Posted: July 14th, 2022

What is Unified Psychology?

The Theory of Unified Psychology
What is Unified Psychology?
Is there a need to have a multitude of theories related to psychology? Some may say that it would
be better to have one unified theory of psychology. Sternberg and Grigorenko (2001) provided
some insight into a unified psychology as opposed to a psychology based on often competing
theories of multiple individual contributions of the sub-disciplines. The premise was that unified
psychology is an integrated study based on psychological phenomena rather than from a
multiparadigmatic and multidisciplinary frame of reference.
Sternberg and Grigorenko go on to explain:
Unified psychology involves giving up, or at least, putting aside, three bad habits
that are commonplace among some psychologists. The bad habits are: (a)
exclusive or almost exclusive reliance on a single methodology rather than
multiple converging methodologies for studying psychological phenomena; (b)
identification of scholars in psychology in terms of psychological subdisciplines
rather than in terms of the psychological phenomena they study; and (c)
adherence to single underlying paradigms for the investigation of psychological
phenomena. (p. 1069)
Sternberg, Grigorenko, and Kalmar (2001) continue the explanation of a unified psychology by
expanding on a unified theory of psychology. They provide an expanded explanation of the three
bad habits with some solutions. To gain a better understanding, let’s take a look at how a
traditional psychology department at a university may be designed.
Traditional vs Unified Psychology
Each department typically includes faculty members who are trained in a specific area of study
based on a particular school or field of psychology, such as behavioral, clinical, and cognitive.
There may even be only one main focus of a department, such as behavior analysis. Students
taking courses in this area can expect that courses will be delivered from the perspective of
behavior analysis (or whichever field their professor specializes in).
In a unified psychology department, the student would specialize in one or more areas of study
based on a particular phenomenon such as learning, discrimination, aggression, and/or mental
disorders. In practicality many psychology courses are designed around a multiple viewpoint
(field of study) perspective. Take for example the Abnormal Psychology course. In that course
you probably covered the different viewpoints and perspectives for a particular disorder or
condition. The multiple viewpoint perspective helps broaden the understanding of the disorder.
In practicality, does a unified psychology approach make sense? In one aspect, Melchert (2013)
compared other sciences and their ability to move to a unified approach or theory. For example,
physics and biology have been sciences much longer than psychology. They are a very diverse
group, and in some aspects, it doesn’t appear that either science is moving or has moved to a
unified theory or approach. Physiologically, human beings are nearly identical to one another.
The variations come in part from life experiences and potential genetic predispositional factors,
and even with those an individual can be grouped into like categories. In essence, that is the basis
for diagnostic criteria from a medical as well as mental disorder perspective

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