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Defining and measuring social constructs in psychological science

Conference Paper · April 2019

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Espen A. Sjoberg
Kristiania University College
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Defining and measuring social

constructs in psychological science
ESPEN SJOBERG
OSLO METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

NAFO 2019

The wiggly world

Alan Watts once asked a group of students

«What do you mean by a ‘thing’?»

a «thing»
is a noun
Our perception of nature, reality and the phenomena we study are based on words.
◦ There are no nouns or concepts in nature.

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The wiggly world

Imagine this question was changed

«What do you mean by a ‘thing’?»

What do you mean by ‘culture’? nouns
What do you mean by ‘intelligence’?

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Colloquial vs. scientific understandings

Psychology studies concepts that reflect human behaviours.
We all share an understanding of these concepts.
Think of:
◦ Culture
◦ Intelligence
◦ Behaviour
◦ Reality
◦ Life

We all know what these things mean.

◦ But in science, is there a mutually shared definition of them?

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Example: Culture
We all know what culture means.
◦ But how do we define it, and how can we measure it once we do?

In 1952, Kroeber and Kluckhohn found 164 different definitions of «culture».

This issue became a debated topic in behavioural ecology

due to controversial question:
«Do animals have culture?»

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Established cultural practice in animals?

In the 1950’s researchers at Koshima notice that a monkey (macaque) started washing potatoes
in saltwater.
◦ This monkey was called Imo («potato»).
◦ Over time, Imo’s mother also started washing potatoes.

After approx. 10 years this behaviour had spread to all

the monkeys on Koshima.

The question was then:

«Is this culture?»

de Waal (1999); Kawamura (1959)

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Monkeying around with culture

Some anthropologists and psychologists were uncomfortable calling this «culture».
◦ This was because culture was supposedly unique to humans.

Thus, some researchers defined culture to include verbal communication of information.

This would effectively render culture a concept only found in humans.

◦ In behaviour analysis, culture (or cultural practice, to be precise)
was formulated by Skinner (1981) with humans in mind.

What the hell is «culture» anyway?

Laland and Hoppitt (2003) attempted the impossible task:
◦ Reviewing definitions of culture and proposing a unified wording.

“The concept of culture has become a quagmire for the social sciences. Intuitively, we all know
what it is and feel it to be important, yet it has proven virtually impossible for social scientists to
derive a consensual definition or to find a satisfactory means of operationalizing it (s. 150).»

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Culture: A hot potato

Ultimately, Laland and Hoppitt (2003) proposed that:
«Cultures are those group-typical behavior patterns shared by members of a community that
rely on socially learned and transmitted information (s.151).»
In other words, genetically transferred behaviours are not culture.

Based on this, potato washing can be considered culture in monkeys.

◦ Because this behaviour is established through observational
learning, and not inherited.

What did we decide anyway?

Notice that ultimately this is an arbitrary choice on defining a man-made concept.
There is arguably no «culture» in nature.
◦ It is a phenomenon that we have classified, and then we decide how it is defined.
◦ There is no correct answer to be found in the universe on how this is to be defined.

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To the rescue: Operational definition

A conceptual definition and an operational defintion is not the same.

A conceptual definition deals with abstract concepts.

An operational definition deals with measurable concepts.

Intelligence
Conceptual definition Operational definition
the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, Score on IQ test
think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas,
learn quickly and learn from experience

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Operationalism absurdium
Zoltan Dienes illustrated how a concept can still be perfectly well
operationally defined, yet still not reflect what one wishes to
investigate.

The example was how to study the

Freudian concept of penis envy.

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Operationalism absurdium
In an experiment, one could give out several pencils to women participants during a test.
Penis envy is then operationalized as:
◦ «amount of pencils returned»

The idea being that women who returns fewer pencils

have a higher degree of penis envy.

This is, of course, absolutely absurd, but still

follows the logic of operational definitions.

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Operationally defined
Operational definitions allows fleeting concepts to be measured.
Even if we disagree on the conceptual definition of a phenomenon, the operational definition is
concrete and allows the collection of data.

Of course, this raises a new question:

Are we really measuring what we claim?
◦ Does IQ really reflect the concept of «intelligence»?
◦ i.e. Does it have construct validity?

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Impulsivity
In delay discounting research, children with
ADHD are shown to be impulsive.
◦ Indicated by a more rapid switch from large to
small reinforcers.
large reinforcer
% choice of

However, notice that this is an explanation of

the data!
◦ We have observed a phenomenon and then
decided that this is called impulsivity.
◦ This is an arbitrary explanation.
Impulsivity
◦ It also does not tell us WHY the children were impulsive immediate short long
Delay to reinforcement

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Behavioral vs. natural sciences

It is generally harder for social sciences to investigate phenomena (Rosenberg, 2012).
◦ This is because human behaviour is a fleeting, varied phenomenon that changes across time.

Thus psychology and behavior analysis is the never-ending pursuit of documenting and explaining
human behaviour.

By contrast, the natural sciences deal with absolute properties that exist in nature.
◦ Gravity is not a concept, but a force in the universe.
◦ That we use language to describe it, and that our understanding changes over time,
does not change the fact that gravity exists in reality.

«Theories in natural science cannot change the nature of the reality,

but theories in social science can and often do (p.21)»

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Abstract nature of psychology

In natural sciences, conceptualization is difficult.
◦ That is, it is hard to establish what concept the data represents, if any.

In social sciences, it is often the reverse:

◦ concepts are created but defining them and collecting valid data is difficult.
◦ This is because we have pre-existing biases on what these concepts mean.

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Go behaviour analysis, go!

Behavior analysis is better than psychology to avoid the problem of categorization.
◦ Because behaviour is explained through causality and precise mechanisms.

Behaviourists do not always define many concepts, just explore them.

◦ The rejection of hypothetical constructs/mentalism reduces risk of conceptual confusions.

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The way forward

Focus on operationism.
◦ Definable, observable events and their relationship to manipulations.
◦ Let data dictate the concept

Stanovich (2007) argued that debates about words prior to investigation is the
opposite of science:
«The meaning of a concept in science is determined after investigation of the
phenomena the term relates to (...)

the explanation of phenomena, not the analysis of language,

is the goal of the scientist (p.36-37)»

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This talk is dedicated to

Román Pérez Déniz

1957 -2019

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Follow the duck

not your theory of the duck
Bill Charlesworth
Co-founder of the International Society for Human Ethology

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