"The Crisis of Theory Following the Crisis of Methods"

“The Crisis of Theory Following the Crisis of Methods”

This thread initiated by Ekaterina Damer has sparked numerous suggestions from psychologists on Twitter.

Here are the majority of the suggestions, along with their recommenders in parentheses. I have not read these, but I wanted to gather them in one location. Comments are welcome if you have additional recommendations.

– (Iris van Rooij) [“How does it function?” vs. “What are the principles?” Two views on psychological explanation](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f5b1/b05e8313aee94ccd98e80eab3ec56dbd2c97.pdf). Robert Cummins

– (Ed Orehek) [Theory Development in Social Personality Psychology: Personal Insights and Lessons Acquired: A Special Issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327957pspr0802_1)

– (Djouria Ghilani) [Personal Insights on Theory and Psychology](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959354310378184). Gerd Gigerenzer

– [Selected Works of Barry N. Markovsky](https://works.bepress.com/barry_markovsky/)

– (essentially everyone, but Tal Yarkoni articulated it this way) Meehl stated nearly everything there is to convey about this:
– [Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological contradiction](http://meehl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1696/f/074theorytestingparadox.pdf)
– [Evaluating and modifying theories: The approach of Lakatosian defense and two principles that justify it](http://meehl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1696/f/147appraisingamending.pdf)
– [Why summaries of research on psychological theories tend to be vague](http://meehl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1696/f/144whysummaries.pdf)
– (By the way, [PsychBrief](https://twitter.com/PsyBrief) has been examining Meehl and offers detailed summaries here: [Paul Meehl on philosophy of science: video lectures and papers](http://psychbrief.com/meehl-videos-papers/))

– (Burak Tunca) [What Theory is Not](http://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/papers/stawtheory.pdf) by Robert I. Sutton & Barry M. Staw

– (Joshua Skewes) Valerie Gray Hardcastle’s “How to construct a theory in cognitive science”.

– (Randy McCarthy) Chapter 1 of Gawronski, B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2015). Theory and explanation in social psychology. Guilford Publications.

– (Kimberly Quinn) McGuire, W. J. (1997). [Creative hypothesis generation in psychology: Some beneficial heuristics](http://sing.stanford.edu/cs303-sp11/papers/mcguire_hypothesis_gen.pdf). Annual review of psychology, 48(1), 1-30.

– (Daniël Lakens) Jaccard, J., & Jacoby, J. (2010). Theory Construction and Model-building Skills: A Practical Resource for Social Scientists. Guilford Press.

– Fiedler, K. (2004). Tools, toys, truisms, and theories: Some reflections on the innovative cycle of theory development. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(2), 123–131.

– (Tom Stafford) Roberts and Pashler (2000). [How convincing is a good fit? A commentary on theory evaluation](https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt5vt0z72k/qt5vt0z72k.pdf)

From the dialogue, it is evident that the theory crisis will be as diverse and full of disagreement as the methods crisis.

**Updates 16 August 2018**

– (Richard Prather) Simmering et al (2010). [To Model or Not to Model? A Conversation on the Role of Computational Modeling in Developmental Science](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3103214/)

– (Brett Buttliere: we established a Facebook group to discuss theory) [Psychological Theory Discussion Group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/153619768802306/about/)

– (Eric Morris) Wilson, K. G. (2001). [Some remarks on theoretical constructs: types and validation from a contextual behavioral perspective](http://www.ijpsy.com/volumen1/num2/23/some-notes-on-theoretical-constructs-types-EN.pdf)

– (Michael P. Grosz) [The