Properties of Theories

What constitutes a good theory?

Felix Schönbrodt

felix.schoenbrodt@psy.lmu.de

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

2024-08-12

What constitutes a good theory?

Inherent quality criteria - before the theory gets in contact with empirical data.

„experimental tests are often superfluous and we should instead focus more on nonempirical evaluations of the quality of our theories” (Szollosi & Donkin, 2021)

Empirical evidence for the theory (“Empirische Bewährung”), usually expressed as relative evidence compared to a competing theory.

Inherent quality criteria

A good theory …

defines the variables
specifies the domain
builds internally consistent relationships
makes specific predictions about phenomena that have not yet been observed (only specific predictions, which can also be false, allow falsifications)
unifies (seemingly) disparate phenomena

Wenn der Hahn kräht auf dem Mist, ändert sich’s Wetter oder bleibt wie es ist.

More properties of good theories

Slide from Karolin Salmen’s talk @ ZPID

Useful (for a specific purpose), not true

His design for a London underground railway was initially rejected as too revolutionary. Today, the technical draughtsman’s idea has gained worldwide acceptance - Beck simplified the route (only horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines) and ignored exact distances.

One of my favorite theories:

\(rB>C\)

A good theory is falsifiable?

Very difficult topic …

Quine-Duhem problem: A failed test always can either be attributed to (a) a core hypothesis (which would falsify / weaken the theory) or (b) an auxiliary hypothesis (“The manipulation did not work; the measurement was unreliable”)
Lakatosian defense (blaming the auxiliary, creating new ad-hoc auxiliary hypotheses)

(see Von Nordenflycht, A. (2023). Clean up Your Theory! Invest in Theoretical Clarity and Consistency for Higher-Impact Research. Organization Science, orsc.2022.16122. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16122)