Operationism in Psychology - by Uljana Feest (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Analyzes psychological research to offer insights into how methodological and ontological questions are intertwined.

Psychology has seen an intense debate about the lack of replicability of results in recent years. Uljana Feest uses history and philosophy of science to shed light on the nature of experiment in psychology in general, but her aim reaches beyond debates about replication to provide a novel and comprehensive analysis of the investigative process in experimental psychology. She shows that the central unit of analysis for our epistemological considerations of psychological research should be not theories but, rather, concepts. Her guiding question is: How do psychological concepts figure in the experimental exploration of the objects of psychological research? For Feest, this question has two intertwined aspects: What role do concepts play in the design of experiments and the production of data, and how can concepts be revised or adapted in response to experimental results. Following the historical trajectory of debates about operationism in psychology, she argues that this debate was not concerned with philosophical theories of meaning but, instead, closely connected to the investigative practices of experimental psychologists. The book offers a broad analytical framework for thinking philosophically about the investigative process in psychology, including analyses of the relationship between data and phenomena in psychology, the relationship between folk- and scientific psychological concepts, the relationship between genuine results and experimental artifacts, and the nature and exploration of psychological kinds.

Review Quotes

"In Operationism in Psychology, Feest does for psychology what Hasok Chang (in Inventing Temperature) did for physics: provide a historically grounded and philosophically rich account of how scientific progress is possible in the face of profound epistemic and conceptual uncertainty. Unlike Chang, Feest does not have the luxury of looking back to a long period of foundational disputes while knowing how they were eventually resolved. By the same token, however, her analysis of contemporary psychological methodology and conceptual change can contribute to establishing those foundations along with illuminating our understanding of them."--Carrie Figdor, author of "Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates"

"Feest's excellent book investigates the methodological tenet of operationism as advanced by psychologists starting in the 1930s and traces its history up to the application of operational analysis and converging operations in recent research, where she takes implicit memory and working memory as her primary cases. Her analysis undermines the usual distinction between context of discovery and context of justification and shows that operationism in psychology was not a theory of meaning in which content is entirely fixed by experimental operations but a tool for guiding research. The book is brimming with insights and is a must-read for scientific methodologists in general and for all historians and philosophers of science."--Gary Hatfield, author of "Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology"

"In welcome contrast to the current obsession over prediction and automation, Feest's book dissects the power and labor of exploration in science--the vital strategies that facilitate the investigation of novel research objects under conditions of uncertainty and ignorance. Through a provocative reframing of the history and philosophy of operationism, Feest provides a field-defining study of investigative practices in cognitive psychology and a timely, erudite defense of its methodological credibility."--Sabina Leonelli, author of "Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study"

About the Author

Uljana Feest is professor of philosophy at the Leibniz University of Hannover.