Psychology Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
Grouped by the kind of thing the question is about, so you can go straight to the entity type you work on.
Showing 21 to 34 of 34 open questions, page 2 of 2.
Schools and Movements 8
Existential Psychology
Do existential therapy approaches produce measurable clinical benefit, or does the evidence differ sharply by which existential tradition is being tested?
Open Existential Psychology
Why It Is Open Outcome studies find meaning-centered existential therapies improve life meaning and moderately reduce psychopathology, while experiential-existential and cognitive-existential approaches show no significant effects in the same research base, leaving open which existential tradition, if any, is reliably effective in the clinic.
What Would Settle It Head-to-head randomized outcome trials comparing the distinct existential therapy traditions, logotherapy, daseinsanalysis, experiential-existential and cognitive-existential, against each other and against established treatments.
Expertise Needed Clinical psychology and psychotherapy outcome research
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Existential Therapy.
Cognitivism
Did Chomsky's critique alone cause the cognitive revolution?
Open Cognitivism
Why It Is Open Histories of psychology commonly credit Noam Chomsky's critique of B.F. Skinner's behaviorist account of language acquisition as the decisive blow that opened the field to cognitivism, but that critique arrived alongside independent pressures from early computing (the mind-as-information-processor analogy) and from Ulric Neisser's own program-building work, and the sources consulted here do not weigh these causes against one another.
What Would Settle It A historiographical study tracing citation and hiring patterns across psychology, linguistics and early computer science departments through the 1950s and 1960s, to test whether the shift away from behaviorism tracks the Chomsky critique specifically or the broader cross-disciplinary move.
Expertise Needed History and philosophy of science
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Cognitivism (Psychology).
Psychoanalysis
Can psychoanalytic claims about the unconscious be falsified?
Open Psychoanalysis
Why It Is Open Karl Popper argued psychoanalysis lacks scientific rigor because its central claims about instinct, consciousness and memory are constructed so that they cannot be refuted by any possible observation, a criticism aimed specifically at how the theory explains conscious acts after the fact. Psychoanalytic clinicians and researchers dispute this, and empirical studies of psychoanalytic psychotherapy's effectiveness report benefits for some disorders while the field's own overall efficacy remains contested, so whether the core theoretical claims (as opposed to the therapy's outcomes) are testable at all is unsettled.
What Would Settle It A precise, pre-registered operationalization of a specific psychoanalytic mechanism (for example a defense mechanism's predicted behavioral signature) stated in a form that specifies in advance what observation would count against it, then tested.
Expertise Needed Philosophy of science and clinical psychology
Question posed in
Psychoanalysis.
Narrative Therapy
In what specific year should narrative therapy's founding be dated: 1983, when Michael White established the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide, or 1990, when White and David Epston published Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, the book that brought the approach to wide attention?
Open Narrative Therapy
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's own Narrative therapy article states only that the approach was developed during the 1970s and 1980s by Michael White and David Epston, with no single founding year named; the Michael White biographical article separately dates the Dulwich Centre's founding to 1983 and the field-defining book to 1990, leaving which year properly marks the school's founding unresolved.
What Would Settle It A source that explicitly states which single year the discipline treats as narrative therapy's founding, or an explicit editorial convention here for dating an approach that developed gradually over two decades.
Expertise Needed history of psychotherapy
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Narrative therapy, History section.
Schema Therapy
In what year did Jeffrey E. Young first formulate schema therapy as a distinct approach?
Open Schema Therapy
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's Schema therapy article documents the approach's theoretical concepts, techniques and outcome studies in detail but names no year or founding publication for when Young first developed it; a Wikipedia page for Jeffrey E. Young himself does not exist to check further (fetched live this session, page missing).
What Would Settle It A source identifying the specific year or publication that the field treats as schema therapy's founding moment.
Expertise Needed history of psychotherapy
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Schema therapy, whole article, no founding date given.
Psychosynthesis
In what specific year should psychosynthesis's founding be dated: 1910, when Roberto Assagioli began formulating the ideas, or 1927, when he first published them as a named system in the pamphlet A New Method of Healing: Psychosynthesis?
Open Psychosynthesis
Why It Is Open Wikipedia names two different years for two different events (1910, the start of Assagioli's thinking; 1927, the first publication of the named system) and does not say which one the field treats as the founding date.
What Would Settle It A history-of-psychotherapy source that states explicitly which of the two years, or a third year, the field itself treats as psychosynthesis's founding.
Expertise Needed history of psychotherapy
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Psychosynthesis, lead section, A New Method of Healing pamphlet.
Internal Family Systems Model
In what specific year did Richard C. Schwartz first develop the Internal Family Systems Model?
Open Internal Family Systems Model
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's History section states only that Schwartz developed the model "in the 1980s," with no single year given anywhere in the article.
What Would Settle It A biographical source or Schwartz's own account naming the specific year he began developing IFS, rather than the decade.
Expertise Needed history of psychotherapy
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Internal Family Systems Model, History section, IFS developed in the 1980s.
Theories and Concepts 7
Collective Unconscious
Is Carl Jung's well-known paranoid-schizophrenic patient case, which he used as evidence for the collective unconscious, authentic as reported?
Open Collective Unconscious
Why It Is Open Historian and Jung critic Richard Noll has argued against the authenticity of this case, which remains a contested piece of evidence Jung offered for archetypal patterns appearing independent of a patient's personal exposure to the source material.
What Would Settle It Independent archival verification of Jung's original case notes and contemporaneous records against his published account.
Expertise Needed History of psychiatry / archival scholarship
Question posed in
Collective unconscious, Collective unconscious article, critique section.
Hierarchy of Needs
Does Maslow's hierarchy of needs reflect a genuinely universal structure of human motivation, or is it culturally specific to individualistic Western societies?
Open Hierarchy of Needs
Why It Is Open Critics note the needs and drives of those in individualistic societies tend to be more self-centered than those in collectivist societies, and a 1976 review found little evidence for the theory's specific ranking of needs, undermining its claim to universality.
What Would Settle It Controlled cross-cultural studies directly testing whether need-priority sequencing holds across individualist and collectivist societies.
Expertise Needed Cross-cultural psychology
Question posed in
Maslow%27s hierarchy of needs, Maslow's hierarchy of needs article, Criticism section.
Cognitive Load Theory
Can the three types of cognitive load (intrinsic, extraneous and germane) be reliably measured and empirically distinguished from one another?
Open Cognitive Load Theory
Why It Is Open Cognitive load theory names three distinct types of load, but researchers using self-report, physiological and performance-based measures have not converged on a way to isolate them from one another, and some findings suggest the three may not be additively separable in practice.
What Would Settle It A validated measurement method, independently confirmed across labs, capable of isolating intrinsic, extraneous and germane load from one another in the same learning task.
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Cognitive Load, Measurement section.
Attachment Theory
Are Ainsworth's Strange Situation attachment classifications culturally universal, or do they reflect Western caregiving norms?
Open Attachment Theory
Why It Is Open Attachment theory's secure/insecure classifications were developed and normed on a Western, mostly American middle-class sample, and the social milieux and caregiving arrangements the theory assumes vary widely across cultures, so it remains disputed whether the same classifications and their developmental meaning transfer to societies with different childrearing practices.
What Would Settle It Attachment measures independently developed and validated within non-Western caregiving contexts, compared against the Strange Situation's own classifications and outcomes.
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Attachment Theory, Cultural differences section.
Psychometrics
Does Spearman's g reflect a genuine unitary cognitive ability, or is it a statistical artifact of overlapping mental processes?
Open Psychometrics
Why It Is Open Spearman's own model of a single general factor and rival sampling-theory models, which explain the same positive correlations among test scores as an artifact of overlapping mental processes rather than one underlying capacity, are statistically indistinguishable from the correlational data alone.
What Would Settle It Evidence that does not depend on the same correlational test-score structure both rival models already fit equally well, for example converging biological or neurological findings for a single general capacity distinct from a bundle of overlapping specific processes.
Question posed in
Wikipedia: G Factor (Psychometrics), On the debate section.
Replication Crisis
How much of psychology's published literature will ultimately replicate, and which reforms actually fix the underlying incentives?
Open Replication Crisis
Why It Is Open The 2015 Reproducibility Project measured a 36 percent replication rate for one sample of 97 findings, but researchers still debate how representative that sample is, how to interpret a "failed" replication, and whether reforms such as pre-registration are sufficient to change publication incentives.
What Would Settle It Sustained tracking of replication rates across psychology's subfields after widespread adoption of pre-registration and open data, compared against pre-reform baselines.
Expertise Needed Psychology (Methodology / Meta-Science)
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Replication crisis, Remedies.
Cognitive Load Theory
Do intrinsic, extraneous and germane load measure genuinely distinct constructs?
Open Cognitive Load Theory
Why It Is Open A 2008 study found that three commonly used measures of cognitive load responded differently to intrinsic, extraneous and germane load, and researchers have separately proposed an additivity hypothesis under which the three load types overlap substantially rather than staying cleanly distinct, so the theory's own three-way split has not been settled as measurably separable.
What Would Settle It Converging physiological, behavioral and self-report measures of cognitive load that agree with one another across instructional conditions designed to isolate each load type in turn.
Expertise Needed Educational psychology and psychometrics
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Cognitive Load.