The Oddly Absent “Wesearch”

May 23, 2025

You might think that fields would very often apply their own methods to themselves. For instance, economists conduct a supply/demand or incentives-based analysis of the field of economics itself to understand why they focus on some areas and not others or why the field has become more math-heavy over time. Psychologists can also study the psychology of academic psychologists to understand the underlying psychological drivers that determine which areas of study are popular or why the repli...

The Many Models for Depression

February 28, 2018

People often argue whether depression is, or is not, caused by a "chemical imbalance". Much of what happens in our brains is chemical, why would depression not be? If by "imbalance" we happen to mean "a state of brain chemicals that the patient doesn't want", as opposed to, say, some specific theory that is now discredited like "not enough serotonin" (i.e., the low serotonin myth), then depression can reasonably be thought of as a "chemical imbalance". Disagreement about whether depressi...

Ways to develop new hypotheses about human psychology

November 16, 2017

How would you go about building improved models of human psychology so that you can better help people? It might seem nearly impossible at first, but data about psychology is all around us, and there are numerous approaches you could take to discover new insights. Here are 24 different methods you could use to better understand the way humans work. In each case, I use "trying to figure out new things about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)" as an example. What techniques am I leaving out...