Inching Toward a Unified Metatheory for Psychology

Zagaria et al. (2020) have aptly suggested that as a discipline, psychology is a giant with feet of clay. Drawing on the content of introductory textbooks, the authors show that there is little coherence and consensus about the meaning of key psychological terms - including such terms as psychology, mind, behavior. Drawing on evidence marking psychology is a "soft" science, the authors suggest that psychology can profit by adopting the "hard" foundation of evolutionary psychology as its metatheory. While Zagaria et al.'s characterization of psychology's fractious foundation has deep merit, their desire to erect a psychological metatheory on evolutionary psychology is unlikely to solve the problem they so aptly identify. At the least, I suggest a unified metatheory must: (a) establish a shared psychological lexicon; (b) elaborate a methodology that coordinates first-, second- and third-person modes of inquiry, and (c) develop a process model that describes psychological functioning at the biological, psychological and socio-cultural levels of analysis. To illustrate, I describe how contemporary relational and systems frameworks provide a framework that can move us in these directions.

The Dynamic Construction of Culture, Self and Social Relations

Selves emerge in development through intersystemic co-action. To illustrate this position the case of pride, a self-evaluative emotion, is used. It is argued that language and other semi otic vehicles of culture are instrumental in the social mediation of the shared meaning systems that frame the development of self-evaluative emotions. Illustrations from interviews with participants from India and the US suggest similarities as well as differences in the kinds of ideologies, values and myths that are employed to talk about and structure pride experiences. The American individual endorses a system of pride relevant cultural values that is organised around low interdependent themes, which are prominent among Indians. However there are commonalities between the American and the Indian participants too. The themes such as "helping others", "taking care of one's children and family'; "helping those who are in need" and "working hard" were common to both. It is suggested that it might be useful to think of the cultural differences as embedded within similarities.

Developing through relationships: an embodied coactive systems framework

In recent decades, the developmental sciences have undergone a relational turn. Epigenetic (Gottlieb & Lickliter, 2007), embodied (Thompson, 2007), relational (Lerner & Overton, 2008) and systems (Kelso, 2003) approaches are transforming the ways in which we think about the nature and origins of psychological structures. At their most basic level, relational and systems approaches analyze the developmental origins of order and variability not in terms of sets of separable causal forces but instead in analyses of relations between causal systems. From this view, genes and environment, biology and culture, cognition and emotion, self and other, and so forth are inseparable as causal processes in the development of action and experience. Drawing on these principles, this paper contains an outline of an embodied coactive systems framework for understanding how individual psychological structures develop as a product of socially distributed coactions that occur among elements of the extended person-environment system. Based on these principles, a system for the Developmental Analysis of Joint Action is described. This system provides a set of conceptual and empirical tools for making precise assessments of dynamic structure of jointly constructed patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. By tracking developmental changes in joint action, the system allows researchers to track the origins of higher order psychological structures through particular sequences of coconstructive activity. The holistic analytic system is illustrated through microdevelopmental analyses of (1) the joint construction of shoe-tying skill between a 5-year-old boy and a caregiver, and (2) socioemotional organization developing representations of self in a young adult over the course of a single session of psychotherapy.

Effect of semantic clustering on the memory of spatial locations

The effect of altering the labels attached to points was examined in three experiments. The first experiment measured the extent of clustering that occurs based on the labels alone. This experiment also established norms for the remainder of the study. In the second and third experiments, subjects were required to learn the locations of points. The points were labeled in such a way as to suggest certain spatial clusterings. It was shown that subjects cluster points with regard to the labels attached to the points and these clusters may be based solely on the labels attached to the points. Furthermore, an alteration of the learning sequence to induce an alternate clustering showed no noticeable effect.

Effect of semantic clustering on the memory of spatial locations

The effect of altering the labels attached to points was examined in three experiments. The first experiment measured the extent of clustering that occurs based on the labels alone. This experiment also established norms for the remainder of the study. In the second and third experiments, subjects were required to learn the locations of points. The points were labeled in such a way as to suggest certain spatial clusterings. It was shown that subjects cluster points with regard to the labels attached to the points and these clusters may be based solely on the labels attached to the points. Furthermore, an alteration of the learning sequence to induce an alternate clustering showed no noticeable effect.