Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 24, 2025

Author Spotlight: A Novel Setup to Conduct Naturalistic Laboratory Experiments with Real Human Actors in Scenarios
Published on: August 4, 2023
Let's get real (with a small 'r'): for a health psychology that prioritizes the concrete
1School of Nursing, Midwifery & Community Health, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK. flora.cornish@gcal.ac.uk
Abstract:
Depending on which kind of philosophy of science we espouse, health psychology can be a relatively concrete or relatively abstract activity. Estacio, I suggest, prioritizes the concrete, by foregrounding real social phenomena. I argue that prioritizing the concrete has two particular benefits: it increases the social relevance of health psychology, and it increases the validity of our analyses, by ensuring that they are close to reality. To further the pursuit of the concrete, I suggest that critical health psychology is in particular need of exemplars of critical health psychology in action, rather than reflexive commentary on critical health psychology itself.

