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Why Psychologists Tend to Overlook Certain “Obvious” Facts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gustav Ichheiser
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Extract

Psychological research and theory has been in the past, and is at present, vitiated by three groups of presuppositions and tendencies. Firstly, by a rigid ideal of preciseness, which produces in the mind of psychologists a biased predilection for selecting and emphasizing those facts which lend themselves best to a precise investigation, and for neglecting those facts with which this is not the case. Secondly, by certain psychological presuppositions rooted in the ideological background of the society to which the psychologist himself belongs; these presuppositions induce him often to state, unwittingly, certain of his problems along the lines suggested by the predominant ideology. And thirdly, by the tendency to overlook, or to neglect, certain very important facts because these facts appear to be quite “obvious”.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1943 , pp. 204 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943

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References

1 “Misinterpretations of Personality in Everydaylife and the Psychologists Frame of Reference”, Character and Personality.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Henry A. Murray, Exploration in Personality, 1938, p. 36: “Insofar as this psychology emphasizes facts which for a long time have been and still are generally overlooked by academic investigators it represents a protest against current scientific preoccupations. And since the occurrences which the specialized professor has omitted in his scheme of things are the very ones which the laity believe to be ‘most truly psychological’, the dynamist must perform the tedious and uninviting task of reitarating common sense. Thus he comes on the stage in the guise of a protesting and perhaps somewhat sentimental amateur”.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Herbert Blumer “The Problem of the Concepts in Social Psychology”, Am. Journal of Sociology, March, 1940. Blumer, however, does not emphasize sufficiently that it is not enough to introduce the concepts required to make intelligent observations. We must rather, first of all, eliminate those distorted concepts which prevent us from perceiving significant facts. Furthermore, it is not by chance that we do possess certain concepts which are misleading, and do not possess other concepts which would enable us to see the relevant facts. Of basic importance for an understanding of these problems is the modern sociology of knowledge as represented especially by Karl Mannheim.Google Scholar

4 See my article “Ideology of Success and the Dilemma of Education”, Ethics, 1943.Google Scholar

5 Cf. my article “Ueber einige Voraussetzungen der psychologischen Begabung”, Erkenntnis, 1936. This article contains a diagram which illustrates the characteristics of an adequate, inadequate, and false psychological description.Google Scholar

6 We quite agree with C. C. Pratt: The Logic of Modern Psychology, 1939, p. 30, when he says it would have been far better “had psychology produced a Linnaeus instead of a Wundt during its formative years”.Google Scholar