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 shape of the gap rather than its subject: what sort of thing is unresolved.
Showing 1 to 20 of 34 open questions, page 1 of 2.
chronology 7
When something happened, where the sources disagree or are silent.
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.
Selective Perception
In what year was selective perception first identified or named as a distinct concept in psychology?
Open Selective Perception
Why It Is Open The cited Wikipedia article traces the concept only to Gestalt psychology in the early 20th century and says it attracted more scholarly attention in the mid 20th century, naming Leon Festinger 1957 cognitive dissonance theory as a later explanatory milestone, but it gives no specific year for when selective perception itself was first described or named.
What Would Settle It A citable primary source, textbook, or history-of-psychology reference naming the specific year or publication that first used or defined the term selective perception.
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Selective perception, Wikipedia: Selective perception, History section.
Zero-Risk Bias
In what year was zero-risk bias first described or named as a distinct concept?
Open Zero-Risk Bias
Why It Is Open The cited Wikipedia article cites Baron, Gowda and Kunreuther (1993) and Viscusi, Magat and Huber (1987) as early studies documenting the effect, and an economics study by Kunreuther (1991), but does not state in what year the bias itself was first named or described, and the 1987 study title does not use the term.
What Would Settle It A citable source naming the specific year or publication where the term zero-risk bias was first coined.
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Zero-risk bias, Wikipedia: Zero-risk bias, Explanation section.
Present Bias
In what year was the term present bias first introduced?
Open Present Bias
Why It Is Open The cited Wikipedia article states only that the term was not introduced until the 1950s and separately notes that Phelps and Pollak introduced the quasi-hyperbolic model in 1968, without giving a specific year or publication for when present bias itself was first named.
What Would Settle It A citable source naming the specific year and publication that first used the term present bias.
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Present bias, Wikipedia: Present bias, History section.
replication 5
Recorded as unresolved.
Asch's Conformity Experiments
Does the Asch conformity effect reflect a durable feature of human group behavior, or was it substantially a product of the cultural moment (1950s America) in which it was measured?
Open Asch's Conformity Experiments
Why It Is Open Perrin and Spencer's 1980 British replication found conformity had nearly vanished (one join in 396 trials), arguing the Asch effect was a child of its time. Bond and Smith's 1996 meta-analysis further found conformity rates differ across cultures and genders, with collectivist cultures showing higher rates than individualist ones.
What Would Settle It Systematic cross-cultural and cross-era replication with standardized methodology, isolating cultural-moment effects from a stable underlying conformity mechanism.
Expertise Needed Social psychology / cross-cultural psychology
Question posed in
SimplyPsychology: Asch Conformity, Perrin and Spencer 1980/1981; Bond and Smith 1996.
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.
Hawthorne Studies
How strong was the original Hawthorne effect, really?
Open Hawthorne Studies
Why It Is Open The term was coined in 1953, two decades after the original studies, from a methodologically loose, largely uncontrolled dataset. A 2011 re-analysis of the original illumination-experiment data by economists Steven Levitt and John List found only slight long-run evidence for the effect, far weaker than its popular retelling, and the psychologist Richard Nisbett has dismissed the whole phenomenon as a glorified anecdote, so how much of the classic story survives contact with the original data is unsettled.
What Would Settle It A full re-analysis of the surviving relay-assembly and bank-wiring datasets, not just the illumination-experiment data Levitt and List examined, using modern statistical controls for the original experiments' many confounds (rest breaks, pay changes, seasonal effects).
Expertise Needed Industrial-organizational psychology and applied econometrics
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Hawthorne Effect.
Rat Park Experiment
Did later attempts to replicate the Rat Park experiment support Alexander's original findings?
Open Rat Park Experiment
Why It Is Open Bruce Petrie, a graduate student of Alexander's, attempted a replication correcting for methods issues in the originals and could not replicate the results. Subsequent researchers have shown little interest in replicating the studies further, citing methodological problems in the originals themselves: a small number of subjects, oral morphine dosing that does not mimic real use and introduces a bitterness confound, inconsistent measurement of morphine consumption between conditions, plus equipment failures, lost data and rat deaths.
What Would Settle It A modern, adequately powered replication using a consistent, non-oral dosing method and standardized morphine-consumption measurement across all housing conditions, addressing the equipment and data-loss problems that undermined the original series.
Expertise Needed Behavioral pharmacology and addiction research
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Rat Park.
Pygmalion in the Classroom
Did later studies replicate Rosenthal and Jacobson's original Pygmalion in the Classroom effect?
Open Pygmalion in the Classroom
Why It Is Open Rosenthal originally claimed the treated group's IQ gain exceeded the control group's by 24.8 points and that the gain was persistent and widespread, but the instrument used to assess the children's IQ was seriously flawed, and studies since the 1980s have repeatedly failed to replicate a strong effect, instead finding only a weak effect in a small minority of students (5 to 10 percent), one that resets after a period of weeks.
What Would Settle It A large, pre-registered classroom replication using a validated IQ instrument and blinded teacher-expectation manipulation, tracking effect persistence over a full school year rather than a period of weeks.
Expertise Needed Educational psychology and psychometrics
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Pygmalion Effect.
dating 4
When something happened, where the sources disagree or are silent.
Overconfidence Effect
In what year was the overconfidence effect first identified or named as a distinct phenomenon in the psychological literature?
Open Overconfidence Effect
Why It Is Open The surveyed Wikipedia article names three component forms, overestimation, overplacement and overprecision, and cites many later studies, but states no founding study or coining year for the overconfidence effect itself, unlike the other five entities worked this pass which each name a clear year.
What Would Settle It A citation to the earliest peer-reviewed study or review naming and defining the overconfidence effect as a distinct phenomenon, rather than one of its three later-named component forms.
Expertise Needed history of psychology
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Overconfidence effect, no origin year stated in surveyed source.
Not Invented Here
In what year was the not invented here phenomenon first identified or named in management or organizational research?
Open Not Invented Here
Why It Is Open The surveyed Wikipedia article documents a 1982 empirical study (Katz and Allen) providing evidence for the syndrome, but states no year for when the phenomenon or term was first named or described.
What Would Settle It A citation to the earliest source naming or describing the not invented here syndrome, distinct from the 1982 Katz and Allen study already cited as empirical evidence.
Expertise Needed history of psychology
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Not invented here, no origin year stated in surveyed source.
Automation Bias
In what year was automation bias first identified or named as a distinct phenomenon in human factors research?
Open Automation Bias
Why It Is Open The surveyed Wikipedia article discusses automation bias research from 1997 onward (Mosier et al.) but states no year for when the phenomenon or term was first identified or named.
What Would Settle It A citation to the earliest peer-reviewed study or review naming and defining automation bias as a distinct phenomenon, prior to the 1997 Mosier et al. study already cited.
Expertise Needed history of psychology
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Automation bias, no origin year stated in surveyed source.
Intentionality Bias
In what year was intentionality bias first described or named in the psychology literature?
Open Intentionality Bias
Why It Is Open The English Wikipedia article on intentionality bias (the source already cited on this entity) describes the concept in a short lead paragraph with an empty References section and names no year, paper, or author for when the bias was first described or named; a full raw-extract read of the article contains no four-digit year at all.
What Would Settle It A citable paper, textbook, or reference work naming the year and author or authors who first described or coined the term intentionality bias.
Expertise Needed history of psychology
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Intentionality bias, entire article, References section empty.
historiographical 4
Recorded as unresolved.
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.
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).
Facilitated Communication Studies
Why did facilitated communication persist for years after it was discredited?
Open Facilitated Communication Studies
Why It Is Open Despite more than fifty controlled studies by 2005 showing facilitators, not the person being facilitated, controlled the typed messages, and the American Psychological Association stating in 1994 there was no scientifically demonstrated support for the technique, some practitioners and family members continued to use and defend it for years afterward. The sources consulted here do not settle how much of that persistence reflects genuine belief formed from specific favorable cases versus institutional and emotional investment that made abandoning the technique difficult.
What Would Settle It A study of practitioner and family decision-making that traces why individual cases and institutions continued after the aggregate controlled evidence became clear, rather than only re-testing whether the technique itself produces authentic communication.
Expertise Needed History and sociology of science, clinical psychology
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Facilitated Communication.
Rosenhan Experiment
Did all eight of the pseudopatients David Rosenhan described in his 1973 "On Being Sane in Insane Places" study genuinely exist and undergo the hospitalizations as published?
Open Rosenhan Experiment
Why It Is Open Susannah Cahalan's 2019 archival investigation (The Great Pretender) could confirm only two of the eight claimed pseudopatients, Rosenhan himself and one graduate student whose own account allegedly conflicts with the published article, and found other inconsistencies and apparently fabricated quotations in Rosenhan's papers.
What Would Settle It Identification and independent corroboration (hospital admission records, first-person testimony) of the six remaining pseudopatients Rosenhan claimed but never named.
Expertise Needed History of Psychology
Question posed in
Wikipedia: Rosenhan Experiment, Accusation of fraud section.