The operationalization of general hypotheses versus the discovery of empirical laws in Psychology

Stéphane Vautier (1)

1 Octogone - Octogone Unité de Recherche Interdisciplinaire

Psychology students learn to operationalize 'general hypotheses' as a paradigm of scientific Psychology: relatively vague ideas result in an attempt to reject the null hypothesis in favour of an alternative hypothesis, a so-called research hypothesis, which operationalizes the general idea. Such a practice turns out to be particularly at odds with the discovery of empirical laws. An empirical law is defined as a nomothetic gap emerging from a reference system of the form O x M(X) x M(Y), where O is a set of events or dated objects for which some states in the set M(Y) are hypothetically impossible given some initial conditions depicted in the set M(X). This approach allows the knowledge historian to carefully scrutinize descriptive and nomothetic advances in contemporary empirical Psychology.

Mots clés: Psychology; Epistemology; Methodology; Scientific law; Operationalization

Domaines: Psychologie

Stéphane Vautier. The operationalization of general hypotheses versus the discovery of empirical laws in Psychology. Philosophia Scientiae, 2011, 15 (2), pp.105-122. ⟨10.4000/philosophiascientiae.656⟩. ⟨hal-00640487⟩