This piece examines competing models of psychological stability in trait, state, and narrative frameworks. It argues that these approaches do not offer rival explanations of the same phenomenon, but instead capture different forms of continuity across time. By clarifying their assumptions, strengths, and limits, the piece calls for a layered understanding of stability rather than a zero-sum theoretical debate.

This piece examines reductionism in psychology as an explanatory temperament rather than a formal theory. It argues that reductionism persists because it satisfies preferences for clarity, control, and causal depth, even when poorly matched to psychological phenomena. Drawing on James and Fodor, the piece calls for greater explanatory flexibility and discernment across levels of analysis.

This piece examines how psychological models often shift from descriptive frameworks into implicit moral claims. It analyzes how concepts such as rationality, regulation, and normal functioning embed value judgments that shape theory, application, and cross-cultural interpretation. The piece argues for making normativity explicit so that empirical adequacy and moral endorsement are not silently conflated.

This piece examines the distinction between mechanism and meaning in psychological theory. It argues that identifying causal processes does not exhaust explanation in a field concerned with lived experience, interpretation, and value. Drawing on thinkers such as Dilthey and Fodor, the piece calls for resisting the collapse of meaning into mechanism and for clarifying how different explanatory modes address different dimensions of psychological life.

This piece examines why competing explanations in psychology can all be empirically supported yet remain incomplete. It argues that theoretical conflict often reflects differences in explanatory level rather than factual disagreement, and calls for disciplined pluralism that clarifies scope, assumptions, and limits instead of forcing premature unification or zero-sum resolution.

This piece examines why psychological theories function as simplifying models rather than mirrors of mental reality. It analyzes how models select and organize aspects of experience, how empirical success encourages reification, and why theoretical pluralism is often more appropriate than zero-sum competition. The piece argues for treating models as tools shaped by explanatory aims, not as comprehensive descriptions of mind.

This piece examines why methodological sophistication cannot rescue poorly formed research questions in psychology. Drawing on critiques by Meehl and others, it argues that weak theory and shallow question formation produce confident but unilluminating findings, regardless of rigor. The piece calls for restoring conceptual judgment and question formation as central scholarly skills within psychological science.

This piece examines the limits of transparency in psychological science. It argues that practices such as preregistration and open data improve procedural integrity but do not ensure conceptual clarity or explanatory depth. Transparency reveals how research is conducted, not whether theories are well specified or findings meaningfully advance understanding, and should be treated as a safeguard rather than a substitute for theory.

This piece examines the epistemic seduction of big data in psychological research. It argues that scale and predictive accuracy are often mistaken for understanding, allowing correlation to substitute for explanation. The piece analyzes how data abundance reshapes theory, construct definition, and evidentiary norms, and calls for restoring conceptual discipline when working with large, passively collected datasets.

This piece examines meta-analysis as an exercise of epistemic power in psychological science rather than a purely neutral synthesis. It analyzes how aggregation decisions shape what counts as knowledge, often amplifying theoretical ambiguity and obscuring conceptual disagreement. The piece argues for treating meta-analysis as a tool for theoretical refinement, not a mechanism for closing inquiry.

This piece examines psychology’s dependence on WEIRD samples and the resulting myth of generalizability. It argues that findings derived from narrow cultural contexts are often misrepresented as universal, shaping constructs, theories, and applications in parochial ways. The piece calls for treating generalization as a theoretical claim rather than an automatic statistical entitlement.

This piece examines what counts as evidence in psychology given the field’s lack of stable objects. It argues that many psychological phenomena are dynamic, self-interpreting, and context-dependent, complicating traditional evidentiary standards. The piece calls for aligning methods and evidence types with the instability of psychological processes rather than forcing uniform criteria derived from more static sciences.

This piece examines the limits of randomized controlled trials in psychological science, arguing that their privileged status often exceeds their epistemic reach. It analyzes how assumptions of isolability, stability, and generalizability strain when applied to complex psychological phenomena, and calls for a more pluralistic alignment between method, theory, and subject matter.

This piece examines how operationalization in psychology often functions as theory in disguise. It analyzes how measures come to define constructs, embedding unexamined assumptions that shape research agendas, replication, and interpretation. The piece argues for treating operational definitions as provisional, theory-laden hypotheses rather than neutral technical tools.

This piece reframes replication failure in psychology as a signal of theoretical insufficiency rather than merely methodological flaw. It examines how vague, under-specified theories generate unstable findings, and argues that replication exposes weaknesses in concept formation, causal specification, and the discipline’s tolerance for flexible explanation more than technical shortcomings.

This piece examines statistical significance as a social and epistemic convention in psychological science. It traces how p-values became proxies for truth and importance, shaping research behavior, publication norms, and theory development, and argues that psychology’s reliance on significance reflects institutional incentives and discomfort with uncertainty more than genuine inferential clarity.

This piece examines psychology’s unresolved relationship with philosophy, arguing that the discipline never escaped its philosophical foundations despite efforts to define itself as purely empirical. It analyzes how theoretical assumptions about mind, knowledge, explanation, and value remain embedded in psychological models, shaping debates, fragmentation, and the limits of integration across the field.

This piece examines psychology’s engagement with consciousness prior to the rise of neuroscience, tracing how early theorists treated awareness as foundational rather than peripheral. It analyzes how behaviorism and cognitive models displaced consciousness as a central problem, and argues that contemporary psychology has gained technical power while losing conceptual seriousness about lived experience and subjectivity.

This piece examines a neglected lineage in psychological theory that treats emotion as foundational rather than derivative of cognition. It traces how affective primacy was historically marginalized by methodological preferences and measurement constraints, and argues that emotion organizes attention, meaning, and behavior in ways that cognition refines but does not generate.

This piece explores psychology’s longstanding entanglement with measurement, tracing how quantification became a proxy for scientific legitimacy. It examines how measurement practices shape what counts as real, valuable, and publishable psychological knowledge, and argues for greater conceptual humility in distinguishing what is measurable from what is meaningful.