Rethinking psychology’s foundations: A reflection on five philosophical and methodological commitments

The philosophical and methodological commitments that characterize psychological science are largely based on ideas that crystallized in the 20th century and that are associated with the dominant philosophical doctrines of that time, by and large deriving from logical positivism and falsificationism. Although these doctrines do not enjoy widespread support in current philosophy of science, they continue to influence psychological science through their effect on research practices and its, often implicit, methodological principles. In this paper, we argue that at least five of these principles hamper progress in psychology. Epistemic freezing refers to unhelpful conservatism in the use of psychometric measurement techniques; testing myopia concerns the focus on hypothesis testing at the expense of other research practices; data fixation is the belief that data are what require explanation, and that gathering novel and surprising data is key to scientific progress; smallism is the preference for reductive explanation; and mirrorism denotes a focus on developing true theories as opposed to developing pragmatically or epistemically useful ones. We argue that adherence to these principles, and to the research practices that go with it, puts psychological science at risk of stagnation, and we call for a broad discussion to reassess and adapt them.