“Doing justice” in psychological methodology: From science and experiments to anecdotes

Abstract

Methodology is intrinsically related to “object” and its quality is based on the degree to which a method is doing justice to the object, demonstrating the entanglement of ontic, epistemic, and ethical considerations. The intent of “doing justice” is at the core of methodology and is the de facto guiding principle for conducting research and for producing knowledge. Objects in psychology can range from subjectivity to science and conflicts emerge because of giving primacy to particular objects. Using this perspective, various meanings of doing justice, critics’ challenges, deviations from doing justice to an object, ethical-political dimensions and the dialectics of doing justice in relation to objects are discussed. If doing justice is at the core of methodology, then the issue becomes under what circumstances a particular method is doing justice in relation to a particular object. Contrasting the experiment with anecdotes, it is shown dialectically that the former has no privileged status in psychology, and that experiments that are not replicated only do justice as anecdotal evidence.