A Contextualist Theory of Knowledge: Its Implications for Innovation and Reform in Psychological Research

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the contextualist epistemology as an appropriate metatheory for psychology. Contextualism's implications for reforming the process and product of psychology are also discussed in the chapter. The two phases of needed process reforms are described in the chapter for creatively generating hypotheses and developing them by the means of empirical confrontation. In the chapter, the psychological product is also discussed by reviewing the various theoretical depictions of the person that have guided and grown out of the research process. These implications are described for the process of developing psychological theory and then as relative to the product—the theories that emerge from the process. The various internal criteria for judging the relative adequacy of competing theories—that are sometimes even mutually contradictory—illustrates a basic descriptive tenet of contextualism. The four types of theories guiding and emerging from the research are (1) categorical theory, (2) process theories, (3) axiomatic theories, and (4) guiding-idea theories. The sixteen partial views of human nature that have served as guiding-idea theories for psychological research are tabulated in the chapter. The content aspect of social psychology or contextualism reveals the need for an ecumenical stance toward theory for recognizing the existence and utility of a wide variety of formulations to generate insights into the contents and determinants of experience and behavior.