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Here’s a question that’s been bouncing around: ‘What do we mean when we say psychology is conceptual?’
It sounds like academic jargon, I know. But stick with me, because this idea gets right to the heart of what makes psychology such a fascinating and essentially human field.
What ‘conceptual’ means
When we say psychology is conceptual, we’re pointing to something fundamental: the things psychologists study aren’t sitting out there in nature waiting to be discovered, like gold deposits or new species of beetle.
Think about it. ‘Memory’, ‘aggression’, ‘intelligence’, ‘attachment’, ‘depression’… these are all human-created concepts. We invented them. We drew the boundaries. We decided what counts as ‘aggression’ versus ‘assertiveness’, where ‘normal anxiety’ ends and ‘anxiety disorder’ begins, and what behaviors signal ‘secure attachment’.
These aren’t discoveries of pre-existing, naturally occuring things. They’re useful ways we’ve carved up the messy, continuous reality of human behavior.
Concepts change with time and culture
Here’s where it gets interesting. If psychological concepts were natural features, fixed features of reality, they’d be universal and unchanging. And of course, they’re not.
The concept of ADHD didn’t exist 100 years ago. ‘Hysteria’ was once a major diagnostic category; now it’s vanished from our textbooks. Different cultures conceptualize mental states in different ways. Some languages don’t even have a word that maps onto our concept of ‘depression’.
Our psychological concepts are also theory-laden. When we talk about ‘working memory’, we’re not just describing something neutral, we’re buying into a particular model of how cognition works. When Freudians spoke of ‘ego defence mechanisms’, they were smuggling in a whole theoretical framework.
So what’s the alternative?
If psychology is conceptual, what would it look like if it weren’t?
The alternative would be studying human behavior and experience as purely physical or biological phenomena. We’d focus only on directly measurable, observer-independent entities: neurons firing, neurotransmitter concentrations, brain structures, hormone levels, reaction times, genetic markers…
This would be neuroscience or physiology: concrete, physical, and measurable.
The problem is…
The problem is that most of what makes us human: love, identity, grief, creativity, the search for meaning…, these can’t be fully captured by purely physical descriptions.
You could give me a complete neural map of everything happening in someone’s brain during grief. Every synapse, every chemical cascade, every pattern of activation. And yet that description wouldn’t capture what grief is as a human experience. It wouldn’t tell you what it means to lose someone you love.
Living in the tension
This is why psychology occupies such uncomfortable territory. It sits between the natural sciences, which study observer-independent physical phenomena, and the human sciences, which study meaning-laden, conceptual phenomena.
Psychology is both at once. It studies real biological processes and culturally-situated concepts. It measures objective behaviors and interprets subjective meanings. It discovers and constructs.
This creates unique methodological and philosophical challenges. But it’s also what makes psychology interesting. We’re not just measuring things; we’re constantly negotiating what those things even are.
And that’s not a weakness. It’s the nature of studying something as complex, dynamic, and meaning-soaked as human experience.
What do you think? Does recognizing psychology as conceptual make it less scientific or does it make it more honest about what science of the human mind can actually be?
One of the quiet revolutions in teaching IB Psychology is this: our students no longer need to memorise outlines of 200 or more studies, each with two strengths and two limitations. That’s worth celebrating. It makes our subject lighter, more engaging, and far more relevant. Students can now focus on developing critical thinking, connecting concepts, and applying their knowledge rather than playing flashcard games with endless lists of studies.
But let’s not forget: research is the scientific foundation of psychology.
Would you teach ethics in psychology without telling your students about Little Albert and the white rat, Zimbardo’s appalling Stanford Prison Study, or Milgram’s not-so-appalling obedience experiments? Of course not. These are the stories that not only illustrate concepts but also bring to life the ethical debates that shape our subject.
Would we introduce social identity theory without Sherif’s Robbers Cave study? Could we possibly explain observational learning without Albert Bandura’s endlessly punched Bobo doll? And when we turn to methods, what better way to anchor quasi-experiments and neuroplasticity than Eleanor Maguire’s London taxi drivers, or to illuminate the case study method than Henri Molaison, whose memory loss is legendary?
The point is simple: research gives psychology its credibility.
Yes, assessment criteria don’t explicitly require studies by name. Students aren’t graded on whether they remember that it was 22 boys in Sherif’s camp or 72 children in Bandura’s playroom. But to teach any of the IB Psychology concepts with integrity, we must draw upon the research that produced them. Without robust studies and their conclusions, our discipline risks floating away into abstraction, detached from the science that grounds it.
So let’s celebrate freedom from rote memorisation, but let’s also celebrate the research itself. Studies are not an add-on; they are the very evidence that makes psychology worth studying.
Every year, I tell my students that sleep is just as important as revision and study habits when it comes to academic performance. And now, a compelling new study from the University of Cambridge and Fudan University gives us even more reason to double down on that message.
In a study involving over 3,000 teenagers, researchers discovered that those who:
Went to bed earlier,
Slept longer,
And had lower sleeping heart rates,
scored significantly higher on a range of cognitive tests, including reading, vocabulary, and problem solving.
Even more striking? The actual difference in sleep duration between groups was minimal—just 15 minutes between the lowest and highest scoring groups—yet this small variation had a surprisingly large impact on brain performance and function.
Brain scans revealed that teens with the best sleep habits not only performed better but also had larger brain volumes and more efficient brain function.
Despite these findings, even the best-sleeping teens in the study didn’t reach the 8–10 hours per night recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The healthiest group averaged just seven hours and 25 minutes of sleep.
Why? Teenagers face a biological shift toward later bedtimes during adolescence. Add in screen use, homework, social media, and caffeine—and you’ve got a generation of students consistently underslept.
We’re not powerless. In fact, this is where we shine. As Psychology teachers, we can…
1. Teach the Science of Sleep
Incorporate sleep research into your lessons on cognitive development, memory, and mental health. Use this new study to show how even small changes in sleep patterns make a real difference.
2. Debunk Myths
Help students understand that “catching up” on weekends (aka social jet lag) doesn’t undo the damage of sleep loss during the week. Emphasize consistency.
3. Promote Simple, Practical Changes
Share strategies backed by experts:
Encourage regular exercise to improve sleep quality.
Urge students to limit screens an hour before bedtime.
Support healthy bedtime routines, such as winding down with a book, journaling, or light stretching.
4. Embed Sleep into Pastoral Care
Work with your school’s wellbeing or pastoral team to create sleep hygiene workshops, or add sleep content into personal and social education. Oxford’s Teensleep project is a great resource for ideas and activities.
5. Make Sleep “Cool”
Reframe sleep as a performance enhancer. Better memory. Sharper thinking. Bigger brains. It’s the one lifestyle change that benefits everything from academics to mental health—and it doesn’t cost a thing.
Professor Barbara Sahakian, who co-led the study, put it best: “It’s the sleep driving the better cognitive abilities… Small differences in sleep amounts accrue over time to make a big difference in outcomes.”
Let’s empower our students to make those small changes—because every extra minute of quality sleep could mean a stronger brain, clearer thinking, and greater wellbeing.
Tom Coster - Psychology 