Social Psychological Theory and Falsification

Abstract

Greenwald has suggested that the failure to settle the issue between dissonance and self-perception theories may be attributed to the fact that the operational definitions of these theories are not well-established. Therefore, unpredicted data do not necessarily disconfirm these theories; the new findings are instead incorporated into their operational definitions. Leary examined Greenwald's proposal in light of the new philosophy of science (the Holistic approach) and concluded that it is unfounded. The present contention is that, although social psychology is susceptible to the analysis of the Holistic approach, the problem of the connection between theory and data in social psychology can be distinguished from the Holistic view concerning falsification. In support of this claim, four different problems related to the theory-data connection are discussed. A comparison between the natural sciences (especially classical physics, from which the Holistic approach was developed) and social psychology is made in relation to these four problems, and it is found that, while they have very little effrct, if any, in the former, they' have a major effect in the latter.