Thread by @Oisin_Ryan_

New pre-print on topic of the theory crisis in ``soft’’ psychology: psyarxiv.com/ugz7y

Invisible Hands and Fine Calipers: A Call to Use Formal Theory as a Toolkit for Theory Construction. With Don Robinaugh, @jonashaslbeck @EikoFried and Lourens Waldorp.

Summary below! 1/

There's a growing consensus that psychological theory is in crisis: theories are rarely developed in a way that indicates knowledge accumulation, and are often absent from research entirely. More than 40 years ago Meehl raised these very same concerns bit.ly/2WGmDyE 2/

We argue that Meehl identified serious shortcomings in our evaluation of psychological theories and that his proposed solution would substantially strengthen theory testing. However, we also argue that he failed to provide researchers a set of tools for theory construction 3/

To advance psychology theory, we must equip researchers with tools to better generate, evaluate, and develop their theories. We argue that formal theories (such as implemented by mathematical or computational models) provide this much needed set of tools 4/

Most theories in ``soft'' areas of psychology take the form of verbal theories, and their precision is limited by the precision of verbal language. This in turn limits the deductions we can make based on that theory and so their usefulness for surrogative reasoning 5/

In contrast, formal theories express the structure of the theory in a more precise language, such as the language of mathematics, formal logic or computational programming. By doing so, formal theories allow researchers to precisely deduce the behavior implied by the theory 6/

We illustrate this using multiple different implementations of the "vicious cycle" of panic attacks, showing how each is consistent with the verbal theory, but each leads to very different patterns of behaviour. More on the Panic Model here: psyarxiv.com/km37w/ 7/

But how should we go about constructing formal theories in ``soft'' psychology? We lay this out in detail in a previous pre-print psyarxiv.com/jgm7f/ (images below).

Here we argue that the surest path to a good formal
theory is a bad formal theory 8/

We argue that formalizing a theory is a tool that aids theory development in five ways:

1. FTs uncover shortcomings and imprecisions in existing theory.

2. FTs allow us to evaluate explanations: Don't trust an explanation you can't simulate! (@westermann_io). 9/

3. FTs help us to develop theory further by comparing empirical and theory-implied data models

4. FTs force us to formalize our ideas about measurement: What variables are assessed and how they relate to components of the real world (what Meehl calls auxiliary hypotheses) 10/

5. FTs provide a tool for open and collaborative theory construction, facilitating truly cumulative science

Although underused in ``soft'' psych, we can learn from fields like mathematical & cognitive psych and computational psychiatry, where formal theories have a history 11/

Thanks to @BorsboomDenny for comments and tips. See bit.ly/2Uwh7Mh for a summary of some recent related work, and this thread bit.ly/33H9SoZ for a list of people working on this topic!