Of Immortal Mythological Beasts

Abstract

It is practically an article of faith in psychology that in order to do empirical research one must first operationally define one's variables. However, the `operational attitude', first advocated by the physicist Percy Bridgman in the 1920s, has since been rejected by virtually every serious philosopher of science as unworkable. Furthermore, `operationism'-as developed by psychologists in the 1930s and 1940s-was based on a misunderstanding of Bridgman's intent from the outset. Nevertheless, contemporary textbooks continue to extol the virtues of operational definitions and today's psychology students are still required to learn the strategy. This paper discusses the historical background of operationism, its transmission from physics to psychology and the reasons for its continued tenacity in the face of repeated refutations and Bridgman's own repudiation in the 1950s.

Modeling academic achievement by self-reported versus traced goal orientation

“…We recommend Green's (1992) counsel about research that "What is required is a more sophisticated approach to conceptual analysis in general. Phenomena such as learning, memory, reasoning, perception and emotion can be neither adequately defined in terms of, nor reduced to, a small set of measurement operations" (p. 315).…”

Operationalism and realism in psychometrics

“…Borsboom () concurs to an extent, arguing that a large part of psychological measurement—namely, the part that is based on classical test theory —is operationalist at heart . Philosopher Patrick Suppes and other developers of the representational theory of measurement expressed a similar claim decades ago, accusing psychometricians of misplaced operationalism (Bickhard, ; see also Green, ; Krantz, Luce, Suppes, & Tversky, , Chapter 1; Luce, Krantz, Suppes, & Tversky, , Chapter 22).…”

“…17 It would also be odd to refer to said correlations as evidence that the test measures age. 18 Other people associate construct validation with operationalism, for example, Green (1992). 19 There are multiple notions of construct validity in the literature (for a review, see Vessonen, 2019a, sections 2.6.2 and 2.6.3.)…”

“…20 That is obviously not to say that Boring did not do serious and ambitious work-just that operationalist definition is not the most ambitious way to define things. 21 The fact that philosophers associate operationalism with logical positivism (Feest, 2005;Green, 1992) probably does not help the reputation of operationalism. 22 Note that Alexandrova (2017) and McClimans (2013) do not explicitly discuss operationalism.…”

“…The fact that philosophers associate operationalism with logical positivism (Feest, ; Green, ) probably does not help the reputation of operationalism.…”