Replacing Hypothesis-Testing with “External Validity”

Abstract

The concept of a scientific hypothesis implies that the scientist is dealing with a questionable idea, thus one that needs to be tried out. The idea might read, “increased drive will enhance performance of dominant responses,” or “response persistence will be enhanced by intermittent reinforcement,” or “high achievement motivation produces a preference for risks.” All such statements are notions about the relationships among psychological variables. The psychological variable is not equivalent to behavior but instead, part of a person’s perspective-that is, an attitude, cognition, habit, emotion, arousal state, motive, or similar quality. “Drive,” “habit”, and “achievement motivation” are thus constructs that refer to the person’s perspective, to a process inside the person, and to the way in which these variables fit together in the theory. As further examples, cognitive dissonance theory states that the more the volition involved in a decision, the greater the experience of dissonance, and Easterbrook’s (1959) cue-utilization theory postulates that “the more the arousal or emotion, the narrower is the perceptual frame.”