Psychology is not primarily Empirical Science: A Comparison of Cultures in the Lexical Hypothesis Tradition as a Failure of Introspection

• Published in: Integrative physiological and behavioral science 2017-06, Vol.51 (2), p.285-302
• Main Author: Linkov, Václav
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropology; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Culture; Czech Republic; Humans; Hypotheses; Language; Psychological research; Psychology; Psychology - methods; Regular Article; Republic of Korea; Research Design; Research methodology; Sociology
• ISSN: 1932-4502; 1936-3567
• DOI: 10.1007/s12124-016-9375-1

A large part of psychology has become an empirical science that assumes that there might exist one set of research methods suitable for psychological research in all human cultures. Research questions, methods, and theories formulated from one cultural perspective are not thoroughly introspectively examined when being used in another cultural environment. This leads to research that answers questions that are not meaningful in such environments. Research coming from the lexical hypothesis tradition is given as an example. The original research in English language decided that the lexicon was enough to represent language structures for the purpose of examining how language reflects personality; however, some languages might use specific grammatical structures to reflect personality, so the lexicon is not enough to adequately represent these languages. Despite this, researchers still follow the research method developed for the English language. The Czech and Korean languages are examples of this approach. A solution to this problem is the thorough use of introspection during the formulation of research questions.