On the generality of behavioral theory and abstract phenomena

Pavlov's research on conditioning, perhaps due to his place in founding the field, was limited to identifying a small number of core principles. This may explain why most of his findings have proven to be of broad generality. A century later, associative learning, including Pavlovian conditioning, is viewed as encompassing a multitude of principles, with most being influenced by a number of independent variables, and we are still far from identifying all the independent variables for each principle. However, it is already clear that many behavioral principles share consequential independent variables, making it difficult to examine any given principle in isolation. This precludes making generalizable predictions, except for further studies in the same laboratory setting where most independent variables can be held constant across experiments. When exported to other laboratories or applied situations, this is usually not feasible. While there is theoretical value in identifying how select independent variables influence behavioral phenomena when other independent variables are held constant, I assert that generalizing the findings to different laboratory settings or applied situations is highly prone to being unsuccessful because these 'other variables' will differ from those of the initial laboratory. Nonetheless, academic and funding structures reward researchers who claim great generality concerning behavioral phenomena in the abstract (e.g., 'blocking' as the result of simply stated procedures devoid of specific parameters). The central contribution of this paper is to suggest factors that have led behavioral psychology to develop this penchant for claiming broad generality and to advocate for more conceptual replications, so we are less apt to be distracted by phenomena of limited generality.