The quantitative paradigm and the nature of the human mind. The replication crisis as an epistemological crisis of quantitative psychology in view of the ontic nature of the psyche

Abstract

Many suggestions for dealing with the so-called replication crisis in psychology revolve around the idea that better and more complex statistical-mathematical tools or stricter procedures are required in order to obtain reliable findings and prevent cheating or publication biases. While these aspects may play an exacerbating role, we interpret the replication crisis primarily as an epistemological crisis in psychology caused by an inadequate fit between the ontic nature of the psyche and the quantitative approach. On the basis of the philosophers of science Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Imre Lakatos we suggest that the replication crisis is therefore a symptom of a fundamental problem in psychology, but at the same time it is also an opportunity to advance psychology as a science. In a first step, against the background of Popper’s Critical Rationalism, the replication crisis is interpreted as an opportunity to eliminate inaccurate theories from the pool of theories and to correct problematic developments. Continuing this line of thought, in an interpretation along the lines of Thomas Kuhn, the replication crisis might signify a model drift or even model crisis, thus possibly heralding a new paradigm in psychology. The reasons for this are located in the structure of academic psychology on the basis of Lakatos’s assumption about how sciences operate. Accordingly, one hard core that lies at the very basis of psychology may be found in the assumption that the human psyche can and is to be understood in quantitative terms. For this to be possible, the ontic structure of the psyche, i.e., its very nature, must also in some way be quantitatively constituted. Hence, the replication crisis suggests that the ontic structure of the psyche in some way (also) contains a non-quantitative dimension that can only be grasped incompletely or fragmentarily using quantitative research methods. Fluctuating and inconsistent results in psychology could therefore also be the expression of a mismatch between the ontic level of the object of investigation and the epistemic level of the investigation.