Title: Operationalization and generalization in experimental psychology: A plea for bold claims
Abstract:The rise of scientific psychology has been tied closely to the adoption of experimental techniques in the study of human cognition and behavior. Experiments provide an elegant and rigorous tool to tes...The rise of scientific psychology has been tied closely to the adoption of experimental techniques in the study of human cognition and behavior. Experiments provide an elegant and rigorous tool to test mechanistic theories and they do so by distilling a theoretically relevant idea into an observable measure as part of a behavioral task – a process commonly dubbed as operationalization. I argue that modern experimental psychology is plagued by a continued trend towards overlooking the critical role of such operationalization. This neglect manifests in two seemingly opposing ways, either in research that jumps to inadequate conclusions by playing down the role of tasks in generating the research findings or, conversely, in research that is mainly focused on examining tasks (“paradigms”) for their own sake rather than testing theoretical ideas. This state of affairs can be rectified by re-embracing the power of explicit, theory-driven operationalization as I discuss in general terms as well as applied to the exemplary case of research on rule-violation behavior. Shifting focus back to how a theoretical idea is operationalized in a given research program will help to render experimental research in psychology methodologically sound while at the same time being able to provide generalizable findings.Read More