Department of Theoretical Philosophy.
Department of Psychometrics and Statistics, University of Groningen.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2021 Jul;16(4):779-788. doi: 10.1177/1745691620970586. Epub 2021 Jan 29.
Meehl argued in 1978 that theories in psychology come and go, with little cumulative progress. We believe that this assessment still holds, as also evidenced by increasingly common claims that psychology is facing a "theory crisis" and that psychologists should invest more in theory building. In this article, we argue that the root cause of the theory crisis is that developing good psychological theories is extremely difficult and that understanding the reasons why it is so difficult is crucial for moving forward in the theory crisis. We discuss three key reasons based on philosophy of science for why developing good psychological theories is so hard: the relative lack of robust phenomena that impose constraints on possible theories, problems of validity of psychological constructs, and obstacles to discovering causal relationships between psychological variables. We conclude with recommendations on how to move past the theory crisis.
米伊尔（Meehl）在 1978 年提出，心理学理论来来去去，几乎没有累积性的进展。我们认为这种评估仍然成立，因为越来越常见的观点认为心理学正面临“理论危机”，心理学家应该投入更多精力进行理论建设。在本文中，我们认为理论危机的根本原因在于，发展良好的心理学理论极其困难，而理解为何如此困难是克服理论危机的关键。我们根据科学哲学讨论了三个关键原因，即为什么发展良好的心理学理论如此困难：缺乏强有力的现象来限制可能的理论、心理结构有效性的问题以及发现心理变量之间因果关系的障碍。最后，我们提出了如何克服理论危机的建议。
