What Does Psychology Need?

In the review of Personality Theories: Critical Perspectives, by Albert Ellis and Mike Abrams (with Lidia D. Abrams), Simon Boag comments on the presentation of Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavioral Theory of Personality. Boag notes that "despite Ellis's numerous contributions to psychology (see Farley, 2009), it is difficult to really say that Ellis contributes a novel 'theory' of personality per se." Boag describes the presentation of Ellis's work as an attempt to synthesize and integrate components of other theories with cognitive theories. At this moment in our history, what is required to move behavioral science forward?

Is psychology ready for another "grand theory" of personality and behavior or do we need better integration of existing theories?

Read the Review

Does Psychology Really Need Another Personality Textbook?
By Simon Boag
      PsycCRITIQUES, 2009 Vol 54(41)

Comments

[Thomas Scheff]

I agree that psychology probably doesn't need another personality textbook. What does it need? My suggestions: integration with the social sciences, especially anthropology and sociology. Both psychology and the social sciences would be far more effective if they both worked on combining the individual and the social.

In the arena of methods, psychology (and the quantitative parts of social science)seems to need to give up its use of tests of statistical significance without effect sizes (see Ziliak and McCloskey 2008) and standarized scales that are not unidimensional (Scheff and Fearon 2004).

Similarly, however, the qualitative approaches in psychology and social sciences need to start combining systematic methods with their descriptive approaches.

Integration of both theory and method might go along way to make the human sciences more relevant to the human condition.

References.

Scheff, Thomas and David Fearon. 2004. Social and Emotional Components in Self-Esteem. Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior. 34: 73-90.

Ziliak, Stephen and D. McCloskey. 2008. The Cult of Statistical Significance. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press.

[Tim Marsh]

It disappoints me to see yet another personality textbook that emphasises the sharply disparate conceptual approaches within the field, rather than making some greater attempt to present personality as a unified (or unifiable) discipline. While I'd certainly agree that it is valuable for students to gain a historical perspective on the various conflicts and paradigm-shifts that produced our modern theoretical landscape, I suspect that this style of presentation contributes much to the tendency for personality researchers to 'pick a camp' quite early in their education, and defend its teachings unreflectingly for the remainder of their academic careers.
Though this book seems to take some steps in the right direction, it still seems like the subtitle "Critical Perspectives" is likely a misnomer, if not outright false advertising.