Literature DB >> 19330558

Is psychology based on a methodological error?

Michael Schwarz1.   

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.

Entities:  

Mesh:

Year:  2009        PMID: 19330558     DOI: 10.1007/s12124-009-9089-8

Source DB:  PubMed          Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci        ISSN: 1932-4502


  13 in total

Review 1.  [The "Well-being paradox" in quality-of-life research].

Authors:  Peter Herschbach
Journal:  Psychother Psychosom Med Psychol       Date:  2002 Mar-Apr

2.  Culture of science: strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology.

Authors:  Aaro Toomela
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2007-03

Review 3.  Fragmentation or differentiation: questioning the crisis in psychology.

Authors:  Tania Zittoun; Alex Gillespie; Flora Cornish
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2008-12-05

Review 4.  Cognitive frames in psychology: demarcations and ruptures.

Authors:  Andrey V Yurevich
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2008-12-10

5.  Variables in psychology: a critique of quantitative psychology.

Authors:  Aaro Toomela
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2008-06-05

6.  Integrating psychology within the globalizing world: a requiem to the post-modernist experiment with Wissenschaft.

Authors:  Jaan Valsiner
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2009-01-21

7.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

Authors:  A Tversky; D Kahneman
Journal:  Science       Date:  1974-09-27       Impact factor: 47.728

8.  Unrealistic optimism about susceptibility to health problems: conclusions from a community-wide sample.

Authors:  N D Weinstein
Journal:  J Behav Med       Date:  1987-10

Review 9.  Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health.

Authors:  S E Taylor; J D Brown
Journal:  Psychol Bull       Date:  1988-03       Impact factor: 17.737

Review 10.  Beyond pleasure and pain.

Authors:  E T Higgins
Journal:  Am Psychol       Date:  1997-12
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  12 in total

1.  A stale challenge to the philosophy of science: commentary on "Is psychology based on a methodological error?" by Michael Schwarz.

Authors:  Nora Ruck; Thomas Slunecko
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2010-04-06

Review 2.  Biological roots of foresight and mental time travel.

Authors:  Aaro Toomela
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2010-06

3.  Historizing epistemology in psychology.

Authors:  Gordana Jovanović
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2010-12

4.  "Der Weisheits letzter Schluss"? Wisdom's last conclusion?: commentary on "is psychology based on a methodological error?" by Michael Schwarz.

Authors:  Meike Watzlawik
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2009-09

5.  Shifting loyalties: reconsidering psychology's subject matter.

Authors:  Zachary Beckstead
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2009-09

6.  Tension between the theoretical thinking and the empirical method: is it an inevitable fate for psychology?

Authors:  Yasuhiro Omi
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2012-03

Review 7.  Debates about the Scientific Status of Psychology: Looking at the Bright Side.

Authors:  Lucas B Mazur; Meike Watzlawik
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2016-12

8.  The living fossil of human judgment.

Authors:  Michael Schwarz
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2014-06

9.  Personality psychology: lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts reveal only half of the story--why it is time for a paradigm shift.

Authors:  Jana Uher
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2013-03

10.  Peeking into personality test answers: inter- and intraindividual variety in item interpretations.

Authors:  Grete Arro
Journal:  Integr Psychol Behav Sci       Date:  2013-03
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