Improving Human Interaction Research through Ecological Grounding

Saul Albert,J P De Ruiter,Mark Dingemanse,Rolf Zwaan

doi:10.1525/collabra.132

Abstract

In psychology, we tend to follow the general logic of falsificationism: we separate the ‘context of discovery’ (how we come up with theories) from the ‘context of justification’ (how we test them). However, when studying human interaction, separating these contexts can lead to theories with low ecological validity that do not generalize well to life outside the lab. We propose borrowing research procedures from well-established inductive methodologies in interaction research during the process of discovering new regularities and analyzing natural data without being led by theory. We introduce research procedures including the use of naturalistic study settings, analytic transcription, collections of cases, and data analysis sessions, and illustrate these with examples from a successful cross-disciplinary study. We argue that if these procedures are used systematically and transparently throughout a research cycle, they will lead to more robust and ecologically valid theories about interaction within psychology and, with some adaptation, can enhance the reproducibility of research across many other areas of psychological science.

Highlights

In psychology, we tend to follow the general logic of falsificationism: we separate the ‘context of discovery’ from the ‘context of justification’
This paper aims to contribute to this process by introducing a set of inductive methodological procedures drawn from the field of human interaction research
One of the key issues underlying the use of questionable research practices (QRPs) in human interaction research, for example, is this broader problem of theories being formulated without reference to the everyday interactional situations that presumably give rise to the psychological effects and mechanisms being studied

Summary

Improving Human Interaction Research through Ecological Grounding

We tend to follow the general logic of falsificationism: we separate the ‘context of discovery’ (how we come up with theories) from the ‘context of justification’ (how we test them). Kingstone, Smilek, and Eastwood (2008) suggest that psychological science has repeatedly re-discovered these looming problems, but has tended to ignore them because transforming established research procedures would be too inconvenient It is precisely these problems of too much freedom to theorize and overly flexible induction that have led conversation analysts to limit processes of coding and quantifying interaction (Schegloff, 1993). These include methods for choosing a relevant study setting, making detailed analytic transcriptions, building ‘collections’ of procedurally similar cases, and doing regular, informal peer review at analytic ‘data sessions’, all of which take place before any formal hypothesizing is allowed These constraints are essential for research into human interaction to avoid common pitfalls and threats to the integrity of the research process. Both participants and analysts can detect when these actions are produced smoothly, Art. 24, page 4 of 14

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