Reorienting psychological science

Abstract

Psychological phenomena occur across a wide range of scales, ranging from small, quick events of neurology and biology, to broader, more prolonged unfoldings typical of extended cultural practices. Although theories deployed by psychologists of different stripes have tended to incorporate these different scales, this is typically done in a manner that is implicit, and often unsystematic. That is, typical psychological research is conducted in a manner that is ‘scale-blind’. In this article, I explore some of the historical and more recent recognition of this scale-blindness and place it in the context of recent work on the concept and implications of scale. I conclude by elucidating some of the important ways in which behaviour settings theory, and the researchers who developed it, are explicit and disciplined in their approach to scale, and how such scale-aware work promises practical value in improving scientific practice. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the 21st century'.

People, places, things and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century

“…As demonstrated by several articles in the present collection, behaviour settings work also meshes with several aspects of critical reflection currently underway in the behavioural sciences. The theory and method have implications for evaluating the validity of psychological research in the real world (Baggs & Sanchez de Oliveira [7]; McGann [67]) and offer suggestions for grounding key concepts of embedded and situated cognition (Gastelum et al [68]; Kalis et al [69]).…”

“…Perhaps most broadly, McGann [67] examines how some of the greatest innovations and most productive implications of the Midwest team's work derives from their awareness of scale. McGann diagnoses a general problem of 'scale-blindness' in psychology: the manner in which psychologists employ theories that incorporate a range of scales (from rapid neural firing to prolonged shifts in cultural practices) without any explicit recognition that this is the case, and without offering any systematic means for dealing with such scalar variation.…”