Predicted as observed? How to identify empirically adequate theoretical constructs

Erich H Witte; Adrian Stanciu; Frank Zenker

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.980261

Predicted as observed? How to identify empirically adequate theoretical constructs

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 1:13:980261. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.980261. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Erich H Witte¹, Adrian Stanciu², Frank Zenker³

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
² Data and Research on Society, GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Mannheim, Germany.
³ Department of Philosophy, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Abstract

The identification of an empirically adequate theoretical construct requires determining whether a theoretically predicted effect is sufficiently similar to an observed effect. To this end, we propose a simple similarity measure, describe its application in different research designs, and use computer simulations to estimate the necessary sample size for a given observed effect. As our main example, we apply this measure to recent meta-analytical research on precognition. Results suggest that the evidential basis is too weak for a predicted precognition effect of d = 0.20 to be considered empirically adequate. As additional examples, we apply this measure to object-level experimental data from dissonance theory and a recent crowdsourcing hypothesis test, as well as to meta-analytical data on the correlation of personality traits and life outcomes.

Keywords: Paul Meehl; crowdsourcing hypothesis test; dissonance theory; empirical adequacy; meta-analysis; personality research; precognition; theory construction.