Theory Construction in Social Personality Psychology

Personal Experiences and Lessons Learned: A Special Issue of personality and Social Psychology Review

Arie W. Kruglanski, E. Tory Higgins

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781135066529
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This special issue features papers that offer deeply felt, valuable perspectives on diverse aspects of theory construction in social-personality psychology. The goal is to furnish a basis for starting a discussion about the considerable challenges of theorizing, the ways of meeting those challenges, and the great rewards that successful theorizing offers to the discipline as a whole.

A Perspectivist Approach to Theory Construction

William J. McGuire

Department of Psychology
Yale University

Reprint requests should be sent to William J. McGuire, Department of Psychology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208205; New Haven, CT 06520-8205. E-mail: [email protected]

A perspectivist approach is taken to the theory-construction process in psychological research. This approach assumes that all hypotheses and theories are true, as all are false, depending on the perspective from which they are viewed, and that the purpose of research is to discover which are the crucial perspectives. Perspectivism assumes also that both the a priori conceptual phase of research and the a posteriori empirical phase have both discovery and testing functions. Topics discussed include how the perspectivist approach can improve methodology training and practice (particularly as regards theory construction); what researchers accept as theoretical explanations; the nature of mediational theories; how theories can be formalized, expressed in multiple modalities and for various scaling cases; and how experimental designs can be enriched by theory-guided mediational and interactional variables.

Psychologists have co-opted as their just demesne a fascinating range of topics for study, but the yield of their studies often falls disappointingly short of their promise, evoking worry that psychologists possess a Sadim (reverse Midas) touch such that every hypothesis we touch turns to dross. Part of the problem is that we fail to create explanatory theories that are as interesting as the topics they are supposed to explain. Here I propose improvements in our methods and substance courses that would empower psychologists to construct nonobvious, even counterintuitive, theories that are as fascinating as the topics that earlier enticed us into psychology.

Scope of a Perspectivist Approach to Theory Construction in Psychology

A perspectivist reconceptualization of methodology (McGuire, 1989, 1999) is proposed here better to realize the creative potential of one’s theorizing. Beginning with definitions of basic concepts such as variables, hypotheses, and theories, I describe creative theorizing processes, especially mediational theories, as regards their ubiquity, logical structure, subtypes, and alternatives. I discuss theory desiderata that are often ignored and even deplored, such as the usefulness of formalizing theories and of expressing them in multiple modalities and for diverse cases as regards scaling of their variables. Finally, I discuss how a perspectivist approach can guide our theory construction to add interesting mediational and interactional variables to one’s experimental design before one begins the labor-intensive empirical investigation of one’s hypotheses and their theoretical explanation.

The perspectivist approach re-establishes as a researcher’s main responsibility and opportunity the creation rather than the testing of theory. I describe how one’s research can be done not only better but more joyously, theory creation being the ultimate pleasure in a life in science. As Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918/1998) in his sonnet “To R. B.” explains to Robert Bridges that what sustained him in his often grim creation was the roll, the rise, the carol, the creation that warmed his winter world. We need this, he wrote, the one rapture of an inspiration, the fine delight that fathers thought … and leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.

The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim

Now known and hand at work now never wrong. (Hopkins, 1918/1998)

Miss this glorious undertext and one misses my message. By exploiting perspectivism, one can make research a class act.

Some Basic Concepts: Variables, Hypotheses, and Theories

A major purpose of psychological research is to generate and evaluate knowledge representations, usually formalized verbally as propositions (hypotheses, predictions) that state relations between variables of interest. Psychological variables are aspects (including thoughts, feelings, and actions) on which people differ from one another. Our usual simple main-effect monotonic hypotheses assert a positive or negative (direct or inverse) relation between an independent variable, IV, from which we are predicting and a dependent variable, DV, to which we are predicting, DV = f (IV). Variables are related to the extent that knowing where people are located on the IV allows us to improve, by more than a chance amount, the accuracy of our predictions of where these people are located on the DV. Other types of variables beside IV and DV to be considered later are mediating variables (MV), interactional variables (_iIV), control variables (CV), exploratory variables (EV), and serendipitous variables (SV).

Variables of each type, which together make up the molecules of one’s knowledge, can usefully be given a conceptual definition and an operational definition. For example, if one is studying aggressiveness, one might begin developing a conceptual definition as “a tendency deliberately to hurt another person,” and one might begin an operational definition in terms of some specific set of observable operations of a person (the participant) in a designated situation (e.g., how many times an angered preschooler kicks an inflated Bobo doll). Conceptual definitions tend to be more useful for generating knowledge (hypotheses, theory) and operational definitions tend to be more useful for evaluating this knowledge.

A main-effect hypothesis is a proposition that states a predicted relation between variables, usually having as its logical structure IV

DV. A hypothesis uses knowledge (a) of where a sample of people fall on the IV and (b) of a theorized relation between IV and DV to predict (c) where these people fall on the DV. A theory is a proposition or a set of propositions that explain (account for) such a hypothesized relation. Definitions and labels other than those previously mentioned for variable, hypothesis, and theory are tenable (and some alternatives are touched on later), but these definitions are powerful and widely held at least implicitly.

Specific characteristics on which people vary (aggressiveness, helpfulness, intelligence, exposure to the mass media, popularity, political attitudes, and so on) can fall into any of these types of variables (e.g., IV, DV, MV, _iIV, CV, EV, SV) by virtue of where they enter a specific argument under study. For example, aggression may be an IV in one hypothesis (argument), as when we are predicting how persons’ levels of aggression will affect how liked the person will be (Agg

Lik); in another argument aggression may be a DV, as when we are predicting how exposure to televised violence will affect viewer aggressiveness (TV

Agg). The IV is often but not always the cause and the DV the effect in the hypothetical relation.

Assembling the Variables on Which One’s Research Program Will Focus

Definitions and terminology like those described previously can be developed to describe rigorously and manageably how psychologists (and other scientists) can create knowledge. First, he or she selects and makes explicit to self and intended audience the basic topic of the inquiry. This is usually the DV (and sometimes the IV) point of departure for a hypothesis (i.e., for a predicted relation between variables) and for its explanatory theory. For example, if the researcher is a personality theorist or a student of human conflict, he or she might start by choosing aggressiveness as the basic variable to be studied. Second, if media oriented, the theorist might generate the hypothesis that exposure to televised violence will increase people’s levels of aggressiveness (IV_t

DV_a). Third, he or she might generate a mediating theory (IV → MV₁ → DV) to explain, or account for, this hypothesized relation.

Ordinarily the researcher should cast a wider net to include a broader range of variables than these three in the experimental design before proceeding to an empirical investigation. However, a researcher might decide at this point (e.g., for pedagogic purposes) to move somewhat prematurely into data collection and data analysis. If so, the researcher would measure a represe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Theory Construction in Social Personality Psychology: Personal Experiences and Lessons Learned
• Metatheory: Lessons from Social Identity Research
• Taking the Social Origins of Human Nature Seriously: Toward a More Imperialist Social Psychology
• Common Sense, Intuition, and Theory in Personality and Social Psychology
• Tools, Toys, Truisms, and Theories: Some Thoughts on the Creative Cycle of Theory Formation
• Mind the Gap: In Praise of Informal Sources of Formal Theory
• Making a Theory Useful: Lessons Handed Down
• The Benefits of Abstract Functional Analysis in Theory Construction: The Case of Interdependence Theory
• The Quest for the Gist: On Challenges of Going Abstract in Social and Personality Psychology
• Collaboration: The Social Context of Theory Development
• A Perspectivist Approach to Theory Construction
• Dynamical Minimalism: Why Less is More in Psychology
• Theory in Social Psychology: Seeing the Forest and the Trees
• A Personalized Theory of Theory Construction
• The Naive Epistemology of a Working Social Psychologist (Or the Working Epistemology of a Naive Social Psychologist): The Value Of Taking “Temporary Givens” Seriously