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Theory & Psychology
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Experiments in Social Psychology

Science or Self-Deception?

Lise Wallach

DuKe University

Michael A. Wallach

DuKe University

Criticisms of the very idea of experimentation in social psychology are longstanding; a focal claim recently has been that social psychological hypotheses are non-empirical. We contest this claim, but argue that many experiments in social psychology are pointless nonetheless because they are fundamentally circular. Testing hypotheses requires operationalization; operationalization requires assumptions; and in social psychology, we argue, the necessary assumptions often already imply that the hypotheses can be confirmed. Confirmability of the hypotheses of a number of experiments recently reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology is shown to be implied by two illustrative truistic principles central to theories assumed in any tests of these hypotheses. We suggest that research aimed at finding specifically social psychological laws may only yield unfalsifiable truisms, while useful social psychological research aims elsewhere.

Key Words: circularity • common-sense psychology • operational definition • psychological laws • social constructionism • social psychology

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 4, 451-473 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354301114001
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