Overview of the Internal-External Issue

Abstract

This chapter begins with a discussion of the internal-external issue in psychology-the tendency to emphasize characteristics that are part of the organism and thereby internal to it, or characteristics that are part of the environment and thereby external to the organism, in explaining behavior. While virtually all psychologists recognize the importance of both organism and environment, the tendency within virtually all fields of psychology-perception, learning, cognition, personality, social psychology, developmental psychology-has been to emphasize and focus virtual exclusive attention on one or the other set of determinants. Thus, it is that an outstanding psychologist such as Jenkins (1974) can describe a virtual conversion experience, suggesting that we throw out the old, mechanistic, associationism theory of memory and recognize that experience is the result of the interaction between the experiencer and the world.