In defence of effect-centric research.

Bridging the divide between functional and cognitive psychology.

“…Whereas abstraction involves knowledge about specific cases that influences knowledge about general principles, abstractive analysis involves knowledge about general principles that is applied to specific cases. We agree with Wills and Hollins (2017) that abstraction could be detrimental for applied psychology by detracting attention from the particularities of the specific issue that is being addressed. However, applied psychology can definitely benefit from abstractive analyses because it creates the possibility of applying knowledge about general principles (e.g., reinforcement) to specific cases (e.g., tantrums in children).…”

“…We therefore greatly appreciate the fact that several colleagues took the time to read and comment on our target paper (De Houwer, Hughes, & Barnes-Holmes, 2017) in which we focused on one of those issues: the relation between functional and cognitive psychology within the context of applied research. The commentaries complement the target paper by providing additional support for the arguments that we put forward (e.g., Hambrick, 2017; Mickes, 2017; Smith, 2017) but also by raising possible counterarguments (e.g., Goldsmith, 2017; MacLeod & Risko, 2017; Markman, 2017; Proctor & Xiong, 2017; Wills & Hollins, 2017). We are happy to see broad consensus about the idea that communication between functional and cognitive researchers is possible.…”

“…Finally, Wills and Hollins (2017) argue that we struggle to give good examples of research that was inspired by both cognitive theories and general functional principles. We acknowledge that we provided too few concrete examples in our manuscript, in part because of restrictions in space but primarily because of our lack of knowledge of the applied psychology literature.…”

“…Most importantly, it allows functional and cognitive researchers to communicate about research in a way that is both abstract (thus avoiding the problems of effect-centric research) and agnostic with regard to the mental processes that mediate the effect (thus avoiding the problem of proxies and maximizing theoretical freedom). Wills and Hollins (2017), on the other hand, argue that communication in terms of general functional principles might reintroduce the problem of proxies and orientate attention away from the unique features of the specific issue that applied researchers seek to address (e.g., improve the quality of eye witness testimonies). Instead, they propose that applied psychology should focus on observations and engage in effect-centric research that sticks to the data.…”