Collin Barnes
- Kendall 311
- [email protected]
The above personal links are controlled by the individual and are not any form of representation of statement by Hillsdale College. They are provided as a convenience and views expressed on the sites may not reflect the views or opinions of the College.
“My approach to teaching psychology begins with treating the ways of thinking that motivate different kinds of psychological inquiry as the most important discoveries students can make.”— Collin Barnes
Faculty Information
Additional Faculty Information for Collin Barnes
Education
B.S. in Psychology, John Brown University
M.S. in Social-Personality Psychology, University of Oklahoma
Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology, University of Oklahoma
Memberships
Michael Polanyi Society
Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
Publications
Barnes, C.D. “Social Psychology as a Stable Interpretative Framework Irrefutably Committed to the Scientific Study of Persons and Society,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2022.
Barnes, C.D. “Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge as a Work of Alchemy in the Jungian Sense,” International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2022.
Barnes, C.D. “A Polanyian Appraisal of Likert-scale Measurement in Social Psychology,” Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical, 2022.
Barnes, C.D. “Attuning Psychology to Contingent Knowledge from a Post-critical Perspective,” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2020.
Barnes, C.D. “Do psychologists understand honor cultures when they operationalize them?,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2020.
Barnes, C.D. “A Polanyian response to ‘Psychology’s Renaissance.’” Tradition and Discovery, 45 (2019): 39-50.
Barnes, C.D., Pomerantz, A., & Yashko, L. “Children cover your eyes: Masculine honor and the role of blind patriotism in teaching national allegiance to posterity.” Political Psychology, 37 (2016): 817-834.
Barnes, C. D., Brown, R. P., Lenes, J., Bosson, J., & Carvallo, M. “My country, my self: Honor, identity, and aggressive opposition to national threats.” Self and Identity, 13 (2014): 638-662.
Barnes, C. D., Brown, R. P., & Osterman, L. “Don’t tread on me: Masculine honor ideology in the U.S. and militant responses to terrorism.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38 (2012): 1018-1029.
Biography
My love for psychology, and particularly social psychology, was born from a fascination with the way that abstract notions such as motivation and personality can be quantified in measurement procedures. I was likewise enchanted by the ingenuity of professionals who created controlled laboratory situations that approximated real-world events for the purpose of testing hypotheses. Today, however, my fascination with psychology revolves around questions about the discipline’s philosophical and historical roots and how the aspirations of science are expressed differently by early, influential figures in the field. I believe that the philosopher-scientist model exemplified by these early thinkers needs to be recovered.
My approach to teaching psychology begins with treating the ways of thinking that motivate different kinds of psychological inquiry as the most important discoveries students can make. I show how John B. Watson’s desire for strict objectivity compelled him to eschew the mind as only a word and reduce all psychology to behavior. I highlight in the writings of Wolfgang Kohler his insistence that naïve observation is the entry point for psychological investigation and that direct experience can be the object of legitimate scientific study. I underline Carl Jung’s conviction that psychical and societal life are properly understood as manifestations of our primordial past and that the psyche, as an autonomous reality, cannot be understood in strictly biological terms.
The consequences of such ideas for how we see ourselves is enormous. By considering them openly, my aim is for students to see how every method of inquiry has a particular epistemology as its starting point. Where our questions take us depends on the direction our epistemology is pointing. Beyond this, I want students to appreciate the permeability of disciplinary boundaries and the crucial role of liberal learning in forming this appreciation. By showing students my own labors to liberally educate myself, I hope to inspire them to do the same.