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Communications Psychology volume 4, Article number: 74 (2026)
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Psychology in China is rapidly integrating neuroscience, data science, artificial intelligence, and engineering. While psychology-trained scholars remain the majority of faculty, there is an increase in the proportion of academics with a background in computational and natural sciences. This creates a tension: does the interdisciplinary direction imply the erosion of psychology’s disciplinary foundations, or can the field sustain its identity while expanding its conceptual and methodological boundaries?
Psychology is undergoing a transformative shift in China. Interdisciplinary approaches are increasingly recognized as essential for advancing theoretical innovation, methodological rigor, and societal relevance in the study of cognition and behavior. Traditionally grounded in behavioral experiments and survey-based methods, the field has been rapidly integrating neuroscience, biomedical engineering, data science, and artificial intelligence (AI). Some scholars argue that Chinese psychology should move beyond its conventional social- and natural-science framing and systematically strengthen its engineering orientation, evolving into a discipline that not only explains behavior but also builds scalable, technology-driven systems to meet national and societal needs1. The transformation seems to reflect a global redefinition of psychology as a discipline increasingly structured around multi-level investigations of mind and behavior2. In China, the scale and pace of this interdisciplinary expansion have been particularly pronounced, prompting concerns among some scholars: does interdisciplinary imply the erosion of psychology’s disciplinary foundations, or can the field sustain its identity while expanding its conceptual and methodological boundaries?
Faculty demographics across leading psychology departments in China illustrate a systematic trend of disciplinary rebalancing (Fig. 1). Survey data indicates that psychology-trained scholars are still the largest group, accounting for approximately 50% of faculty members consistently over recent decades. What has changed more substantially is the composition of the remaining half: the proportion of faculty members trained in education and medicine has declined markedly (from 35% to 22%), whereas those with backgrounds in other fields, including biology and computer science, are increasingly represented.
Shown is the proportion of faculty members with undergraduate training in psychology across major institutions at different time points, based on publicly available faculty profiles on department websites (N = 1404, from 29 departments with undergraduate majors identified for 913 individuals). Due to data limitations, year information is based on the time of PhD completion, which typically precedes the actual appointment date by several years. All the necessary data are available in the repository ChinaPsych at https://github.com/cognomicslab.
The redistribution highlights an important distinction: interdisciplinarity of psychology in China is not a process of replacement but of rebalancing. Psychology retains its disciplinary foundation while absorbing new methodological and theoretical resources from other natural and computational sciences. The result is a field that remains anchored in its identity even as it broadens its reach.
Despite this encouraging trajectory, several systemic barriers continue to impede the consolidation of interdisciplinary psychology in China. These barriers reflect persistent misalignments among incentive structures, training models, resource allocation, and research evaluation criteria. Four issues are particularly salient.
First, in many institutions, academic contributions are formally recognized only when a scholar is listed as first or corresponding author, and in some cases only when the primary affiliation is the home institution. These credit-allocation practices discourage cross-departmental and cross-institutional collaboration, thereby directly undermining interdisciplinary team science.
Second, educational and training programs have not kept pace with disciplinary convergence. Approximately two-thirds of psychology programs in China are housed in teacher-training universities, which traditionally emphasize psychology’s instructional role and social science orientation1. As a result, undergraduate curricula remain heavily centered on classical theories and traditional methodologies, with limited integration of neuroscience, data science, AI, and engineering. Many students therefore must engage in extensive self-directed learning in order to avoid entering graduate training without the conceptual and technical literacy required for contemporary interdisciplinary research.
Third, access to research infrastructure and funding remains constrained. Although leading psychology departments have benefited from advanced facilities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), often through national bond-funded initiatives, the high costs of data acquisition and maintenance limited high-impact research in the absence of stable, dedicated support for individual researchers. Funding is further constrained by structural fragmentation: psychology projects are dispersed across multiple review panels, with basic and cognitive research evaluated under neuroscience, and social or applied studies under education or social science frameworks. This dispersion intensifies competition across heterogeneous criteria and exacerbates inequities in sustained funding access.
Fourth, beyond influencing how collaboration is organized, evaluation systems also affect which research questions are pursued. Strong emphasis on publishing in specific high-impact journals incentivizes questions that are methodologically and rapidly publishable, which discouraging engagement with complex real-world psychological problems. Such problems often require sustained, interdisciplinary collaboration and extended time horizons, yet offer fewer immediate publication returns despite their long-term scientific and societal value.
Together, these challenges illustrate a structural paradox: despite substantial investments in infrastructure and active recruitment of faculty members with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, misaligned credit-allocation systems, outdated training models, constrained funding access, and publication-centered research priorities continue to constrain effective integration.
To transform existing constraints into opportunities and foster an environment in which interdisciplinary psychology can thrive, we propose four complementary directions for reform.
First, institutions should explicitly recognize the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary psychology and implement clear mechanisms to credit contributions in interdisciplinary projects, including roles beyond first or corresponding authorship. Transparent and standardized recognition of diverse roles in research teams will strengthen the foundations for integrative science.
Second, undergraduate and graduate curricula should integrate neuroscience, data science, AI, and other complementary disciplines, while emphasizing applied problem-solving skills. Structured interdisciplinary training modules, joint degree programs, and cross-departmental lab rotations can prepare students with the conceptual and technical literacy needed for contemporary research. Investment in mentorship and early exposure to interdisciplinary projects will cultivate a new generation of researchers capable of bridging theoretical and methodological divides.
Third, dedicated funding programs for psychology should be established, rather than dispersing psychological research across neuroscience or education funding categories. Interdisciplinary projects would further benefit from psychology-centered funding channels with joint review mechanisms that ensure fair and discipline-appropriate evaluation. In addition, establishing open-access platforms for neuroimaging and behavioral datasets will further democratize research opportunities and foster inclusive interdisciplinary collaborations.
Fourth, evaluation metrics should balance short-term publication output with the complexity, relevance, and translational potential of research questions. Grant programs and institutional assessments can explicitly reward long-term, interdisciplinary projects that address real-world psychological challenges3, even when immediate publication returns are limited. Encouraging problem-driven, rather than solely publication-driven, research will help cultivate a culture that value depth, integration, and societal relevance.
The discipline’s rebalancing towards interdisciplinary research offers an opportunity, if it uses new approaches as a catalyst for innovation, but remains rooted in tradition, attuned to societal needs, and ambitious in its intellectual reach.
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We thank Dao Zhou, Ruihan Tang, Ce Wang, Guoling Wu, Hanyu Yang, and Qiaoyi Ying for their invaluable assistance in compiling publicly available faculty information from departmental websites.
These authors contributed equally: Xirui Tao, Yi Pu.
Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Xirui Tao & Xiang-Zhen Kong
The State Key Lab of Brain-Machine Intelligence, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Xirui Tao & Xiang-Zhen Kong
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
Yi Pu
Department of Psychiatry of Sir Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
Xiang-Zhen Kong
Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development and Mental Health, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Xiang-Zhen Kong
PubMed Google Scholar
PubMed Google Scholar
PubMed Google Scholar
All authors conceptualized the study, drafted the manuscript, and contributed to revising the manuscript. X.K. supervised the project.
Correspondence to Xiang-Zhen Kong.
The authors declare no competing interests.
The manuscript was considered suitable for publication without further review at Communications Psychology. Primary Handling Editor: Troby Ka-Yan Lui. A peer review file is available.
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Tao, X., Pu, Y. & Kong, XZ. Rebalancing psychology in China. Commun Psychol 4, 74 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00460-5
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