Phenomenological reduction and quantitative psychology: a conflict in the study of self-consciousness.
Front Psychol January 5, 2026 Hu Ren
Quantitative psychology treats self-consciousness as a measurable attribute, using scales and causal models from a third-person perspective, but faces issues like contextual dependence and lack of natural units. Phenomenology, following Husserl, instead examines the pre-reflective, first-person dimension of self-consciousness that underlies all experience. It clarifies the meaning of measured scores by grounding them in lived experience, reframing contextual dependence as a feature rather than a limitation. The paper argues that phenomenology complements quantitative approaches by addressing meaning before causality, without dismissing the value of third-person analysis.