P
Psychological Mechanisms
Ulrich Koch1 and Kelso Cratsley2
1
George Washington University, Washington,
DC, USA
2
American University, Washington, DC, USA
Synonyms
Psychological processes; Mental mechanisms;
Cognitive systems
Definition
Psychological mechanisms are the processes and
systems, or activities and entities, frequently
appealed to in causal explanations within the psy-
chological sciences.
Introduction
In the most inclusive sense, psychological mech-
anisms offer a type of causal explanation of men-
tal states and behavior, often with reference to
underlying processes, systems, activities, or enti-
ties. By postulating and investigating such mech-
anisms, researchers have sought explanations of a
wide range of psychological phenomena. How-
ever, the concept has been deployed in
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
V. Zeigler-Hill, T. K. Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1562-1
dramatically different ways, with very different
meanings, depending upon the particular school
or tradition of psychology (and specific research
program therein). In fact, usage has been so
diverse as to defy easy categorization or defini-
tion. But a historical perspective, even if rather
selective, can trace the broad outlines of the sig-
nificance of psychological mechanisms for the
study of the mind. Perhaps most notable is the
role they have played in the psychoanalytic tradi-
tion; research efforts within behaviorism and cog-
nitive science have also made liberal use of
versions of the concept in their explanatory frame-
works (for discussion of evolutionary psychology,
see the entry “evolved psychological mecha-
nisms”). Cutting across all of these traditions are
several key themes relating to psychological
mechanisms, including questions concerning the
scope of the relevant causal claims, debates about
causal determinism and regularity, and the
unresolved relation between mind and body.
Mechanisms and Natural Philosophy
The appeal to mechanisms in contemporary psy-
chology has historical precedents extending far
beyond the study of the mind, at its broadest
representing a comprehensive mechanistic world-
view (Andersen 2014). Although such an
approach is no longer associated with the use of
the term mechanism in the sciences, early modern
2 Psychological Mechanisms
philosophers such as René Descartes, Thomas
Hobbes, Robert Hooke, and Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz viewed nature as constituted by corpus-
cular bodies and their mechanical movements,
essentially as an all-encompassing mechanism.
This philosophical background is helpful not
only for delineating current uses of the term but
also for understanding why theoretical and exper-
imental efforts to extend mechanistic explanations
to the mind were initially met with criticism in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Descartes’ mechanical philosophy, for
instance, started from the precept that “this earth
and indeed the whole universe” can be described
“as if it were a machine” (1644/1973, IV, para.
188). However, following a tradition that made a
clear distinction between the explanation of pur-
posive human actions and that of inanimate mat-
ter, Descartes limited the scope of mechanistic
explanation (see also Wright and Bechtel 2006).
What are now often called higher mental func-
tions, particularly the use of language and the
ability to reason, he claimed, could not be
explained in mechanistic terms, since these capac-
ities were rooted in reflexive consciousness, the
res cogitans, an indivisible, unextended sub-
stance. Although, Descartes did apply mechanis-
tic explanations to areas of enquiry that today fall
within the scope of psychological science, such as
perception, memory, and the effects of what he
understood as the “passions.”
As the historian of psychology Graham
Richards notes, Descartes is thus frequently
assigned a dual role in the “mechanization of the
world view”: at once committed to mechanistic
explanations of the material world but also deeply
concerned with carving out within it a place for
reflexive consciousness, supposedly only know-
able by reason (1992, p. 23). It is because of his
mechanistic descriptions of mental phenomena
such as memory and perception that he and other
early modern philosophers, especially Thomas
Hobbes, have been regarded as proposing an
early variant of a “mechanistic psychology” and
as the proto-scientific forerunners of twentieth
century behaviorism (e.g., Leahey 1987).
Richards (1992) further points out, however, that
Descartes and Hobbes did not show interest in
particular mechanisms, nor in conducting inves-
tigations to isolate and study them. In other words,
it is questionable whether a mechanistic explana-
tory strategy for psychological phenomena imme-
diately evolved from mechanical philosophy,
which mostly offered explanations that did not
seek to expand physiological knowledge.
With the advent of the scientific revolution,
empiricist philosophers such as John Locke, in
pursuit of conceptual clarity, were reluctant to
employ metaphorical language drawn from natu-
ral philosophy as they proposed their respective
theories of the mind. “Anti-metaphorical linguis-
tic attitudes,” stymied, perhaps ironically, the
development of empirical investigations into psy-
chic life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries (Richards 2010, p. 23). Empiricist
philosophers referred to mental processes using
technical philosophical terms such as “sensa-
tions,” “ideas,” and by invoking “principles” or
“laws” of association – which were only later, by
the end of the nineteenth century, frequently
labeled as “mechanisms.” Moreover, theirs was a
philosophical project, namely, to ground knowl-
edge claims in mental structures and processes. It
was therefore largely left to the slowly emerging
medical sciences to expand mechanistic explana-
tions to include the more intricate mechanisms of
the mind.
The Psychoanalytic Tradition
In the 1902 edition of the Dictionary of Philoso-
phy and Psychology, edited by James Mark
Baldwin, the entry for “mechanism (of mind or
ideas)” ends with a starkly negative assessment:
“The term is not good, since it lends itself to
interpretation in terms of physical analogy”
(Baldwin 1902, p. 59). This criticism presupposed
that mental activities are fundamentally different
from physical processes, and that applying termi-
nology taken from the natural sciences may be
misleading. The only example of a mental mech-
anism mentioned in the entry was the psycholog-
ical theory proposed by the German philosopher
Johann Friedrich Herbart. His Vorstellungs-
mechanik [mechanics of ideas] was an early
Psychological Mechanisms
nineteenth century attempt to apply the principles
of Newtonian mechanics to the mind, which was
conceived of as populated by atomistic ideas
amongst which forces of attraction and repulsion
operated (letting some never rise into awareness,
for instance). Herbart’s writings on pedagogy,
which drew on these deliberations, enjoyed great
popularity in nineteenth century America. In
Europe, the young neurologist Sigmund Freud
was surely acquainted with, and perhaps also
inspired by, Herbart’s speculative mechanistic
account as he developed his own theories about
unconscious processes.
Despite the significance of the Freudian notion
of “defense mechanisms,” which would soon dis-
place Herbart’s ideas as the exemplar in dictionar-
ies of psychology, Freud only made sporadic use
of the word “mechanism” in his writings (see also
Laplanche and Pontalis 1967). The term
psychologischer Mechanismus (translated as
“psychical mechanism” in the Standard Edition),
however, does appear at a crucial moment in his
work, namely, in the title of the seminal 1893
paper “On The Psychical Mechanism of Hysteri-
cal Phenomena,” which he co-authored with Josef
Breuer and was reissued 2 years later as the first
part of his groundbreaking Studies on Hysteria
(1895/1999). Although the term is mentioned
only once in the body of the paper, in the final
paragraph, its use suggests that the psychological
mechanism alluded to in the title is the
traumatogenic etiology, which Freud, at this
early point in his career, proposed for forms of
hysteria previously thought to be unrelated to
traumatic events. (He would later reassess and
ultimately revise the causative role of trauma in
the etiology of hysteria; cf. Leys 2000). At the
very end of the paper, Freud and Breuer added the
caveat that their studies had uncovered “only . . .
the mechanism of hysterical symptoms,” leaving
aside the “. . . internal causes of hysteria. We have
done no more than touch upon the aetiology of
hysteria,” elucidating merely the role of “acciden-
tal factors” in its acquired forms (Breuer & Freud
1895/1955, p. 17).
In early January 1893, Freud also gave a talk
bearing the same title to the Wiener Medizinischer
Club [Viennese Medical Club]. In this version he
3
employed the term in two rather distinct ways.
Toward the end of his presentation, he used it
with reference to not just one causal relationship
but to a set of mechanisms that make up a whole, a
system of interlocking parts. Within this context
Freud discusses the means by which der gesunde
psychische Mechanismus [the healthy psycholog-
ical mechanism] rids itself of the residual quantity
of affect left in the wake of a traumatic experience
namely, assoziative Verarbeitung [associative
integration], and the conjuring of presumably
soothing mental imagery (Freud 1893, p. 193).
In this case, the mechanism in question seems to
coincide with what Freud would later call
psychische Apparat [psychic apparatus] (e.g.,
Freud 1915b/1999). In the same talk, Freud had
also designated the process of symbolization
through which the content of a mental state is
expressed through bodily symptoms (i.e., conver-
sion) as a psychological mechanism (Freud 1983/
1999, p. 190).
This last use of the term suggests that Freud
may no longer have sought to ground such mech-
anisms in the functioning of the nervous system.
In the same talk, Freud had also differentiated
between trauma’s psychological and “mechani-
cal” effects (Freud 1983/1999, p. 187). At the
time, so-called traumatic neuroses had been
observed among victims of workplace accidents,
often involving industrial machinery. Some neu-
rologists, such as Hermann Oppenheim (1889),
who had proposed this disease entity, had argued
that post-traumatic symptoms were caused by the
jarring impact of physical forces, damaging the
neural substrate on a molecular level. Freud and
Breuer, on the other hand, now claimed that since
seemingly more benign yet deeply upsetting
events could still lead to hysterical symptoms,
the causes were more likely psychological than
“mechanical” in nature.
Far from being applied in a systematic fashion
the term still oscillated between referring to one
particular mechanism and to a functioning
mechanical whole. In a later paper that also car-
ried the word mechanism in its title while
employing it only occasionally (“Some Neurotic
Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and
Homexuality”), Freud (1922/1999) did use the
4 Psychological Mechanisms
term more consistently to refer to the unconscious
processes that could be drawn on to explain jeal-
ousy, symptoms of paranoia, and homosexuality
(for an analogous use of Verdrängungsme-
chanismus [mechanism of repression], see Freud
1915b/1999). But still, as Laplanche and Pontalis
(1967) point out in their Vocabulaire de la
Psychanalyse, Freud seems to have used the
term largely as a rhetorical device, signaling the
author’s conviction that psychological phenom-
ena could indeed be scientifically explained. It
should be added that by appealing to mechanisms,
Freud could infer underlying causal processes
whose operational principles were distinct from
conscious mental states and intentional actions.
With regard to “defense mechanism,” Freud
frequently relied on the use of other terms to
replace the German Abwehrmechanismus such
as Abwehrvorgang [defense process],
handlungen [acts], aktionen [actions], or -
reaktionen [reactions] (Freud 1968/1999). Most
frequently, after reintroducing the term in “Inhi-
bition, Symptom, and Anxiety” (1926/1999), he
merely used the term Abwehr [defense]. As
Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) have observed,
“defense mechanism” is used somewhat inconsis-
tently throughout his oeuvre. In two of his meta-
psychological essays from 1915, for instance,
Freud invoked the term, first, to designate repres-
sion a mechanism of defense (Freud 1915a/1999),
and in the second instance he used it with refer-
ence to the collection of neurotic symptoms he
had observed in a particular clinical case, thus
applying it to the patient’s neurosis as a whole
(Freud 1915b/1999). In both contexts, he draws
on his clinical experience, highlighting what one
could call a defense mechanism’s automaticity –
the fact that behavioral, emotional, and affective
patterns have emerged over the course of the
patient’s life, may have surfaced during treatment
and have become second nature. Indeed, the evo-
lution of the psychoanalytic concept of defense is
closely linked to the treatment method developed
by Freud, during which the patient’s defenses
become tangible as obstacles, complications in
the treatment process (as strong affective reactions
to the analyst’s interpretations, for instance),
which in turn provide ample material for further
analysis.
Later, more consistent uses of the term
“defense mechanisms” by Freud postdate the
major publication of his daughter on the topic. In
The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense Anna
Freud (1937/1946) provided the concept’s most
influential exposition. The book would go on to
become a foundational text for psychoanalytic
ego psychology, a current within psychoanalysis
closely associated with so-called classical or
orthodox Freudianism in the post-war United
States. Anna Freud distinguished nine defense
mechanisms (regression, repression, reaction-
formation, isolation, undoing, projection, intro-
jection, turning against the self, and reversal),
which she culled from the psychoanalytic litera-
ture, and added a tenth (sublimation) to the
preliminary list.
Drawing on her father’s essay “Inhibition,
Symptom and Anxiety”, she pointed to the iden-
tical function or “purpose” of this set of rather
diverse mechanisms: “namely, ‘the protection of
the ego against instinctual demands’” (Freud
1936/1942, p. 46). Defense mechanisms in this
classical rendering involve, on an abstract level,
two types of psychological entities (the ego and
instinctual demands), while tensions between
them set in motion varied unconscious responses.
The types of processes that are put into action and
the entities involved in each, however, vary con-
siderably. Yet it is also because of such variation
that psychoanalysts are able to use the observation
of defenses as a diagnostic tool. The specific kind
of mechanism observed in a given case gives an
indication of the degree to which psychic func-
tions have matured. The grouping of observations
under the term “defense mechanism,” in other
words, serves as an important clinical heuristic.
The ego-psychological conception of defense
mechanisms gained further plausibility, and per-
haps also interest beyond psychoanalytic circles,
because of a growing emphasis on the ego as an
agent of adaptation (see, e.g., Hartmann 1939).
Keeping the ego uncorrupted by conflict serves an
adaptive function. Around the same time, psy-
chologists working in the behaviorist tradition
were also guided by the assumption that the
Psychological Mechanisms
mechanisms they hoped to identify ensured an
organism’s survival (see below). It remains to be
explored, however, to what extent evolutionary
ideas shaped the notion of psychological mecha-
nisms at this point in history, perhaps more so than
the mechanistic worldview associated with classi-
cal physics.
Given Freud’s scant usage of the term, it may
appear as ironic that his theories would later be
criticized as too mechanistic by those deviating
from psychoanalytic orthodoxy, particularly pro-
ponents of so-called object relations theory. At the
heart of the criticism of authors such as Ronald
Fairbairn or Harry Guntrip was the rejection of
deterministic claims put forth by ego psycholo-
gists and other strong proponents of drive theory
(for discussion, see Greenberg and Mitchell
1983). On the one hand, it was a rejection of the
type of explanation offered by orthodox psycho-
analysis. As neo-Freudians, interpersonal psychi-
atrists, and object relations theorists moved away
from a one-person psychology and developed the-
oretical perspectives that envisioned the uncon-
scious as imbued with the experiences of past and
present relations to others, linear cause-and-effect
relationships no longer seemed germane. On the
other hand, their rejection of the term was also
directed against the biological underpinnings of
the Freudian drive model, pointing to the still
unresolved issue of how bodily states relate to
mental processes.
In the United States, Harry Stack Sullivan, who
sought to fuse psychiatry with the social sciences,
deliberately sidestepped the term and spoke of
“dynamisms” instead. The psychiatrist and psy-
choanalyst Jules Masserman, to name another
example, critiqued both Freud’s and Ivan Pavlov’s
theories as mechanistic on the grounds that they
paid little to no attention to language and symbol
use, the consideration of which supposedly leads
to a more “dynamic” view of human development
(Masserman 1943). The opposition between a
“mechanistic” vision of human nature and a
“dynamic” one also highlights the contrast
between a reductionist explanatory strategy and
holistic approaches. Proponents of the school of
behaviorism, which dominated academic psy-
chology in the middle decades of the twentieth
5
century, vigorously pursued a reductionist strat-
egy that sought to extend mechanistic explana-
tions to a hitherto unprecedented degree.
Behaviorism and Neo-Behaviorism
Whereas amongst psychoanalysts the words
“mechanism” and “mechanistic” had become rhe-
torical markers signaling either a commitment to
scientific explanation or misguided determinism
and reductionism, depending on one’s theoretical
alliances, amongst behaviorists they again took on
a broader, programmatic significance in two dis-
cernable ways. First, its early proponents
endorsed a mechanistic worldview that came
with strong ontological assumptions about the
uniform nature of reality and an unwavering com-
mitment to the methods of the natural sciences as
the only viable method to gain scientific knowl-
edge about the world, including the mind. “That
the organism is a machine,” John B. Watson wrote
in Behavior, “is taken for granted in our work”;
further stating that the goal of a behaviorist’s
analysis was “the reduction of complex congenital
(instinct) and acquired (habit) forms of response
to simple reflexes” (Watson 1914/1967,
pp. 52–53). Second, in a more practical sense,
behaviorists were naturally drawn to mechanical
devices of different kinds through their experi-
mental work, relying on them to model human
behavior. Behaviorists explained behavior by
controlling it in their laboratories and by
establishing new stimulus-response patterns in
their subjects. The practical ethos of the behavior-
ists’ undertaking has been related to the influence
of the German-American biologist Jacques Loeb,
a teacher of John B. Watson’s during his years at
the University of Chicago. A staunch believer in
technical feasibility, Loeb propagated what the
historian of science Philip Pauly has called the
“engineering ideal in biology”; claiming that the
main problem of his discipline was not the “anal-
ysis of the existent” but “the production of the
new” (Pauly 1987, pp. 7–8).
Despite Watson’s quite literal application of a
mechanist science to the living organism, the term
“mechanism” itself is only occasionally used in
6 Psychological Mechanisms
his more well-known essays. In “Psychology as
the Behaviorist Views it” from 1913, for instance,
although he does mention the “mental machinery”
of learning, he uses the term only with reference to
the “Darwinian mechanisms” of variation and
selection and (Watson 1913, p. 167), in a footnote,
the “associative mechanisms” (Watson 1913,
p. 174). For Watson, mechanism and more so the
adjective “mechanistic” were programmatic but
not technical terms. Psychological mechanisms,
in the narrow sense, may have fallen out of the
mechanistic picture altogether.
Things are different in the case of the neo-
behaviorist Clark L. Hull, who developed an
ambitious, theory-driven program that expanded
stimulus-response theory to include the “interven-
ing variables” of the organism. Hull was also
inspired by classical physics, particularly Isaac
Newton’s Principia Mathematica, whose method
he reportedly espoused for his own major work,
Principles of Behavior, published in 1943. What
Hull set out to achieve was nothing less than a
comprehensive theory that would lay out the laws
governing all forms of behavior, preferably in
mathematical form, by applying “the recognized
scientific methodology” (Hull 1937, p. 9); that is,
the hypothetico-deductive method. Like the natu-
ral sciences, he recommended that the study of
behavior should start out with explicitly stated
postulates, from which theorems can be deduced,
which in turn will generate empirical predictions.
A strong believer in the unity of the sciences, Hull
also asserted that his science of animal behavior
would ultimately provide the basis “for all the
social (behavioral) sciences” (Hull 1943, p. v).
In 1937, Hull had already published a pro-
grammatic article titled “Mind, Mechanism, and
Adaptive Behavior.” The term “mechanism” is
only mentioned once, however, although he did
endorse the construction of a “mechanistic the-
ory” (Hull 1937, p. 10). In a revealing footnote,
Hull described a hypothetical “mechanism.” This
device or “psychic machine,” he argued, could
potentially be “constructed from inorganic mate-
rials” to “display” the postulated behavioral prin-
ciples. Studying its reactions to specific
environmental stimuli and comparing them with
the behavioral patterns predicted by the theorems,
Hull speculated, could provide an “experimental
shortcut to the determination of the ultimate
nature of adaptive behavior” (Hull 1937, p. 29).
An earlier paper, “Knowledge and Purpose as
Habit Mechanisms,” gives a better impression of
what may constitute a psychological mechanism
according to Hull (Hull 1930). A “habit mecha-
nism” is thought of as consisting of an activity
sequence that connects environmental stimuli
with organismic reactions and internal stimuli
according to behavioral principles. In contrast to
the hypothetical physical mechanism that is the
automaton, the description of habit mechanisms
did not involve the material properties of its com-
ponents, as both stimuli and responses were
treated as abstract entities to comply with behav-
iorism’s strict methodological prescriptions.
In Principles of Behavior, Hull used the term
“mechanism” quite frequently and not only with
reference to biological and physicochemical
mechanisms. Behavioral mechanisms are found
on various levels of his theoretical system. For
example, he described “experimental extinction,”
one of his postulates, as “the mechanism which
protects organisms from the evil effects of the
unadaptive habits inevitably set up by the law of
reinforcement” (Hull 1943, p. 277). He mentioned
“primitive automatic mechanisms,” but also des-
ignated some “secondary principles” as mecha-
nisms (Hull 1943, pp. 395–396). And again he
conceived of the whole organism as a “more or
less successfully self-sustaining mechanism”; as
which it allegedly appears from an evolutionary
perspective. It is in this context that Hull provided
the only definition of mechanism contained in the
Principles: “a physical aggregate whose behavior
occurs under ascertainable conditions according
to definitely statable [sic] rules or laws” (p. 406).
In short, mechanisms were construed mainly for
heuristic purposes and situated on the different
levels of his hierarchical explanatory system.
Insofar as they were placed on a higher level,
they had integrative functions for the associated
mechanisms on a lower level. And, although habit
mechanisms could only be identified by way of
abstraction, Hull asserted that, essentially, all
mechanisms are made up of physical parts.
Psychological Mechanisms
In hindsight, a tension within Hull’s explana-
tory project becomes apparent, a tension with
which perhaps all experimenters in the life and
behavioral sciences who had adopted the
so-called mechanistic worldview had to grapple.
On the one hand, he presupposed that the parts
that make up the world, as well as the laws and
principles governing them are homogeneous. On
the other hand, the materials and processes that
make up adaptive mechanisms studied in experi-
ments varied considerably they also differed
markedly from the entities and laws studied by
physicists. Once researchers in the life and behav-
ioral sciences became absorbed by isolating spe-
cific mechanisms and the experimental systems
that sustained them, they lost sight, as it were, of
the natural laws that Hull and other behaviorists
hoped to reveal (regarding the epistemic role of
experimental systems in the life sciences see
Rheinberger 1997, 2010). Outside of thought
experiments, natural laws do not make experi-
ments work, nor do they make machines run, the
machine’s working parts do.
This turn to the study of specific, experimen-
tally replicable behavioral phenomena was well
underway as behaviorist research became more
standardized in its techniques and diversified in
its topics. For various reasons, by the 1960s
behaviorists had abandoned the project of a gen-
eral theory of learning that laid out the principles
of all forms of behavior. As a consequence, the
study of animal behavior became more
fragmented (Amsel and Rashotte 1977). The
abandonment of the basic social science project
of determining natural laws and basic behavioral
principles did not, however, lead to the abandon-
ment of mechanistic explanations. By the second
half of the twentieth century, the mechanistic
worldview had clearly become anachronistic;
however, mechanistic explanations drawing inspi-
ration from biology rather than classical physics
continued to be employed in the laboratory-based
psychological sciences.
7
Cognitive Science
Explanatory appeals to mechanisms have been
pervasive in the allied cognitive sciences. This
has its roots in the early efforts of cognitive neu-
ropsychology to link impairments in basic psy-
chological capacities to localized brain damage,
from the late nineteenth century onwards. Though
rarely couched in strictly mechanistic terms, such
work helped establish the idea that mental func-
tions were grounded in the machinery of the brain
(Shallice 1988). In this literature, it is more com-
mon to find discussion of the related concept
“modularity,” best understood in this context as
specialized, separately modifiable neural systems.
But this is not to imply a uniformity of explana-
tory commitments; not all of neuropsychology is
overly reductive. Modularity has remained highly
contentious, with some preferring the notion of
cognitive or psychological modularity, and many
neuropsychologists have endorsed a relatively
loose, even decoupled relation between mind
and brain. For example, what has been termed
“ultra-cognitive neuropsychology” holds that
investigations of impairments to mental function
can proceed without undue attention to neural
detail (Coltheart 2006).
More recently, there has been an explicit
embrace of the concept of mechanism across a
number of research programs in cognitive psy-
chology and cognitive neuroscience. Here again
there are diverse uses of the term, all representing
a species of causal claim. But amongst this vari-
ance, what has been called the “new mechanism”
paradigm has become increasingly influential
(Andersen 2014). First elaborated by philosophers
of science directly engaged with the biological
sciences, this approach signals a further shift
away from the search for law-like relations
towards a focus on the explanatory practices of
working scientists. In the simplest terms, explana-
tions of mechanisms target regularities, or patterns
of causal relation, in the natural world and then
work to identify the underlying entities and activ-
ities. For instance, in Discovering Complexity, the
philosophers William Bechtel and Robert Rich-
ardson have illustrated how this strategy has been
8 Psychological Mechanisms

applied (1993/2010) to research on genetics, cell social and environmental factors in many research
biology, and cognitive neuroscience. programs within cognitive science, which may
Within neuroscience, the investigation of require the expansion of mechanistic models.
mechanisms, as working parts that regularly pro- The increased attention to network models will
duce phenomena, has obvious implications for the also require reconciliation with more traditional
study of psychological mechanisms. The most notions of mechanism (for discussion of related
relevant, and influential, account is probably the issues, see Craver and Tabery 2016).
philosopher Carl Craver’s Explaining the Brain
(2007), which developed a theoretical framework
for describing the investigation of the components
Conclusion
that make up the mind and brain. In order to
capture all of the entities and activities that are
The concept of mechanism has played a consis-
relevant to the explanation of any particular func-
tent, if quite varied, role in the history of psychol-
tion or capacity, this approach to mechanisms is
ogy. Different traditions have used it in very
relatively inclusive, positing multi-level models.
different ways. This can be seen clearly in the
For example, Craver’s well-known mechanistic
work of the leading theorists of the psychoana-
sketch of spatial memory in mice includes appeal
lytic, behaviorist, and cognitive paradigms, not to
to the animal’s behavior under experimental con-
mention specific research programs operating in
ditions (i.e., navigating a maze), its hippocampus
each tradition. Significant points of divergence
creating a spatial map of sorts, neurons inducing
center on several key themes, including the
long-term potentiation, as well as the activation of
scope of explanation, deterministic commitments,
N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. While
and views on the relationship between the mind
largely concerned with neurobiology, such
and body. This diversity of usage arguably shares
models are nonreductive, and pragmatic, in that
at least one methodological feature, however,
they require the inclusion of any and all variables
which is simply that the appeal to psychological
that contribute to the overall explanation of the
mechanisms has served as an explanatory heuris-
phenomenon in question, including observable
tic, or even as an organizing metaphor. There are
behavior and, potentially, internal mental states.
certainly researchers committed to an ontic con-
Psychological variables are likely to have a
ception of mechanisms (as entities and activities
place within mechanistic models, as important
that actually exist in the world). But for many
parts of the broader explanatory story (Bechtel
research programs, mechanisms are a kind of
2008). But of course this leaves a number of
placeholder or promissory note, to be filled out
unresolved issues. First and foremost, the rela-
empirically through ongoing investigation. Thus
tions between different types of entities and activ-
psychological mechanisms will inevitably take on
ities placed on different levels are an ongoing
new and perhaps unforeseen configurations and
challenge. In other words, if a model includes
applications.
psychological variables as well as neurobiological
variables, then there may be lingering questions
about causal prioritization (i.e., which compo-
nents are the most causally relevant?). And of Cross-References
course there will always be deeper metaphysical
questions (i.e., the mind-body problem). The rap- ▶ Defense Mechanisms
idly changing landscape in the cognitive sciences ▶ Evolved Psychological Mechanisms
also poses challenges to the development of com- ▶ Freud, Sigmund
prehensive and convincing mechanistic explana- ▶ Hull, Clark
tions. Newly emerging empirical findings ▶ Reaction Formation (Defense Mechanism)
continue to force adjustments to specific models. ▶ Watson, John
This includes the increasingly significant role of
Psychological Mechanisms
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