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Conceiving “personality”: Psychologist’s challenges and basic fundamentals of the Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals

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Abstract

Scientists exploring individuals, as such scientists are individuals themselves and thus not independent from their objects of research, encounter profound challenges; in particular, high risks for anthropo-, ethno- and ego-centric biases and various fallacies in reasoning. The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals (TPS-Paradigm) aims to tackle these challenges by exploring and making explicit the philosophical presuppositions that are being made and the metatheories and methodologies that are used in the field. This article introduces basic fundamentals of the TPS-Paradigm including the epistemological principle of complementarity and metatheoretical concepts for exploring individuals as living organisms. Centrally, the TPS-Paradigm considers three metatheoretical properties (spatial location in relation to individuals’ bodies, temporal extension, and physicality versus “non-physicality”) that can be conceived in different forms for various kinds of phenomena explored in individuals (morphology, physiology, behaviour, the psyche, semiotic representations, artificially modified outer appearances and contexts). These properties, as they determine the phenomena’s accessibility in everyday life and research, are used to elaborate philosophy-of-science foundations and to derive general methodological implications for the elementary problem of phenomenon-methodology matching and for scientific quantification of the various kinds of phenomena studied. On the basis of these foundations, the article explores the metatheories and methodologies that are used or needed to empirically study each given kind of phenomenon in individuals in general. Building on these general implications, the article derives special implications for exploring individuals’ “personality”, which the TPS-Paradigm conceives of as individual-specificity in all of the various kinds of phenomena studied in individuals.

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Notes

  1. For a definition of the term phenomenon as used here, see the section on the Central Absolute Presuppositions about Research on Individuals in part II below.

  2. The term “personality” is put in quotation marks in this trilogy to indicate that its definitions vary and that different researchers use this term to refer to different kinds of phenomena and kinds of variation.

  3. For the term experiencing, see the section on the Phenomena of the Psyche in part III below.

  4. To appear in the Annals of Theoretical Psychology, vols. 12, 13.

  5. For the term psychical, see the section on the Phenomena of the Psyche in part III below.

  6. For explanations of this term, see the section on the Phenomena of the Psyche in part III below.

  7. This is also true for the ending –spective or –spection, as spectare can also mean to consider.

  8. The metatheoretical considerations that the TPS-Paradigm makes about frames of reference should not be confused with concepts of relational frame theory of human language and behaviour, which explores how human individuals develop higher cognitive abilities and acquire language on the basis of their abilities to relate events to one another (cf. Hayes et al. 2001).

  9. Translated original: “Der Mensch, der es bemerkt, dass man ihn beobachtet und zu erforschen sucht, wird entweder verlegen (geniert) erscheinen, und da kann er sich nicht zeigen, wie er ist; oder er verstellt sich, und da will er nicht gekannt sein, wie er ist.” (Kant 1798/2000, p. 5).

  10. Morphology and physiology here denote the organismal structures and functions in and of themselves, not the scientific disciplines exploring them. In psychology, these organismal properties are often referred to as “biology” (e.g., as opposed to “culture”), but across disciplines, the term biology is conceived more broadly (e.g., comprising also ecology) and covers various kinds of phenomena that are differentiated from one another in the TPS-Paradigm.

  11. The meaning of the term mediation in the TPS-Paradigm refers to the Latin mediare, to be in the middle, not to the meaning established in statistics (where it is differentiated from moderation).

  12. Previous publications of the TPS-Paradigm (e.g., Uher 2013; Uher et al. 2013a, b) still adhered to the undifferentiated English term “psychological” as a translation of both of the German terms psychisch and psychologisch, a differentiation found in many other languages as well (e.g., French, Italian, Dutch, Russian).

  13. Previously also labelled the one-sided gap of the mind-environment connection (Uher 2013).

  14. Translated original: … und selbst die Beobachtung an sich schon den Zustand des beobachtbaren Gegenstandes alteriert und verstellt” (Kant 1786/1968, p. 471).

  15. Translated original: “Ort und Zeitumstände bewirken, wenn sie anhaltend sind, Angewöhnungen, die, wie man sagt, eine andere Natur sind und dem Menschen das Urteil über sich selbst erschweren; wofür er sich halten, vielmehr aber noch, was er aus dem anderen, mit dem er in Verkehr ist, sich für einen Begriff machen soll…” (Kant 1798/2000, p. 5).

  16. Translated original: “…, weil sich in ihr das Mannigfaltige der inneren Beobachtung nur durch bloße Gedankenteilung voneinander absondern, nicht aber abgesondert aufbehalten und beliebig wieder verknüpfen lässt …” (Kant 1786/1968, p. 471).

  17. Behavioural situations Previously called the “environmental situation” (Uher 2011a, b, 2013; Uher et al. 2013a).

  18. This particular constellation may not always be (a priori) explicitly known.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editor Jaan Valsiner for the invitation to write this trilogy and I also thank him and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous draft. My special thanks go to Jochen Fahrenberg for thought-provoking discussions on the topics covered by this article. The views expressed herein are mine and should not be attributed to any of the persons who provided commentaries. I gratefully acknowledge support from a research grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (Grant Number UH249/1-1).

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  1. Department of Psychology, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK

    Jana Uher

  2. Comparative Differential and Personality Psychology, Free University Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, Berlin, 14195, Germany

    Jana Uher

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Uher, J. Conceiving “personality”: Psychologist’s challenges and basic fundamentals of the Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals. Integr. psych. behav. 49, 398–458 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-014-9283-1

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