The Problem of Coordination and the Pursuit of Structural Constraints in Psychology

Abstract

Paul Meehl's famous critique laid out in detail many of the pathological practices and conceptual confusions that stand in the way of meaningful theoretical progress in psychological science. Integrating some of Meehl's points, we argue that one of the reasons for the slow progress in psychology is the failure to acknowledge the problem of coordination. This problem arises whenever we attempt to measure quantities that are not directly observable, but can be inferred from observable variables. The solution to this problem is far from trivial, as demonstrated by a historical analysis of thermometry. Also, it is not a problem that can be solved by empirical means. At its center is the need for a clear understanding of the functional relations between theoretical concepts and observations. In the case of psychology, the problem of coordination has dramatic implications in the sense that it severely limits our ability to make meaningful theoretical claims. We discuss several examples and lay out some of the solutions that are currently available.

Invisible Hands and Fine Calipers: A Call to Use Formal Theory as a Toolkit for Theory Construction

“…Formalization requires that we specify precisely and transparently not only what variables are being assessed but also our assumptions about how those variables relate to components of the real world. In other words, researchers must specify the measurement function that links the component of the target system to the measured variable in the data (for an extended discussion, see Kellen et al, 2021).…”

Beyond Statistical Ritual: Theory in Psychological Science

“…Our mental traits are also unobservable, warping and shading into different contexts. Although measuring unobservable constructs is a challenge that even the “hard” sciences must face (Kellen et al, 2021; this issue), the extent of the challenge is unique to our science. Assessing “pride” across a variety of individuals and cultural contexts—or even just trying to understand whether such assessments are meaningful—is a challenge a particle physicist will never face.…”

“…Trivializing results by identifying them with “what we can arrive at through the application of a statistical procedure” leads to science that is increasingly divorced from the reality these results are meant to represent. When applied poorly, statistical operationalizations become tautologically defined as the unobservable phenomena they are intended to assess (see Kellen et al, 2021; this issue). When applied well, application of statistics enforces humility (e.g., a wide uncertainty interval leading one to doubt the results), but statistical models should always be understood to be useful metaphors .…”

Modeling the Wason Selection Task: a Response to Ragni and Johnson-Laird (2020)

“…Take an example from physics: the five parameters of the Ideal Gas Law, P • V = n • R • T , do not reflect ignorance on the theorist's part but a precise knowledge of how different attributes such as temperature T jointly determine the state of a gaseous body. We see no reason to think that parameters play a fundamentally different role in psychology (for a related discussion, see Kellen, Davis-Stober, Dunn, & Kalish, 2020). As discussed below, the IGT parameters reflect a specific understanding of the different reasoning and guessing processes that has been experimentally validated.…”