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
You can't psychologize it out of us, even if we admit that it is bad.
From Cinderella Jane by Cooke, Marjorie Benton
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 Cummings, Lettie M.
"The Banker's Daughter," "Old Love Letters" and "Hurricanes" would scarcely revive, so changed our comedy treatment, so differently psychologized our emotion.
From Shenandoah Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 by Moses, Montrose Jonas
It’s not merely trendy psychologizing to salute the qualities of a sturdy tree: a humbling reminder of time’s immensity, but also a living embodiment of shelter, change and growth.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 2026
And yet, surprisingly, Linney’s and Hawke’s doubling duty never comes off as cheap psychologizing of the writer’s relationship with a parent who didn’t get her.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2024
And so we’re reduced to psychologizing the man and trying to figure out what he does care about—and what private incentives, if any, he responds to.
From Slate ● Jan. 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
They follow in fact upon a more primary type of living, acting form, a type to which the "pathetic fallacy" or any other manner of psychologizing may not apply.
From Creative Intelligence Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude by Bode, Boyd H.
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.
