A common criticism of social constructionism is that it is anti-scientific. For the Oxford philosopher of science and social psychologist Rom Harré, that concern can represent a narrow understanding of science. This has particularly been the case given that much social science, particularly psychology, has tried to account for what it is to be human without acknowledging the central human characteristics of reasoning, agency and social interaction. Harré's discursive view of being human is a powerful critique of, and antidote to, prevailing psychological perspectives.

In his classic text that put the original first generation of cognitive psychology on the map, Ulrich Neisser noted that ‘the basic reason for studying cognitive processes has become as clear as the reason for studying anything else: because they are there … Cognitive processes surely exist, so it can hardly be unscientific to study them’ (1967: 5).