Just over a decade ago, I left one Ph.D. program to join another. I was working on a lot of traditional questions in Psychology, and approaching them in relatively traditional ways — nothing about it was especially satisfying to me. Well, okay, nothing about it was satisfying at all. But that’s another story. So, I found myself jumping ship, heading down to Texas to pick up a Psychology Ph.D. while working with someone who was, at the time — and, frankly, still is — one of my heroes, both intellectually and personally: Jamie Pennebaker.
I arrived with a solid foundation in traditional psychology — inferential statistics, study design, all the standard tools of the trade. But, very quickly, I realized that those things weren’t as crucial as I thought they would be. Jamie told me to go talk to some folks over in the computer science department and get trained in machine learning. I was deeply hesitant about whether I would be able to actually learn something that sounded so completely alien and complicated. So, I told him point-blank, something along the lines of “I don’t even know what machine learning is.” His response was refreshingly blunt — with a characteristic Jamie smirk, he shrugged and said “Me neither. But you probably should.” And just like that, I found myself plunging into a whole new world.
Before long, I was labeled the “interdisciplinary guy” — the one doing the “fancy computational stuff.” It was a label that I was never especially comfortable with. I’d often half-joke that a smart 16-year-old could probably do half of what I do, but better. But even as I resisted the label, I grew to understand its value. To others, especially those confined to more traditional academic boundaries, there was something inherently fascinating about people who straddle disciplines. Interdisciplinary thinkers often never feel fully at home in one field but hold a nuanced grasp of multiple domains. Imagine someone equally adept at explaining machine learning models and unpacking the complexities of human emotions. These individuals serve as bridges, translating insights between worlds that often remain isolated. They’re sometimes dismissed as a “jack of all trades, master of none,” but it’s precisely their cross-domain perspective that enables them to generate unique insights.
Hammers and Sailors: Two Types of Interdisciplinarians
In my experience, it’s possible to define “interdisciplinary” in two different ways:
- “The Hammer.” A person with expertise in one discipline who find ways to apply it to another.
These folks often tend to have outstanding expertise in one domain, and find ways to apply it to other areas of interest. These folks have hammers, and they’re always searching for nails. There’s definite value here — often, tried-and-true concepts from one discipline can illuminate new approaches in another. But sometimes, this approach can feel forced or superficial, like hammering a round peg into a square hole. It might lead to innovation, but it can also miss the subtleties or complexities of the new domain. And, to be clear, there are definitely some exceptionally oblivious and/or apathetic folks out there who seem to make a point of just bludgeoning research questions to smithereens despite the rest of us begging them to stop.
- “The Sailor.” A person who actually exists “between” disciplines.
The Sailor, on the other hand, doesn’t simply apply tools from one field to another — they navigate between worlds, genuinely splitting their time and effort across multiple disciplines. Sailors live in the uncertain space between domains, constantly navigating the fog to find meaningful connections between disparate ideas. This is a much more disorienting path, and it often means feeling unanchored, as if you don’t truly belong in any one place. Yet, this very uncertainty is what drives sailors to seek out new perspectives and build bridges that others might never consider.
I like to think of myself as more of a Sailor-type.1 One of the many things that Jamie Pennebaker has often repeated is that interdisciplinary researchers (presumably, of the “sailor” variety) are often the ones doing the most interesting work — they are doing things that have never been done before, viewing previously-unanswerable questions through previously-unused lenses, creating a crown splash where previously there was nothing but empty space.
The Art of Applied Insight: When Hammers Hit New Nails
Both the Hammer and the Sailor contribute value, but in distinct ways. Hammers apply existing ideas in new contexts, often testing how well established principles hold up in unfamiliar terrain. Think of a computer scientist applying machine learning techniques to psychology experiments. These thinkers don’t necessarily need deep expertise in the second field; they just need enough understanding to see whether their tools work effectively. This approach can lead to innovation but can also risk overlooking the nuances of the new domain.
Navigating the Unknown: Sailors in Uncharted Waters
Sailors, on the other hand, seek to truly understand multiple domains and build genuine, lasting connections between them. They invest time and energy into learning both fields in a way that goes beyond surface-level knowledge. They’re not simply looking for nails to hammer; they’re searching for entirely new maps. This often leads to feeling lost or disconnected from traditional academic paths, but it’s precisely in this “lost at sea” feeling where some of the most groundbreaking work happens. By moving between worlds, Sailors create new paradigms and novel approaches that specialists might never even consider.
Imagine trying to communicate the complexities of neural networks to a social psychologist, or explaining the constructionist theory of emotion to a computer scientist. This requires more than a basic understanding — it demands fluency in the vocabulary, frameworks, and paradigms of each discipline. The interdisciplinary thinker has to become a translator, fluent in the languages of both fields, and capable of threading the needle between them in a way that makes sense to both communities. It might not require absolute mastery of each discipline individually, but it requires an ability to understand the principles in the same way as the experts. And I mean really understand the ideas to the degree that they become as obvious and intuitive as they are to the experts.
Traditionalists and the Misfit’s Dilemma
Is being interdisciplinary inherently better than being a specialist? It’s tempting to think so, especially given how often we romanticize the idea of the Renaissance thinker who seems to have mastered everything. In reality, it’s not about being better or worse. The interdisciplinary approach is, quite simply, different, not superior. One of the greatest advantages is the ability to combine ideas from separate fields in ways that traditionalists may never even think to attempt. However, this freedom comes with its own set of challenges.
Traditionalists, deeply entrenched in their own areas of expertise, often don’t (and sometimes willfully won’t) fully understand or appreciate interdisciplinary work.2 The recurring theme here is that it often takes double the effort to figure out how to best explain the value of your work to radically different or heterogeneous audiences. I have heard many horror stories about interdisciplinary people in academia “falling through the cracks” because of the inherent difficulty in finding a home (department, research group, etc.) where one can feel like they are amongst their own people — people who understand their work. This, too, can be easily romanticized into the “starving artist” or “unappreciated genius” archetype. But the folks who share these stories have no romantic pretenses whatsoever.
Here’s my advice, both for interdisciplinary works and for life itself: embrace it. Embrace being a misfit, because it’s in those uncomfortable spaces where true innovation booms.
The Adventurer: Writing Between the Lines
Dropping value judgements altogether: interdisciplinary work isn’t about being better. It’s about opening yourself up to new ways of thinking and embracing the uncertainty that comes with it. Being interdisciplinary means being willing to live without solid footing, to constantly navigate the unknown, and to work with ideas that don’t always fit neatly together. It’s not a path for the faint of heart; it’s challenging, and often thankless, particularly in circles where traditional specialists are celebrated while interdisciplinary work is often admired in theory, but neglected in practice.
Despite all of the challenges, the satisfaction of bringing fresh perspectives to old problems (and old perspectives to fresh problems), and crossing boundaries in ways that others can’t or won’t or (most often) simply haven’t — this is pure, unadulterated magic.
Ultimately, interdisciplinary thinking isn’t about dominance or the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake.3 It’s about curiosity, creativity, and the courage to explore uncharted territory. The interdisciplinary thinker is an adventurer, pure and simple. Grab your hammers and hoist your sails, folks.
- Better examples than myself would probably include folks like my dear friends and colleagues, H. Andrew Schwartz and Morteza Dehghani and Dave Markowitz. Andy Schwartz is a bona fide computer scientist who is deeply curious about, and genuinely comprehends, psychometric principles better than 90% of psychologists I’ve ever met. Morteza is an all-around brilliant guy, and the rare kind of scholar who often innovates in two disciplines at the same time, seamlessly blending machine learning / natural language processing theory with psychological questions in a way that is truly one-of-a-kind. And Dave? Well, Dave is just an unstoppable, creative beast. There are many, many other folks who fit into this category — too many to name here — but we can all take comfort in the fact that there are a lot of incredibly smart people working on incredibly difficult but important problems. ↩︎
- Lynch, J. (2006). It’s not easy being interdisciplinary. International Journal of Epidemiology, 35(5), 1119–1122. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyl200 ↩︎
- One philosophy that resonates deeply with me comes from Carl Rogers’ On Becoming A Person. In it, he shares the perspective of an agronomy professor on learning, which I’ve found to be especially resonant:
“He stressed the futility of encyclopedic knowledge for its own sake, and wound up with the injuction, ‘Don’t be a damned ammunition wagon; be a rifle!'” (Rogers, 1961) ↩︎