Originally published: . Volume 11, No. 5. Source pages: 2.
Editor's Note:
In her inspiring critique, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett argues convincingly for a return to the study of individual differences, pointing out that the statistical mean is an abstraction that cannot capture the reality of an individual, and that research based on simplistic mechanisms ignores individuals as complex, dynamic systems. In other words, the tyranny of mean.
Barrett's advice is timely as we sit in a crisis with little help from the one-size-fits-all, illness care system, with treatments designed to increase profits through mass production, but with little true prevention and health outcomes that are logically more consistent with a third-world country.
Reprinted here with permission, Barrett's column first appeared in the March 2020 Observer, a membership magazine of the Association for Psychological Science.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.