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
He developed psychological behaviorism, which included elements such as emotion and personality, to “behaviorize psychology and to psychologize behaviorism,” as his view is often explained.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 4, 2021
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
The legitimate way out is to transform the material; to psychologize it—that is, once more, to take it and to develop it within the range and scope of the child's life.
From The Child and the Curriculum by John Dewey
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
This method of choice is the logical, which through use and adaptation has become psychologized.
From A Study of Fairy Tales by Laura F. Kready
The psychologized is of interest—that is, it is placed in the whole of conscious life so that it shares the worth of that life.
From The Child and the Curriculum by John Dewey
For all Catton’s rigorous psychologizing, the characters never step out of their frameworks to become people.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 3, 2023
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
The psychologizing is of a delicate sort — far from Hitchcock’s own ham-handed attempts, which his own characters seemed to mock.
From New York Times ● Apr. 6, 2021
On the other hand, some of that is people psychologizing themselves after the fact.
From Slate ● Nov. 8, 2019
The includes some "psychologizing" of persons in the play, specifically in partial analyses of Laertes, Polonious, and Hamlet, enough to foreshadow the later vogue but none of it very remarkable.
From Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) by Anonymous
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