Some pitfalls in psychological theorizing.

"The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to certain examples of confusing psychological statements. These could be classified as involving circularity, lack of parsimony, and indefinite regress. It is hoped that pointing to these examples will lead to their avoidance… . Explanations must lie outside of the thing explained… . It seems to us that, before we invoke a new term, we are obligated to consider whether we are adding unnecessarily to an already unparsimonious state of affairs… . The mere fact that one uses a new term implies that there is a difference, and it seems to us this carries with it the obligation to make the difference explicit. What is particularly unfortunate is the fact that failure to do so is often associated with a disregard for the work of others on essentially the same problem… . A greater regard for parsimony would probably lead to unification rather than fragmentation of research findings." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The "entertainment factor" in theorizing.

Discusses the failure of B. F. Singer (see record 1972-22035-001) to go into the area of psychological gains (satisfactions received by theorists in their work). The inherent psychological gain from the theoretical synthesis itself is analyzed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comments on trends in hardiness research and theorizing.

The author discusses the history and current status of the hardiness approach to enhancing performance, conduct, morale, stamina, and health, and comments on the articles appearing in the Spring 1999 special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal. Observations are made about the future of hardiness and its participation in a new emphasis on personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Taking the theorizing in personality theories seriously: Comment.

Comments on "A tale of two visions: Can a new view of personality help integrate psychology?" by J. D. Mayer (see record 2005-05480-001). Mayer's attempt to find ways to use personality emphases as integrative tendencies in psychology is welcome. Certainly, it would help if the research and practice efforts of psychologists were coordinated more clearly than they are now. The comment author finds Mayer's rather ambiguous and scattered suggestions to be disconcerting. The comment author proposes alternatives he hopes will further Mayer's goals. He believes that emphasizing core, developmental, and peripheral statements is important in envisioning the personality system. The comment author does not agree with Mayer's (2005) assertion that emphasizing existing personality theories is necessarily damaging because of their specific content disagreements. There are, of course, many personality theories, but their diversity can be reduced to a more manageable level by inducing from them the basic models of personality theorizing. When the comment author engages in this process, what emerges is the conflict, fulfillment, and consistency models, each with two subtypes. Psychologists need to collaborate with each other in formulating comparative analytic research that can resolve the fundamental issues arising from the differences between these three models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud's forgotten evolutionary project.

In the last decades psychoanalysis has tended to recast itself as a hermeneutic discipline geared at the retelling of human lives, and Freud is recast as a great writer in the humanist tradition rather than as the scientist as which he saw himself. Although this reconceptualization has good reasons, it tends to obscure the fact that Freud primarily saw himself as a theorist of human nature. One of Freud's deepest convictions was that psychopathology needs to be explained on the basis of evolutionary biology. This paper argues that this may have been one of Freud's greatest ideas. The reason it has been "repressed" by psychoanalysis is that Freud based it on Lamarckian principles. The current flourishing of evolutionary psychology and psychiatry may well turn Freud into one of the precursors of the psychology of the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Image of a global village": Global theorizing and local knowledge.

'Globalization' provides an ambiguous cliché for psychology as the North American and European version of the discipline is being exported widely. After providing a brief history of globalization and the failure of its intended effects I discuss three episodes of psychology's place in a globalized marketplace of ideas; the pre-1900 development of psychology in Germany and North America, the failure of phenomenological psychology in Europe after World War II and the current state of the professionalization of psychology. Psychology has, thus far, largely followed the enthusiasms of the globalizers. While it is far too late to create 'indigenous psychologies,' theory remains a vehicle of questioning, coaxing, and resistance through which to engage the multiplicity of subjectivities that confront us. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Holt .45 misfires: Yet another round of lament and ridicule aimed at psychoanalytic theorizing.

Comments on R. R. Holt's (see record 1992-27289-001) criticism of S. Reisner's (see record 1992-16438-001) interpretation of an object-relational thread running through Freud's writings. According to Holt, such rereadings of Freud are a waste of time; the real problem to which analytic scholars need to address themselves is the sorry epistemic state of psychoanalytic theory. This commentary counterargues that Holt is simply one of a small, but highly visible, group of lamenters for the alleged terminal epistemic illness of psychoanalysis, a group whose modus operandi has been to ridicule anyone who sees in the traditional forms of psychoanalytic theorizing the potential to say anything useful about human psychology. Reisner has, in fact, made an interesting, exciting, and useful contribution to psychoanalytic thinking and to the wider effort of human beings to capture and accurately represent their unconscious processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The story of hardiness: Twenty years of theorizing, research, and practice.

Since 1979, the development of the hardiness approach to enhancing performance and health has been facilitated by continual cross-fertilization between theorizing, research, and practice. At first, hardiness emerged from individual differences research on stress reactions as the attitudes of commitment, control, and challenge. Since then, extensive theorizing and practice, combined with considerable additional research, has led to the supplementation of hardy attitudes with hardy skills concerning coping, social interaction, and self-care. Also, the mechanisms whereby hardy attitudes and skills enhance performance and health are better understood. The hardiness approach has also expanded from the individual to the organizational level. All these developments form an example of the value of combining theorizing, research, and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental-behavioral initiation of evolutionary change.

The traditional approach to evolutionary psychology relies entirely on natural selection as the cause of the evolution of adaptations. Exclusive reliance on natural selection overlooks the fact that changes in development are a necessary prerequisite for evolutionary change. These developmental changes provide the material for natural selection to work on. In the neo-Darwinian scenario, the mechanisms of evolution are mutation or genetic. In the spirit of evolutionary pluralism, the author describes a different 3-stage scenario in which migration (the invasion of new niches or habitats) may occur without mutation or genetic recombination and selection first initiating a change in genes or gene frequencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The developmental basis of evolutionary change.

It is a hard-won insight that developmental change is essential to evolution, and the issue has received little consideration in the psychological literature. The origin of the concept can be traced to the nineteenth century biologist St. George Mivart, with the more systematic and extensive treatments of the issue in the early twentieth century by Walter Garstang, Gavin de Beer, and Richard Goldschmidt playing an instrumental role in fleshing out the idea and keeping it alive. Garstang and de Beer held that genetic change, either through selective breeding or mutation, could change the timing of ontogenetic events in various defined ways to give rise to a new species. Goldschmidt felt that a developmental macromutation was necessary to produce a genuine evolutionary novelty. In the view of Garstang, de Beer, and Goldschmidt, a genetic change or mutation is necessary to bring about the developmental changes that lead to evolution. In the present article I utilize the developmental change concept in a different manner than the aforementioned writers. In essence, I describe a different evolutionary pathway, one in which developmental changes in behavior lead to evolutionary change. On this view, genetic change is a secondary or tertiary consequence of enduring behavioral changes brought about by nongenetic alterations of species-typical development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparative evolutionary psychology of sperm competition.

A comparative evolutionary psychological perspective predicts that species that recurrently faced similar adaptive problems may have evolved similar psychological mechanisms to solve these problems. Sperm competition provides an arena in which to assess the heuristic value of such a comparative evolutionary perspective. The sperm competition that results from female infidelity and polyandry presents a similar class of adaptive problems for individuals across many species. The authors first describe mechanisms of sperm competition in insects and in birds. They suggest that the adaptive problems and evolved solutions in these species provide insight into human anatomy, physiology, psychology, and behavior. The authors then review recent theoretical and empirical arguments for the existence of sperm competition in humans and discuss proposed adaptations in humans that have analogs in insects or birds. The authors conclude by highlighting the heuristic value of a comparative evolutionary psychological approach in this field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Issues raised by facilitated communication for theorizing and research on autism

There is considerable disagreement in the literature and among clinicians about the success of facilitated communication, a new method of augmentative communication being used with people diagnosed autistic. Some claim almost everyone exposed to it achieves success, basing their claims upon their observations and experiences of naturally occurring facilitated interactions. Others claim minimal or no success, basing their claims on their observations of facilitated interactions under controlled experimental conditions. I argue here that both claims can be valid and that FC users with autism are sometimes competent and other times incompetent, depending upon the conditions under which they are evaluated. I support my argument by offering a collaborative view of communication in place of the commonly held view that communication involves passing messages over an invisible conduit. Given the assumption that facilitated communication does allow for the expression of unexpected competence for many with autism, I describe various unusual phenomena being revealed by facilitation and FC users and offer some theoretical approaches for explaining these phenomena. I then propose some research ideas for studying the phenomena associated with FC and offer them as suggestions for how we might proceed in our efforts to develop our understanding of when and how it works for people with autism.     

Toward an evolutionary taxonomy of treatable conditions.

The definition of disorder as a harmful dysfunction (J. C. Wakefield [see record 1999-03409-002]) is a useful concept, anchored in the recognition that the evolved human architecture consists of a collection of functional mechanisms that may potentially be impaired and whose impairment may be harmful. Because natural selection organized each mechanism to solve a distinct adaptive problem under ancestral conditions, the criteria for whether a mechanism is dysfunctional are supplied by whether the mechanism has become impaired in performing its ancestral function. Because evolutionary function and dysfunction diverge markedly from normal human standards of value, many dysfunctions are beneficial, whereas various mechanisms that are performing their evolved function may cause disturbing outcomes. For this reason, many conditions in addition to disorders may require treatment, and the authors attempt to sketch an evolutionary taxonomy of treatable conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oversimplifying evolutionary psychology leads to explanatory gaps.

Comments on Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations (see record 2010-02208-001) by Confer et al. They argued that SST cannot explain the existence of either homosexuality or suicide within the human species. We contend that a sufficiently nuanced evolutionary position has no difficulties explaining either phenomenon. Also in this account, it is assumed that all psychological functioning must serve survival and reproduction. However, since evolution selects against certain qualities (it does not select for qualities, as it is commonly, but incorrectly, described), two types of qualities should remain intact for any species: (a) those that facilitate survival and reproduction and (b) those that do not impede survival and reproduction at the population level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rape in non-human animals: An evolutionary perspective.

Rape-like behaviour has been documented in a number of species of animals. The purpose of this paper is to explain the evolutionary perspective on this behaviour. Several key concepts of modern evolutionary theory are first explained. Then the problem of defining rape in such a way that it is amenable to scientific study is discussed. Agonistic mating, altruistic mating, forced mating, and detrimental mating are defined in terms of costs and benefits to both male and female fitness. The introductory section concludes with a discussion of the role of genes in determining sexual behaviour and the nature of biological adaptations. Forced mating in orangutans, mallard ducks, and scorpionflies is described. The evolution of this behaviour is explained in terms of parental investment and sexual selection theory. Speculations on mechanisms that females might evolve to deal with this coercive male reproductive strategy conclude the paper. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding understanding: An evolutionary autonomous agent approach.

Two poles of understanding define the hermeneutic circle: gestalt understanding, in which the experience of a text or piece of music is apprehended as a unity, and conceptual understanding, in which the work is broken down into more determinate parts. In our sensory-motor interaction with the world, the environment is composed of discrete objects, but there is also an omnipresent gestalt background of nonrepresentational practices that confer meaning on these objects. It is argued that neuroscience can provide an explanation of how a physical system instantiates these types of understanding. A naturalized version of temporality, that extended temporal horizon that frames the flux of sensible experience and confers meaning on it, is equated with the dynamical system concept of temporal hierarchical organization. With this naturalized concept of temporality, it is demonstrated how the two poles of understanding that define the hermeneutic circle can emerge in an evolutionary autonomous agent as those dynamics best suited to maintain optimal grip in that particular agent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological interventions in organizations: An evolutionary perspective.

Throughout the 20th century, managers and policy makers have relied on psychological interventions to help solve organizational problems. Yet, the results of these interventions rarely meet expectations. One reason may be that some of the perspectives used in thinking about interventions are at odds with how interventions and organizations function. This article argues that applied psychologists may benefit from an evolutionary perspective. Although it holds an important place in basic psychology and organization theory, an evolutionary perspective is nearly absent in applied psychology. It views the development and use of social technologies as part of sociocultural evolution—driven by variation, selection, and retention. This article provides a framework for theory and research on an evolutionary perspective in applied psychology and suggests implications for practice. Key concepts in the design of interventions include uncertainty, variation, and conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review.

What is compassion? And how did it evolve? In this review, we integrate 3 evolutionary arguments that converge on the hypothesis that compassion evolved as a distinct affective experience whose primary function is to facilitate cooperation and protection of the weak and those who suffer. Our empirical review reveals compassion to have distinct appraisal processes attuned to undeserved suffering; distinct signaling behavior related to caregiving patterns of touch, posture, and vocalization; and a phenomenological experience and physiological response that orients the individual to social approach. This response profile of compassion differs from those of distress, sadness, and love, suggesting that compassion is indeed a distinct emotion. We conclude by considering how compassion shapes moral judgment and action, how it varies across different cultures, and how it may engage specific patterns of neural activation, as well as emerging directions of research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)