Interdisciplinary fields’ constant novelty churn causes rapid obsolescence of researchers

Evidence

The politics and psychology relationship has been lively and longlasting as interdisciplinary affairs go, its longevity fostered by frequent shiftings of its popular topics, methods, and theories. The fluidity has made participation both exciting and precarious, offering novelties that lure new recruits and facilitating the weeding out of tried-and-trivialized old constructs. The obverse of this tradition of novelty in interdisciplinary research is painfully rapid obsolescence. Earlier, the depth analysts of the political personality era were edged out of the fast lane by the survey researchers of the political attitudes era, well-funded to study U.S. presidential elections; now these second-era survey researchers are finding the third era’s cognitive science mavens tailgating to edge them out of the passing lane into cyberspace. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 386

Categorization

• XREF: The replacement-via-novelty dynamic echoes the broader pattern in communication culture studies about media and paradigm shifts.