Theory and theory-construction, certain statistical methods, and impressive hardware initially served as valuable tools in scientific psychological enquiry. They have developed to lead us to neglect the development of a science with predictive power, and to devote ourself to the endless manufacture of impressive-sounding trivialities. RealAudio
This paper elaborates, with chapter and verse, the sad history of theorizing in psychology and points out the slim (and transient) positive results theorizing has had. Theories have served to sweep problems under the rug, to delude reserchers into work of monstrous triviality, to guide the acceptance (or rejection) of research findings for publication all but independent of their quality, and to transmogrify the self-fulfilling prophesy into Holy Writ. We are now again entering some new theoretical morasses, remarkabley like the ones we pulled ourselves out of a scant half-century ago. Like the demode theories they replace, they take us still further from, and may preclude our returning to, what should be our data base, the behavior of individuals in uncontrived situations, outside the laboratory or clinic. (addendum 1996: Worse, when they are rejected, experimental and obervational data related to them are also rejected, or forgotten.)
Gist of remarks: at best, it doesn't work well; at worst, it leads to wasted effort.
Whether or not there's a "there" to get to, it is demonstrable that pscyhologists will never move from their present level of achievment until they develop and use concepts that can examine in detail the role that "situations" play in determining behavior. The descriptive conceptual framework that is required is implicit in Kantor's concept "setting factors".
Gist of remarks: Although some behaviorisms have proposed to 'describe' and 'explain' behavior in physical and physiological terms, such reductionism is not implicit in all of them. The behaviorisms most productive in generating new findings ignore the limitation set by the requirement that physicalistic accounts be possible.
A bare-bones summary of the basic concepts and taxonomic system of operation-analytic behaviorism: Stimuli are classified as transients or stators, and as reinforcers, aversors, or neutral; responses include operants, respondents, and locomotions. The Paradigmatic Operations fall into three major classes: Stimulus Operations; Response Operations; and Dependence Operations, of which the Discriminal ('three-term contingency') Operations are a subclass.
Major emphasis in this paper is placed on the Setting Operations, which define/produce the 'context,' the 'circumstances,' under which specific objects and events function as stimuli in relationship to specific responses available in the individual's repertory, and which others loose such function, the full set of such relationships, observed following a setting operation, constitute a behavior-set. It is noted that certain members of such behavior sets function primarily as stimuli for other individuals. (Darwin termed these "expressions of emotion.")
Remembering is a social behavior, determined as much by the immediate situation as by the "past," the putative events remembered. The contrast in behavior between those who deal with remembering professionally, and those psychologists who deal with some of its phenomena "scientifically" leads to reflection on the ironies of how psychologists theorize. (eventually published; see Bibliography)