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Why we need a ‘psychology of science’

Nature Human Behaviour volume 8, pages 4–5 (2024)Cite this article

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Science is a human enterprise and if we want to improve it, we must understand its human aspects. Unlike philosophy and sociology, and despite previous attempts to develop one, psychology has no dedicated approach to studying the scientific world. We need a ‘psychology of science’ — a dedicated subdiscipline that takes this perspective and understands that many of the strengths and weaknesses of the scientific world depend on how its members work and live together. Here, I propose that the psychology of science be redefined as covering all metascientific approaches that use the empirical methods, perspectives or conceptual frameworks of psychology, to understand or support the way in which science is done.

Metascience is a broad term that encompasses all scientific efforts that are aimed at understanding and improving science itself. Metascience, however, is not a discipline; it lacks disciplinarity and institutionalization, such as dedicated journals, departments or doctoral programmes. This constrains its development and limits the efforts of researchers to occasional metascience projects instead of systematic research programmes. As a subdiscipline of psychology, the psychology of science should fit within the existing divisions of its discipline (as do the philosophy, sociology and history of science). Psychologists of science would participate in metascience through systematic research programmes that explore and support how science is done using psychological expertise.

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Fig. 1: The ecosystem of the psychology of science.

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  1. ELTE, Eotvos Lorand University, Institute of Psychology, Budapest, Hungary

    Balazs Aczel

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  1. Balazs Aczel
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Correspondence to Balazs Aczel.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Robert Proctor and Erin Buchanan for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Aczel, B. Why we need a ‘psychology of science’. Nat Hum Behav 8, 4–5 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01786-4

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