psychologize
Americanverb (used without object)
verb
-
to make interpretations of behaviour and mental processes
-
to carry out investigation in the field of psychology
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of psychologize
First recorded in 1820–30; psycholog(y) + -ize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Whether fake-wrestling or barhopping with women or trying to psychologize each other, neither guy really knows what’s fun or illuminating anymore.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2025
He oozes capability, of the mental and physical sorts, and though he has a tragic backstory he doesn’t seem particularly marked by it, as much as other characters might want to psychologize him.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 28, 2024
As often as not, his portraits suppress our impulse to psychologize by showing their subjects dead-eyed or asleep.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 6, 2022
That’s one way to think about it, the cynical, uncharitable, myopic way, the way you’d think about it if you wanted to psychologize Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable.
From New York Times ● Apr. 27, 2018
She had little power to psychologize concerning social conditions, but the stalwart constructive persistence of Cowperwood along commercial lines coupled with the current American contempt of leisure reflected somewhat unfavorably upon Lynde, she thought.
From The Titan by Theodore Dreiser
The characters are treated with odd touches of realism and their sophistic arguments are stingingly psychologized.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2017
Indeed, many psychologists—Handelsman included—have psychologized the scandal, citing Stanley Milgram’s work on obedience or Leon Festinger’s on dissonance as explanations for what happened.
From Slate ● Sep. 5, 2017
The murder of Lincoln, as writer Adam Gopnik has suggested, should not be psychologized.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 27, 2015
He was always affable and pleasing, especially when he desired to secure a person's approbation to being psychologized.
From Professor Huskins by Lettie M. Cummings
It needs to be psychologized; turned over, translated into the immediate and individual experiencing within which it has its origin and significance.
From The Child and the Curriculum by John Dewey
That’s good, in a way — explicit psychologizing of behavior is a dramatic dead end.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 16, 2024
This is the only conclusion one can draw from his psychologizing account of her work, which turns even her lightest on-screen gestures into plodding signifiers of anger and grief.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 14, 2021
On the other hand, some of that is people psychologizing themselves after the fact.
From Slate ● Nov. 8, 2019
There is also some heavy-handed psychologizing in regard to the early life of both main characters; it might have a basic in fact, but I didn't buy it on film.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2019
It was describing the developments of a character, was psychologizing as it had hitherto done only in conjunction with poetry or the theater.
From Musical Portraits Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers by Paul Rosenfeld
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
