practices than its North-American offspring (see, e.g., Watson, 1934, and
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science [2007], 41[1]). A number
of crucial perspectives became lost in psychology when the center of
dominance in research moved Westward over the Atlantic in conjunction
with the tragedies of World War II—the loss of careful look at phenomena
Preface (cid:129) ix
studied in single cases (replaced by large sample studies and statistical
generalizations—Gigerenzer et al, 1989; Lamiell, 2003; Molenaar, 2004),
diminished look at dynamic processes that lead to outcomes (in favor of the
evaluation of outcomes—Valsiner, Molenaar, Lyra, & Chaudhary, 2009),
and discounting the value of general theory in favor of data accumulation
(leading to the science becoming largely pseudo-empirical—Smedslund,
1995).
As a result of post World War II years, the current mainstream psychology
represents the North-American way of thinking. The German-Austrian
tradition has almost disappeared. Yet there was no valid scientifi c reason to
abandon principles valued by German-Austrian psychologists. In our time of
reconstruction of psychology with participation of representatives of many
cultural histories it is precisely the Continental European focus that can
link with the culturally disperse phenomena from the myriad of indigenous
psychologies that are currently emerging on all continents. After all, the
social system of the United States—and its mores—has been exported only
to one other country since the American Revolution1—and with dubious
results. The Big Mac and IQ tests have succeeded better, of course—but
their effects may be equally dubious. Psychology needs to widen its scope.
Such observations led us to dwell deeper into the question whether 60
years of psychology may have gone astray indeed. This was the starting idea
for the present book. We invited eminent scholars from different continents
each with different scientifi c backgrounds in psychology to contribute to
this volume. Two questions were put forward for them:
1. Which of the historical or new principles should be introduced to
the modern psychology? If you fi nd that no new principles should
be introduced, then please provide review of the research that has
followed all important methodological principles in your fi eld of
psychology. If new (“old new”) principles should be introduced,
then which?
2. How would mainstream psychology benefi t from utilizing the prin-
ciples you propose to introduce into methodological thinking of
modern psychology? Here we expect a contributor to bring spe-
cifi c examples from her/his most beloved fi eld of psychology, to
indicate specifi c questions that need to be answered but have not
been answered due to limitations of mainstream methodological
thinking.
There was no pushing the authors to agree or disagree with the idea the
editors wished to discuss. Yet we did provide a clear general orientation—
the book was to be a contemplation of how to improve psychology through
1Liberia