The problem with alternatives to cognitive psychology

In the last post, I pointed out the problem with cognitive psychology: While often hopelessly ambiguous, it creates a practical and useful sense of solidity, making it easy to use for normal professional activities. But what about alternative approaches?

Alas, the situation is almost the complete opposite for most attempts to get “beyond cognitivism”: They are not, or at least do not seem, useful in the above sense. They are not flexible, in that they are picky about which theoretical constructs are plugged into a given hole; they are not utilitarian, in that it is often unclear how to implement a program of research based on the theories, even if you agree with them completely; and they are non-conformist, in that they involve rejecting the way lay westerners think of the world. Further (or perhaps as a result), though the terms used might be quite concrete, they provide a firm illusion of being hopelessly ambiguous. The combination of little flexibility, little usefulness, unintuitiveness and seeming ambiguity, make it difficult for aspiring psychologists to understand, and further, once the neophytes become convinced, it will be difficult for them to go about standard professional activities. (p. 195)

All it takes to be a behaviorist... or... Manifesto, Take 2

There is much confusion over what it means to be a behaviorist. This is largely due to silly posturing by Big Names over the past 100 years ago. Rather than work to develop the theory and implications of behaviorism based on broad first principles, researchers developed their own niche specializations, and then each declared "Behaviorism" to be "What I do." I don't want to dwell on this history here, but rather present a sketch of how behaviorism should be understood.

Unifying Psychology: On framing a positive message

As some of you may know, I am editing a special issue of the Review of General Psychology. The focus is on potentially unifying theories. There are, of course, many past attempts to bring unity to the field. Most take two forms: First, there are the pipe dreams; bold visions from young Turks or senior scholars. Second, there are those who want us to give up the quest for a unified underlying theory and instead claim that we are already unified sufficiently by our agreed upon subject matter. The latter often come off as apologists, who hope we can learn to revel in our differences. Neither of these approaches is necessarily bad, but I am not sure another special issue with one of those focuses would be helpful, and suspected there was a better way to make progress.

New Unified Theory of Psychology

I blogged a bit ago about Gregg Henriques's "New Unified Theory of Psychology", which had seen several in-press discussions, and a book. Gregg also blogs over at Psychology Today.

I mention this because my practice of reviewing one book a year for PsychCritiques provided me with a copy of Gregg's recent book, and the review has just released. As in the past, I don't want to provide too much of the review, for fear of violating copyright, but, as I liked the book, something should be said here.