During my developmental period as a neophyte psychotherapist and psychology professor, I was reluctant to deviate from the fundamental, empirical principles and findings of either clinical practice or teaching. My fear stemmed from a sense that I did not possess the proficiency to extrapolate from principle to subtle application, let alone hypothetical possibility. In those days, I would not have thought it safe to generalize the findings of the courses I was teaching to content I then considered more appropriate to other psychology courses and even other disciplines. In other words, I did not feel secure applying course material from Personality Theories, Abnormal Psychology, Introduction to Psychology, and even Social Psychology far beyond direct and obvious applications to extra-classroom life experiences.
Richard Booth (Sat,) studied this question.