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Is psychological science progressing? Explained variance in PsycINFO articles during the period 1956 to 2022.
Geir Smedslund1,2, Jan Ketil Arnulf3, Jan Smedslund4
1Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
Psychological science consistently explains 42.8% of variance, a finding potentially driven by methodological and semantic constraints. This suggests theoretical progress may require transcending current research paradigms.
Area of Science:
- Psychological Science
- Quantitative Psychology
Background:
- Modern psychological science has shown a consistent average explained variance of 42.8% across studies from 1956 to 2022.
- This stagnation in explained variance may be linked to methodological conventions and the semantic properties of psychological variables.
Purpose of the Study:
- To numerically assess the progress of psychological science by analyzing explained variance.
- To investigate the role of methodological conventions and semantic properties in limiting explained variance.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of 1565 articles published between 1956 and 2022 to determine average explained variance.
- Latent semantic analysis (LSA) applied to 50 studies to replicate semantic factor structures of 205 constructs.
Main Results:
- Average explained variance remained constant at 42.8% over the study period.
- Methodological conventions appear to impose mathematical constraints, clustering explained variance around 40%.
- Hypotheses with high or low semantic truth values are unlikely to be studied, favoring those around 40% truth value.
Conclusions:
- The consistent explained variance suggests findings might be predictable from semantic structures alone, potentially without empirical data collection.
- Psychology's shift from individual, causal methods to group-level associations may stem from the complexity and dynamic nature of psychological processes.
- Current research paradigms may inherently limit theoretical progress, necessitating a move beyond the 40% explained variance barrier.
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