2026/02/13 by Noah N'Djaye Nikolai van Dongen, Andreas Glöckner, Philipp Musfeld +22 · 2 voices · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology #Mental Health Research Topics #Philosophy and History of Science
paper · doi:10.31234/osf.io/2fjx4_v2
openalex publication_date 2026/02/13 · openalex created_date 2026/02/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Psychology’s theory problem, long noted since Meehl, persists: most theories are verbal, underspecified, and make weak predictions, so hypotheses rarely follow from theory and findings seldom constrain it. Historical empiricism and today’s incentives (novelty, significance, volume) favor flexible, low-risk, strategically vague theorizing, while reforms and training emphasize methods over theory construction and formal/computational modeling. The result is fragmented subfields, drifting constructs, and “effects” that don’t cumulate—fueling replication failures, post-hoc rationalization, and shallow applied progress. Improving epistemic design requires educating and rewarding precise, falsifiable theories.