Advocating a Valid Cultural Alltagspsychologie

Abstract

In the present article, I criticize the narrow-minded definitions of validity as done by mainstream psychology and its quantitative imperative. I argue that validity should be defined in a broader way such as enhancing the transparency of a present scientific inquiry. The consequence of a too narrow-minded focus upon validity is that specific psychological phenomena are bracketed, and its analysis is argued as non-valid or non-scientific. Psychological phenomena such as watching television, going to sleep, and talking to friends—among many others—are part and parcel of human everyday life. For such phenomena, we are not able to control variables or a specific setting. Yet, I argue that this is not necessary as we can unravel those psychological mechanisms within a different scientific lens that I call a cultural Alltagspsychologie (folk psychology) in tradition of Jerome Bruner. This Alltagspsychologie analyzes a person’s individual social relatedness in time that is argued to demonstrate his/her personal culture and accounts for his/her relations with his environment as well as with himself/herself. Analyzing this relatedness is possible by the TEM diagrams that can decipher the development of culture from past to future and show equally potential alterations of exactly that culture. In the end, I argue that such a scientific approach can be also called valid.