London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2019 Mar;3(3):221-229. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0522-1. Epub 2019 Feb 11.
The replication crisis facing the psychological sciences is widely regarded as rooted in methodological or statistical shortcomings. We argue that a large part of the problem is the lack of a cumulative theoretical framework or frameworks. Without an overarching theoretical framework that generates hypotheses across diverse domains, empirical programs spawn and grow from personal intuitions and culturally biased folk theories. By providing ways to develop clear predictions, including through the use of formal modelling, theoretical frameworks set expectations that determine whether a new finding is confirmatory, nicely integrating with existing lines of research, or surprising, and therefore requiring further replication and scrutiny. Such frameworks also prioritize certain research foci, motivate the use diverse empirical approaches and, often, provide a natural means to integrate across the sciences. Thus, overarching theoretical frameworks pave the way toward a more general theory of human behaviour. We illustrate one such a theoretical framework: dual inheritance theory.
心理学领域面临的复制危机被广泛认为源于方法论或统计学方面的缺陷。我们认为，问题的很大一部分在于缺乏一个累积的理论框架。如果没有一个涵盖各个领域的总体理论框架来产生假设，那么实证项目就会从个人直觉和具有文化偏见的民间理论中产生和发展。通过提供明确预测的方法，包括使用正式建模，理论框架设定了期望，决定了新发现是确证性的、与现有研究路线很好地整合的，还是令人惊讶的、因此需要进一步复制和审查的。这些框架还优先考虑某些研究重点，激励使用不同的经验方法，并且通常为跨学科整合提供了自然的手段。因此，总体理论框架为更普遍的人类行为理论铺平了道路。我们将举例说明这样一个理论框架：双重继承理论。
