The Hidden Worldviews of Psychology’s Theory, Research, and Practice

Brent D. Slife, Kari A. O'Grady, Russell D. Kosits, Brent D. Slife, Kari A. O'Grady, Russell D. Kosits

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138229655
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315283951
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

By revealing underlying assumptions that influence the field of psychology, The Hidden Worldviews of Psychology's Theory, Research, and Practice challenges psychologists to reconsider the origins of ideas they may take as psychological truths. Worldviews, or the systems of assumptions that provide a framework for psychological thinking, have great influence on psychological theory, research, and practice. This book attempts to correct assumptions by describing the worldviews that have shaped psychological theory, practice, and research and demonstrating how taking worldviews into account can greatly advance psychology as a whole.

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Introduction to Psychology’s Worldviews

Brent D. Slife, Kari A. O’Grady, and Russell D. Kosits

Psychologists often forget that there are ideas behind their ideas. Sometimes called assumptions or presuppositions, these ideas are a hidden but influential guide or framework for how psychologists should think and what psychologists should do. This book is concerned with whole systems of these assumptions—what some would call worldviews.

Unfortunately, when psychologists forget about or do not acknowledge the influences of worldviews, it is tempting to think that their impact is slight or even absent. This thinking is especially tempting in psychological research where the data and investigations are frequently presented as “objective”—implying that the research is or should be relatively unbiased or free of values and assumptions. Worldviews are also rarely recognized in the formulation of psychology’s many theories and practices. Personality theories, for example, are typically described as if the worldview present in the theorist’s culture does not inform the personality theory formulated. And, of course, the concrete implications of these theories are often applied in the many practices of psychologists, from therapy to parenting.

Defining Worldview

Pop the word “worldview” into Google, and you will get this definition: “a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.” Merriam-Webster’s dictionary elaborates on this understanding:

The German word Weltanschauung literally means “world view”; it combines “Welt” (“world”) with “Anschauung” (“view”), which ultimately derives from the Middle High German verb schouwen (“to look at” or “to see”). When we first adopted it from German in the mid-19th century, “weltanschauung” referred to a philosophical view or apprehension of the universe, and this sense is still the most widely used. It can also describe a more general ideology or philosophy of life.

In the field of psychology, Mark Koltko-Rivera (2004) proposed that we study worldviews as a psychological construct. His definition is helpful, and consistent with the dictionary definitions above. A worldview, he writes, is:

a set of beliefs that includes limiting statements and assumptions regarding what exists and what does not…, what objects or experiences are good or bad, and what objectives, behaviors, and relationships are desirable or undesirable. A worldview defines what can be known or done in the world, and how it can be known or done.… Worldviews include assumptions that may be unproven, and even unprovable, but these assumptions are superordinate, in that they provide the epistemic and ontological foundations for other beliefs within a belief system.

(p. 4)

In view of these definitions, we suggest that a worldview is a set of beliefs (articulated or not) on issues that are philosophical (epistemological, ethical, and ontological) in nature. We can see all three of these in Koltko-Rivera’s definition. Epistemologically, worldviews define “what can be known” and “how it can be known.” Ethically, they define what is “good and bad,” “desirable or undesirable.” Ontologically, they define “what exists and what does not,” including our view of human nature. We would only add that these beliefs are not necessarily encapsulated or closed to other belief systems; worldviews are open to other worldviews, and thus can change over time.

Power of Worldviews in Psychology

Worldview beliefs also have a powerful impact or relationship to other beliefs. They are more “deeply ingressed” (Wolterstorff, 2001, p. 235) in the sense that changing them entails the revision of other beliefs. (Indeed, we may say that the more deeply ingressed a belief, the more “worldviewish” it is). Along these lines, Koltko-Rivera says they are “superordinate,” providing “foundations for other beliefs within a belief system.” World-views often play the role of an implicit “faith” that researchers and therapists just “know,” but cannot prove. (We will provide a few examples of these unproven worldview beliefs in the next section.) As such, much psychological theory, research, and practice is shaped by unexamined epistemological, ethical, and ontological worldview assumptions and values passed down through a psychologist’s education and training.

It is worth noting that Koltko-Rivera’s call to rigorous investigation of worldview has largely gone unheeded, which introduces a tremendous irony: We psychologists pride ourselves in our ability to explain human behavior; and yet, if worldview is a powerful shaper of human understanding, this would be a significant blind spot in our understanding of that behavior. Even more seriously, if the central contention of this volume is correct—that psychology is powerfully shaped by worldviews—then psychologists are largely ignorant of the influences on their own behavior! In other words, psychology’s ignorance of worldview as a psychological topic has a concerning parallel in the tendency of psychologists to be blind to the worldview that shapes their own discipline.

Chapters 2 and 5 discuss how these “superordinate” worldview influences have been shaped by the culture, preferences, geographical locations, and values of scholarly social structures over time, with groups of scholars aligning with one description of psychology over others. The most powerful and influential scholars ultimately decided the parameters of modern psychological science. These parameters explain a large chunk of the variance of what psychologists think about themselves and those they study and serve. In fact, the power of a worldview is increased because we fail to recognize it as a worldview. The chapters of this book—particularly Chapters 3 and 4—flesh out the claim that psychology’s theory, research, and practices are significantly shaped by worldview.

Still, the point of this book is not to call psychologists to a deeper study of worldview as a psychological construct, though this is undoubtedly a desideratum. Neither is it our goal to advocate for particular worldviews, or to show that worldviews themselves are problematic. Indeed, world-views are inevitable. Rather, the purpose of this volume is to increase psychologists’ sensitivity and accountability to the influence of the worldviews of psychology, i.e., the combination of epistemological, ethical, and ontological assumptions that shape psychological research and practice.

Dangers and Benefits of Worldviews in Research and Practice

The benefits of worldviews are that they provide structure and sense to a rapidly changing and often chaotic world. Collective worldviews, such as institutional worldviews, help define shared values and preferential approaches to complex problems. Psychologists engage each other within a shared worldview that distinguishes the profession. However, worldviews can have a dark side, as they constitute biases which can become reified prejudices. As we will soon see, the contemporary worldviews that influence modern psychology can become dangerous if we assume that psychological science is fundamentally value-free and objective, that research and therapeutic methods reveal the non-interpreted truth of the world, or that all members within a discipline walk in lockstep with their worldview beliefs. This danger is, in fact, one of the primary motivations or purposes of this book—to prevent ignorance of such hidden worldviews so as to better advance the discipline.

Dangers of Hidden Assumptions for Research

Indeed, without explicit attention to the worldview assumptions of our profession, we may be likely to engage in misaligned methodologies (i.e., allegiance to one tool of methodology that does not fit the subject matter), insensitive measurement items and interview protocols (i.e., items that capture researcher values and perspectives, rather than the experiences of the participants), and underdetermined and predictable moves in our conclusions (i.e., reification or underestimation of our worldviews). Further, we are unlikely to generate truly new findings when we remain stuck inside Kuhnian “normal” (puzzle-solving) science (Kuhn, 1970) and do not consider alternative understandings of our world.

For example, as Chapters 3 and 4 describe, many psychology researchers assume that personal subjectivity can and should be separated from objectivity and that “rigorous research” means investigations that have undergone a series of checks and balances which attempt to sterilize the data from outside influences that could distort the focus of the study. We, for instance, conduct double-blind studies to prevent the researcher’s familiarity with the study from confounding the findings with undue influence from the researcher. As Chapter 4 of this volume describes, this approach to research may seem like it universally defines good research, but it is important to remember it represents a worldview assumption about the role of research methods that aligns with the worldview of some but not all researchers.

Other data collection approaches have different means for ensuring rigor—even incorporating the researcher’s subjectivity into the study’s findings—that stem from some worldviews but not others. Many approaches to qualitative methods, for example, do not attempt research rigor through the elimination or minimization of bias, primarily because they consider it impossible even to minimize biases (Packer, 2010). Rather, they seek methodological rigor by identifying their biases as well as alternative biases so that they can easily modify them in the light of data to the contrary. From this alternative logic of method, the assumption that our subjectivity can be separated from the objective aspects of the world (or conversely, the assumption that it cannot be separated) can properly be viewed as assumptions and not a fact of research investigations per se.

Again, this is not to say that either approach to method logic is flawed or unproductive. Instead, as Chapter 4 points out, it is important that we know what assumptions we are making, not to mention what methodological options we have, with both ultimately depending on the nature of our study. To expose and highlight these hidden (or ingressed) worldviews, we contrast them to other worldviews in Chapters 3 and 4. Through contrasting several of the worldview influences of two dominant worldviews in psychological science, Chapter 4 illustrates how worldviews shape even psychology’s research methods themselves.

Dangers of Hidden Assumptions in Practice

Certain worldview assumptions can permeate psychotherapy in ways that are not always helpful. One seemingly innocuous practice is having clients come to our offices for treatment. The assumption is that clients have their problems within them—within their selves, their psyches, or their brains—and so they are considered to carry around their “personalities” or “diagnoses” from one situation to another and into our offices. The home or work situations in which the problems originate are thus assumed to be secondarily important rather than inherently defining of clients and their problems. To many psychotherapists, this belief is so familiar that it may seem axiomatic or the “way things are” in dealing with clients, but as Chapter 3 will show, it is an assumption of a prominent Western worldview—liberal individualism. Consequently, Chapter 3 also compares the characteristics of liberal individualism to the characteristics of another intriguing worldview, to allow the reader to see how the axiomatic status of received practices can be challenged.

Consider also the assumption of eliminating subjectivity that we just described in psychology’s research. As Chapter 3 will outline, this “value neutrality” in research methods transfers quite nicely (or quite wrongly, depending on your worldview) to psychotherapeutic methods. Epistemology in research becomes ethics in practice. Psychotherapists, for instance, are forbidden from “imposing their values” on their clients by prominent professional ethical principles (APA, ACA). This sanction against such an “imposition” may feel “right” to many readers who have been trained in the current research worldview we have just been describing, but the contrasting worldview described in Chapter 3 not only does not accept this ethical principle but also does not think it is even possible. From this alternative worldview perspective, it is wrong, and even dangerous, to think that therapists can somehow avoid valuing their values.

Similarly, this transfer of the dualism and objectivity of the evidence-based worldview has led psychotherapists to champion “openness,” as if therapists should be open to all client values (Slife, Scott, & McDonald, 2016). As Chapter 3 will describe, however, this openness may be important with some clients, but it does not account for clients whose values are clearly part of their problems. To even recognize such problems of values, therapists would require therapist value-judgments from an alternative set of values, which is forbidden in the current paradigm. Moreover, what happens when an “open-minded” therapist deals with a “closed-minded” client? As Chapter 3 explains, the research is clear: open-minded therapists attempt to make closed-minded clients more like themselves, i.e., more open-minded, even to the degree that they consider the closed-minded client abnormal (Slife, Smith, & Burchfield, 2003). Again, the point here is not that cultivating openness in clients is bad; rather, the point is that this open-minded orientation, and thus its cousins of objectivity and value-neutrality, are themselves worldview values, not the acceptance or elimination of all values or even the avoidance of all worldviews.

Benefits of Knowing the Assumptions Behind Our Worldviews

The aim of this volume is not to portray worldviews in and of themselves as problematic. They are unavoidable. Rather the goal is to remind readers of the need to be cognizant of the influence of their assumptions in psychology. As Chapters 5 and 6 describe, we believe it is especially important to explicitly take into account these prevailing assumptions and values so that our tendency to dismiss value systems that clash with our own will not constrain the field nor harm the consumers of psychology.

By making the worldview assumptions of modern psychology explicit, we make it possible to reconsider and reconceptualize these assumptions in ways that prompt innovative solutions to complex problems. The most profound ideas for a field are typically discovered through the juxtaposition of competing worldviews (Nemeth, 1986). Since humans appear to be naturally drawn to like-minded fellows (ideological echo chambers) and toward the path of least resistance, psychologists will likely need to make concerted efforts to intentionally expose themselves to alternative worldview perspectives....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• 1 Introduction to Psychology’s Worldviews
• 2 The Sociocultural Dynamics of Worldviews in Psychology and Their Challenges
• 3 A Prominent Worldview of Professional Psychology
• 4 A Prominent Worldview of Psychological Research
• 5 Cultures, Worlds, and Worldviews
• 6 Toward Worldview Pluralism in Psychology
• Index