Microsoft Word - 1. Editorial.doc


Europe’s Journal of Psychology 3/2009, pp.1-2  

www.ejop.org 

 

 

 

The Psychology of Specialization and Specialization in Psychology 

 

 

By Fathali M. Moghaddam 

Georgetown University 

 

 

Some years ago I committed blatant heresy by publishing a book that questions one 

of the sacred beliefs of the modern world; namely, that specialization is necessarily 

beneficial. This belief has become sacred because it is derived from two lines of 

argument, each of which is independently taken for granted as received wisdom. 

The first line of argument derives from the ideas of Adam Smith (1723-1790), 

particularly as set out in The Wealth of Nations. By increasing divisions of labor, Smith 

argued, workers could become more productive, “The division of labour… so far as it 

can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportional increase of the 

productive powers of labour.” The second line of argument is derived from an even 

more illustrious source, Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) monumental scientific treatise 

on the Origin of Species. The theory of evolution seems to imply that specialization is 

necessary to maximize the utilization of environmental resources, find ‘vacant 

spaces’, and increase survival chances. Taken together, Smith and Darwin seem to 

present increasing specialization as an inevitable and necessary path to increasing 

production and improving survival opportunities. 

 

In The Specialized Society (1997), I argued that specialization in areas such as human 

education and research should not be designed according to purely materialist 

criteria, such as ‘productivity’.  Education and research must give priority to training 

the ‘whole person’ and to the individual as a unique, independent, complete entity, 

rather than to shaping the individual as ‘a specialized part of a whole’.  I continue to 

wonder, was I being too idealistic?  The sub-title of The Specialized Society is The 

Plight of the Individual in an Age of Individualism, and I wonder if I was being too 

idealistic to question and spotlight that plight? 

 

Graduate education seems to be forcing students into narrower lines of research, 

which if they are successful will be published in ever more specialized journals.  In 



 

 

Europe’s Journal of Psychology 

 

 

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every major domain of research, there are now ten and in some instances twenty or 

forty or fifty times more specialized journals than there were several decades ago. I 

used to be able to keep up with the half a dozen or so journals in my academic 

area, but now there are dozens and dozens of specialized journals publishing on 

topics ‘in my field’ and I do not even keep up with the titles of papers being 

published.  Is this trend beneficial? Does this trend represent progress?  Perhaps it 

does in a way, but these are questions we seldom discuss, because we are all 

hurrying to publish the next paper in our increasingly specialized journals. We do not 

have time for such ‘large’ questions, we are too deeply immersed in our specialized 

lines of research to be able to look about and critically examine the larger picture 

and our own development as whole persons. This continues to be the plight of the 

individual in an age of individualism. 

 

 

About the author: 

 

Fathali Moghaddam is Professor, Department of Psychology and Director, Conflict 

Resolution Program, Department of Government, at Georgetown University in 

Washington. He is also Senior Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Policy, 

Education and Research on Terrorism. Prof. Moghaddam has been published 

extensively on the psychology of intergroup conflict, subjective justice, radicalization, 

and terrorism. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 by the 

American Psychological Association's Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and 

Violence. Among his publications: The specialized society: The plight of the individual 

in a age of individualism (1997); Social psychology: Exploring universals across 

cultures (1998); From the Terrorists' Point of View: What They Experience and Why 

They Come to Destroy (2006) and Multiculturalism and Intergroup Relations: 

Psychological Implications for Democracy in Global Context (2008).