Avoiding the a??d??j??-variablea?? phenomenon: social psychology needs more guides to constructs

摘要

As a journal editor, I am frequently asked what constitutes an exceptional research article (Hagger, 2012). I usually respond by recommending Skinner's (1996) seminal guide to constructs of control as a prototypical example. When I was a doctoral student Skinner's article was extremely influential to my work. It not only helped me make sense of the myriad of constructs and terms used to describe and define the control construct, but also how I approached other constructs in social psychology. Skinner's guide was ahead of its time and her systematic approach to classifying and synthesizing constructs is supremely relevant today. Skinner identified the diversity in terminology, definition, and content of constructs related to control in social psychology, conducted an integrative review of theories incorporating control-related constructs, and developed a taxonomy and theoretical model to characterize them. Her guide was innovative for three reasons: (1) she recognized the richness in control-related constructs in social psychology but also the substantial redundancy and poor consensus; (2) she focused on systematically reducing redundancy and arriving at a core set of definitions and constructs; (3) she developed a theoretical basis for her integration. The proliferation of systematic reviews and syntheses in social psychology and other psychological disciplines illustrates that Skinner's guide was a precursor of things to come, but also illustrates that many syntheses of research findings are somewhat premature as they do not first systematically identify the commonalities and diversity in the constructs involved (Hagger and Chatzisarantis, 2009). I argue that social psychology needs more integrative frameworks like Skinner's to identify consistency in terminology, definition, and content of social psychological constructs. This will assist researchers to synthesize and integrate research findings and effects involving social psychological constructs.