What is Descriptive Psychology?

That’s a reasonable question, but it’s kind of like asking, “What is Physics?” There’s a reasonable answer, but it’s not something you can boil down to a 25-word elevator pitch. I’ll do the best I can.

If you think about physics for a second, you can see it has some central concepts: length, mass, time, force, charge. At our everyday level, you can explain pretty much everything that’s happening in the physical world with those five things. What physicists do is claim those concepts have a certain relationship and then test that claim.

For example, given length and time, we can say velocity is length/time. Given velocity, we can say acceleration (a) is velocity/time. With those, we can say the famous equation F = ma, that is, force is directly related to mass and to acceleration. That’s a relationship F, m, and a have with each other, and it’s a claim. Once we test that claim (an experiment) and prove it, we can go ahead and use that relationship.

Now note that length, mass, time, force, charge are not things we did an experiment to find out about. We already understand them as they are, and anyone who didn’t understand, say, length, would be considered a kook. That is, those core concepts of physics are pre-empirical. We don’t test for them, and we can’t test for them. We already have them, we try different relationships, and we keep the ones that are useful. So we have a set of concepts for describing objects and what they do.

DP is a set of concepts for describing persons and what they do. These concepts are pre-empirical. That is, we don’t test for them, and we can’t test for them. We already have them, we try different relationships, and we keep the ones that are useful. In the way F = ma is considered a central concept in physics, the Person Concept is the central concept in Descriptive Psychology. Without that concept, we person scientists have nothing to study. And anyone who couldn’t use the Person Concept would be considered a kook.

I’m sure you are ready to challenge me on that last one. “I don’t have a definition of a person, and I don’t use a definition of a person, ever.” You’re right about that. But do you recognize a person when one is in front of you, or do you mistake the people around you for complex mobile artifacts? You recognize them. You have competence with the Person Concept, even if you can’t say what it is.

If you didn’t have that competence, couldn’t recognize a person when you saw one, imagine what your life would be like. Imagine how other persons would treat you. So this competence with the Person Concept is central to your daily life, your normal life, and to what you expect from others.

DP articulates the Person Concept so we can be person scientists. It lets us cmpare theories of personality and other claims about persons and what they do. It lets us see what these theories and claims commit to when talking about persons, and it lets us see what they ignore. It does this in what is pretty much everyday, common-sense language, and Pete Ossorio wrote it that way because we persons have been talking about each other in everyday language probably since we invented language. We don’t need special talk. We just have to have common talk and to recognize the relationships we are already talking about.

And that’s DP. It’s a network of concepts that lets us talk about the facts about people and what they do—all the facts, and all the possible facts–in everyday language.

 This was originally published @ http://descriptivepsychology.transformativebusinessgroup.com/2013/07/what-is-descriptive-psychology/ and has been syndicated with permission of the author.

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