Abstract
The chapter begins by outlining the assumption of universalism that pervades the discipline of psychology. What it means in practice is that the results of psychological research are thought to apply to all people in all places and at all times. This view is traced to the assumption that psychology is a natural science. Dissenting voices have existed and attempts have been made to study the peculiarities that are associated with individual personalities, cultures, and the historical periods in which people live. The chapter shows how this work has been marginalized in psychology due to its incompatibility with the universalistic assumptions of the discipline. It then discusses the concept of historically emergent universalism. Psychologists generally associate “universal” with “biological” but there is no reason why that should be the case. Universals can also be cultural and they can have a history. This point is discussed in relation to globalization and the spread of Western psychology around the world. It is suggested that this phenomenon can, at least in part, explain the universality of many of its concepts and practices. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the devaluing of the humanities and social sciences and how this situation is likely to lead psychologists to continue to seek refuge among the natural sciences. While this may bring with it certain financial and social advantages, it comes at the cost of marginalizing the historical, cultural, and personalistic aspects of their discipline and adopting an inappropriate universalism with regard to the rest.
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Notes
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Quoted in Norenzayan and Heine (2005, p. 763). It can also be found on numerous websites, but none of these websites provide a reference.
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- 3.
See, for example, http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/arc2-2.html
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Brock, A.C. (2016). The Universal and the Particular in Psychology and the Role of History in Explaining Both. In: Klempe, S., Smith, R. (eds) Centrality of History for Theory Construction in Psychology . Annals of Theoretical Psychology, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42760-7_2
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