ReviewIntegrative psychological & behavioral science2009
Is psychology based on a methodological error?
Review in Integrative psychological & behavioral science, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Epistemological Alienation in Scientific Psychology.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2024Article
- Debates about the Scientific Status of Psychology: Looking at the Bright Side.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2016Review
- The living fossil of human judgment.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2014Article
- Peeking into personality test answers: inter- and intraindividual variety in item interpretations.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2013Article
- Personality psychology: lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts reveal only half of the story--why it is time for a paradigm shift.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2013Article
- A moderate eclecticism: ontological and epistemological issues.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2012Article
- Tension between the theoretical thinking and the empirical method: is it an inevitable fate for psychology?Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2012Article
- The fault is not in ourselves, but in our methods: comment on Schwarz.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2010Article
- Three approaches to the disjunction between psychological measurement and psychological persons: methodological and ethical considerations.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2010Article
- Historizing epistemology in psychology.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2010Article
- Biological roots of foresight and mental time travel.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2010Review
- A stale challenge to the philosophy of science: commentary on "Is psychology based on a methodological error?" by Michael Schwarz.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2010Article
- "Der Weisheits letzter Schluss"? Wisdom's last conclusion?: commentary on "is psychology based on a methodological error?" by Michael Schwarz.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2009Article
- Shifting loyalties: reconsidering psychology's subject matter.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2009Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is believed a proven fact that variables in social and personality psychology match to normal distribution with its single peak. Multiple peaks are explained by independent variables. However, after a comprehensive data analysis of more than 8.000 patients and on the basis of a bio-psycho-social model with 27 scales, we arrived at the conclusion that normal distribution and the psychometric error theory cannot withstand critical analysis in large samples. Beyond the "truth" that is proved by distribution-dependent statistical inferences, there exists another "truth" that is denied by the empirical doctrine. This "truth" is influenced by compensatory belief systems and explains paradoxes in quality of life research. We hypothesize that items, referred to life risks are micro-stressors, triggering self-regulatory processes as a humanly inherent response, deeply anchored in human evolution. Especially when exposed to threatening experiences, self-focused attention generates amplified multimodal distributions and subverts the methodological premises by an ambivalence-bias between thrill and threat, hopes and fears, pleasure and pain, success and failure, etc. In this article we want to focus attention to the incommensurability between test theoretical axioms and the way people usually respond to self-focused items. We discuss basic distribution patterns and approach to an evolutionary theory of fluctuation of validity.
Indexed as
Identifiers
19330558What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.