Beyond Mechanism in Psychological Theories of Learning

2021 ◽  
pp. 188-208
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Yanchar ◽  
Stephen W. Francis
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Danks

AbstractThe target article uses a mathematical framework derived from Bayesian decision making to demonstrate suboptimal decision making but then attributes psychological reality to the framework components. Rahnev & Denison's (R&D) positive proposal thus risks ignoring plausible psychological theories that could implement complex perceptual decision making. We must be careful not to slide from success with an analytical tool to the reality of the tool components.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-167
Author(s):  
John R. Lauck ◽  
Stephen J. Perreault ◽  
Joseph R. Rakestraw ◽  
James S. Wainberg

SYNOPSIS Auditing standards require external auditors to inquire of client-employees regarding their knowledge of actual or suspected fraud (PCAOB 2010b; AICPA 2016). However, the extant literature provides little guidance on practical methods that auditors can employ to increase the likelihood of fraud disclosure and improve audit quality. Drawing upon best practices in the whistleblowing literature and psychological theories on self-regulation, we experimentally test the efficacy of two practical strategies that auditors can employ during the fraud inquiry process: actively promoting statutory whistleblower protections and strategically timing their fraud inquiries. Our results indicate that auditors are more likely to elicit client-employee fraud disclosures by actively promoting statutory whistleblower protections and strategically timing the fraud inquiry to take place in the afternoon, when client-employee self-regulation is more likely to be depleted. These two audit inquiry strategies should be of considerable interest to audit practitioners, audit committees, and those concerned with improving audit quality. Data Availability: From the authors by request.


Author(s):  
Leah R. Warner ◽  
Stephanie A. Shields

Intersectionality theory concerns the interdependence of systems of inequality and implications for psychological research. Social identities cannot be studied independently of one another nor separately from the societal processes that maintain inequality. In this chapter we provide a brief overview of the history of intersectionality theory and then address how intersectionality theory challenges the way psychological theories typically conceive of the person, as well as the methods of data gathering and analysis customarily used by many psychologists. We specifically address two concerns often expressed by feminist researchers. First, how to reconcile the use of an intersectionality framework with currently-valued psychological science practices. Second, how intersectionality transforms psychology’s concern with individual experience by shifting the focus to the individual’s position within sociostructural frameworks and their social and political underpinnings. In a concluding section we identify two future directions for intersectionality theory: how psychological research on intersectionality can facilitate social activism, and current developments in intersectionality theory.


Author(s):  
Eva Illouz ◽  
Yaara Benger Alaluf

In the last decades, sociologists and anthropologists of consumption have been increasingly interested in emotions and in the seemingly contradictory concurrence of rational and emotional ideas and practices. Drawing on Illouz (2018a), this article suggests understanding the mutual enhancement of rationalization, commodification, and emotionalization as the outcome of an accelerating co-production of consumerist actions, commodities, and emotional lives. The article offers a historical analysis of the configuration of emotions and consumption, emphasizing the influence of psychological theories on the marketing sciences. It is demonstrated that it was throughout this process that consumers became increasingly defined in emotional terms and emotional experiences converted into commodities.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162096679
Author(s):  
Ivan Grahek ◽  
Mark Schaller ◽  
Jennifer L. Tackett

Discussions about the replicability of psychological studies have primarily focused on improving research methods and practices, with less attention paid to the role of well-specified theories in facilitating the production of reliable empirical results. The field is currently in need of clearly articulated steps to theory specification and development, particularly regarding frameworks that may generalize across different fields of psychology. Here we focus on two approaches to theory specification and development that are typically associated with distinct research traditions: computational modeling and construct validation. We outline the points of convergence and divergence between them to illuminate the anatomy of a scientific theory in psychology—what a well-specified theory should contain and how it should be interrogated and revised through iterative theory-development processes. We propose how these two approaches can be used in complementary ways to increase the quality of explanations and the precision of predictions offered by psychological theories.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162097477
Author(s):  
Bharathy Premachandra ◽  
Neil A. Lewis

Psychologists are spending a considerable amount of time researching and developing interventions in hopes that their efforts can help to tackle some of society’s pressing problems. Unfortunately, those hopes are often not realized—many interventions are developed and reported in journals but do not make their way into the broader world they were designed to change. One potential reason for this is that there may be a gap between the information reported in articles and the information others, such as practitioners, need to implement the findings. We explored this possibility in the current article. We conducted a scoping review to assess the extent to which the information needed for implementation is reported in psychological intervention articles. Results suggest psychological intervention articles report, at most, 64% of the information needed to implement interventions. We discuss the implications of this for both psychological theories and applying them in the world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 251524592110073
Author(s):  
Julia M. Rohrer ◽  
Ruben C. Arslan

Psychological theories often invoke interactions but remain vague regarding the details. As a consequence, researchers may not know how to properly test them and may potentially run analyses that reliably return the wrong answer to their research question. We discuss three major issues regarding the prediction and interpretation of interactions. First, interactions can be removable in the sense that they appear or disappear depending on scaling decisions, with consequences for a variety of situations (e.g., binary or categorical outcomes, bounded scales with floor and ceiling effects). Second, interactions may be conceptualized as changes in slope or changes in correlations, and because these two phenomena do not necessarily coincide, researchers might draw wrong conclusions. Third, interactions may or may not be causally identified, and this determines which interpretations are valid. Researchers who remain unaware of these distinctions might accidentally analyze their data in a manner that returns the technically correct answer to the wrong question. We illustrate all issues with examples from psychology and issue recommendations for how to best address them in a productive manner.


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