Heisenberg, Kandinsky, and the heteromethod convergence problem: lessons from within and beyond psychology

During the past 100 years, advances in personality assessment have paralleled key events in art and physics; but for the most part, these parallels have gone unrecognized. In this article, I discuss the ways in which 2 movements in 20th-century art (cubism and nonrepresentational painting) and 2 principles from 20th-century physics (the uncertainty principle and the observer effect) combined to create an intellectual context for the process dissociation approach to personality assessment, a research strategy wherein naturally occurring influences on test scores are deliberately manipulated to illuminate underlying response processes. I discuss core elements of a process-focused paradigm for 21st-century personality assessment including (a) the need for researchers to explore test score divergences as well as convergences, (b) a view of the assessor as active shaper (rather than dispassionate observer) of testee behavior, and (c) the importance of integrating personality assessment concepts and methods with ideas and findings from disciplines within and outside psychology.