Psychology and common sense.

Abstract

This article examines the nature of the relationship between psychology and common sense. It is postulated that common sense may be categorized in three ways: (a) as a set of shared fundamental assumptions, (b) as a set of maxims or shared beliefs, and (c) as a shared way of thinking. It is further argued that psychology has and should have a different re- lationship with each area. The role that conceptual analysis and other research techniques can play in investigating commonsense cognitive schemata is dis- cussed. It is concluded that common sense is a valuable but inherently dangerous resource available to psy- chologists. This article concerns the relationship between psy- chology and common sense. Clearly, the nature of that relationship will vary depending on the area of psychology considered. At a prima facie level, com- mon sense does not have much to offer such areas as neurophysiolo gy in contrast to social psychology or social cognition. For this reason, in addition to the fact that I know more about social psychology and the related area of social cognition, this article focuses primarily on these two areas. To set the scene for the subsequent analysis, let us draw the battle lines. Philosophers, particularly those from the ordi- nary language school, have often adopted eulogistic attitudes toward common sense. For example, R. S. Peters (1960), in his book The Concept of Motivation, argues that The difficulty about developing a science of psychology is that, in a sense, we already know too much about human behaviour, albeit in a rather uncoordinated manner. Com- mon-sense, which is incorporated in the concepts of ordinary language, has creamed off most of the vital distinctions. Psychology has the task of systematizing what is already known and adding bits of special theory to supplement common-sense, (p. 155) Probably the most explicit appeal to common sense in the formulation of psychological theory has been made by the dominant approach in social psy- chology today—attribution theory. The genesis of at- tribution theory can be traced to Fritz Heider and the publication in 1958 of his book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. Heider's view is that much of what is called naive psychology is embodied in the conceptual structures underlying everyday language. Thus, through conceptual analysis of everyday lan- guage, Heider attempted to provide a systematic, con- ceptual explication of commonsense psychology. Hei- der argued that the analysis of this conceptual struc- ture can play an important role in describing the naive psychologist's cognitive processes and in de- veloping a theory to explain those processes. In short, Heider took common sense seriously. In Heider's words, The ordinary person has a great and profound understanding of himself and other people which, though unformulated or only vaguely conceived, enables him to interact with others in more or less adaptive ways. (p. 2) This emphasis on common sense was maintained by those who followed Heider. Harold Kelley (1973), one of the central figures in the subsequent devel- opment of attribution theory, writes,