In the 1990's and early 2000's one of the key obstacles to moving forward in the discipline of personality psychology was the fragmentation of the field. Different researchers employed widely different theoretical outlooks, research specializations, and incompatible language to communicate their findings -- or at least, so it might have seemed from reading the field's textbooks.
The need for a more integrated fieldwide framework -- a framework that represented the field's common language and common pursuits -- was a high priority. A fieldwide framework, in this sense, is an outline employed by an academic field to present the work it conducts and the findings it has made (Mayer, 1994; 1998).
This web site began as a tool to educate those in the field about the Systems Framework -- one such integrated approach to the discipline. This section examines fieldwide frameworks in general, and the Systems Framework, in specific, in further detail.
In the discipline of personality psychology, for example, if you were to judge from most the field's textbooks, the dominant framework still today is a "theoretical perspectives" framework. This framework organizes the discipline according to the major theoretical perspectives employed in the field.
For example:
-- and the findings from each area. The exact list may change a bit from occasion to occasion, but that represents the general idea. If you examine the table of contents of many textbooks in the field of personality psychology, for example, you will see something like this organization. The same applies -- although less consistently -- to certain research reviews in the field.*
Fieldwide frameworks are important to a discipline for several reasons.
Special Feature: A PowerPoint lecture on the fieldwide frameworks in personality psychology
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References
Mayer, J. D. (1993-1994). A System-Topics Framework for the study of personality. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 13, 99-123.
Mayer, J. D. (1998). A Systems Framework for the field of personality psychology. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 118-144.
*The above was discussed in general in this site's Main Selections. The current coverage is more detailed.