Domain Denigration and Process Preference in Academic Psychology

Abstract

Unlike most other disciplines, psychology parses its field primarily in terms of processes or mental entities (e.g., learning, sensation, perception, memory), rather than domains of life (e.g., eating, work, leisure). Although there are merits in this organization, a perhaps unintended result is that psychology has paid minimal attention to the major domains of life and how people function in them. Examination of contemporary major introductory, social, and developmental psychology textbooks reveals that their indexes include almost no terms representing five critical domains: food, politics, religion, leisure-entertainment, and work. The process division of psychology dates back at least to Wundt and James, and probably derives from psychology's origins and early dedication to discovering general laws of the mind. The avoidance of study of life domains in psychology is related to several forces, including a downgrading of both applied research and descriptive research in favor of theory and laboratory experimentation. Psychology would profit from paying greater attention to describing and explaining what people actually do, an endeavor that would perhaps be facilitated by a focus on the domains of daily life.