Not by Behaviour Alone: In Defence of Self-Reports and ‘Finger Movements’

Abstract

We agree that it is important to study behaviour in psychology but warn against putting behaviour on a scientific pedestal. We argue that this would be problematic for at least three reasons. First, behaviour should not be seen as disconnected from thoughts and feelings; moreover, quarantining different domains of responses does not help to explain human psychology comprehensively. Second, because behaviour hardly ever speaks for itself, it is essential to gather other responses from participants (including self-reports and "finger movement responses") to understand what their behaviour really means. Finally, and most importantly, we observe that the main response to the crisis in social psychology has consisted of calls to change our empirical practices. Here this call takes the form of arguing for studying one particular dependent variable: behaviour. Even though we agree that there is value in measuring behaviour, promoting such practices is not going to be a silver bullet that overcomes the key challenges that social psychology as a discipline is currently facing. To do that, a more fruitful avenue would be to focus on the theory that needs to underpin and inform that empirical work. Indeed, without a proper theoretical framework to guide the study of behaviour, developing a "science of behaviour" is in our view rather futile.Dariusz Doliński (2018, this issue) addresses the important issue of social psychology's failure to study the behaviour of humans. He is right to observe that social psychologists claim to study real behaviour but rarely do. We not only fully agree with this point, but also appreciate the author's analysis and arguments about why it is important for researchers to try harder and do better when it comes to studying significant and meaningful forms of human behaviour.

Integrating Social Scientific Perspectives on the Quantified Employee Self

“…Typically, psychological data come from self-report survey questions and small movements or expressions of body language (Baumeister et al 2007). More complex behaviors are often deemed more desirable and insightful, but psychologists also need to seek unobservable processes that are driving them (Jetten and Haslam 2018). In the workplace, this means that the psychological tension is between data driving behavioral change versus understanding the nature of the behavioral change and how it is produced.…”