Lecture 1 what makes a good theory?

Question 1

Strenght model of self-control
(Baumeister & Heatherton 96; … & Vohs 2016)

Answer 1

• Observations from everyday life
  People who have difficulties, following their long-term goals in one life domain, often experience, similar difficulties in other domains
  self control - general capacity that is limited, and can be depleted
• self control Failures, more frequent after long and tiring days and stressful times, or when demands are unusually high
• SC limited source
• SC domain-general construct
• SC can be improved with practice (Beames et Al 2017)

Question 2

What is Self-control?

Answer 2

Ability to override or change ones inner responses, as well as to interrupt, undesirable behavioral tendencies (impulses) and refrain from acting on them

Question 3

What is Ego depletion?

Answer 3

A person shows impaired performance in self control demanding tasks after he has previously exerted self control (compared to a control group that has not exerted self control in task 1)

Question 4

What is sequential task paradigm?

Answer 4

Participants work on two sequential tasks, demanding self control, and measured their performance in the second task as a function of whether the first task was high or low in self control demands

Question 5

Levels of analysis (De Houwer, 2011)

Answer 5

behavioral level of analysis defines behavioral effects exclusively in terms of changes in elements of the environment that cause behavioral changes on a dependent variable

• Insult leads to aggressive reaction for example

Process level of analysis refers to the underlying mental processes that are triggered by elements in the environment and are responsible for subsequence changes all the dependent variable

Example
Insult leads to angry thoughts that leads to aggressive reaction

Explanandum (that which needs to be explained)
Needs to be kept separate from the
Explanans (that which is used to explain)

Question 6

What makes a good theory? Theoretical criteria

Answer 6

1. Consistency.
2. Precision.
3. Parsimony
4. Generality
5. Falsifiability
6. Progress

Question 7

What is consistency? Theoretical criteria

Answer 7

Theory corresponds to empirical observations in the laboratory, and/all the real world (otherwise must be adjusted or refuted)

Example Ego depletion
- affirming core personal values, incentivized to perform, subjective theory that self control is non-limited, high disposition for action orientation= all shown to counteract Ego depletion effects)

Question 8

What is precision? Theoretical criteria

Answer 8

Theory clearly defines concepts and operationalizations that allow for a little stitching or subjective interpretation (counteracts ambiguity in deciding if observations are continent or not with the theory)

Example
- Definition of self control
Self control processes by which the self intentionally alters its own responses, including thoughts, emotions, impulses, performance, and behaviors based on standards
behavioral level -what is a valid manipulation for impaired self control?
process level - what is the resource that is limited or reduced?

Question 9

What is parsimony? Theoretical criteria

Answer 9

Theory explains more with less (many events with a few assumptions as possible)

Example
Strength model is parsimonious-
Two Central assumptions (domain generality and limited resource)

Occam’s razor - scholastic, philosopher, William of Ockham - plurality should not be posited without necessity
This principle gives precedence to simplicity :
of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred
Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity

Question 10

What is generality? Theoretical criteria

Answer 10

Theory can be applied to various fields, situations or behaviors

Example
Strength Modell exploratory breadth is unusually large

Question 11

What is falsifiability? Theoretical criteria

Answer 11

Theory can never be “proven” to be true, and has to be falsifiable

Example
Some assumptions of the strength model are difficult to falsify
behavioral level - the prediction that exerting self-control impairs subsequent self control performance is difficult to falsify
process level - nature of the purported resource is unspecified, and its existence can therefore not be falsified

Question 12

What is progress? Theoretical criteria

Answer 12

Theory inspires new research and promote theoretical advancement
Example
Strength Modell successfully spurred progress (neuroscience, consumer behavior, decision making… development of other theories, explaining ego depletion)

Question 13

What makes a good theory? Empirical criteria

Answer 13

1. Statistical power
2. Operationalization and manipulation check
3. P-hacking and publication bias
4. Moderation and mediation
5. Meta-analysis

Question 14

What is statistical power? Empirical criteria

Answer 14

The power of statistical test is the probability that it will yield statistically significant results

• Increases with larger effect sizes and with larger sample sizes*
  Example
  An ego depletion literature, many studies have small sample sizes 

Question 15

What is operationalization and manipulation check? Empirical criteria

Answer 15

If central constructs are not well operationalized, it is difficult to estimate the robustness of an effect.
Manipulation checks are used to test if an independent variable successfully manipulated the construct of interest
Example
Majority of ego depletion studies did not make use of manipulation checks
Strength model doesn’t suggest specific set of operational definitions
Research on it used large variety of operational definitions to measure and manipulate self control (IV) and variety of tasks as DVs

Question 16

What are P-hacking and publication bias? Empirical criteria

Answer 16

Questionable research practices to make originally nonsignificant analysis statistically significant and bias for significant findings to be published

Example
P hacking and ego depletion literature
Bias ego depletion research

Question 17

What are moderation and mediation? Empirical criteria

Answer 17

Moderators can reveal important boundary conditions of effects proposed by a theory and elucidate the breadth of a phenomenon, reveal new differentiations, and explore limits of a theory.
Mediators test assumptions about the underlying process of a phenomenon

Examples
Moderation : 100 studies investigated moderators of the ego depletion effect, but they predominantly report significant findings with low statistical power, Suggesting p hacking and/or publication bias
Mediation : providing process evidence for the strength model is impossible, because the assumed resource is unspecified and thus non-assessable

Question 18

What are meta-analysis? Empirical criteria

Answer 18

Combine results of multiple studies in a field;
Shift the focus from individual studies to the broader picture

For ego depletion mean effect sizes get smaller the more recent the meta-analysis; recent meta-analysis are difficult to interpret because of the methodological issues.
Example : Dang (2018) results suggest that attention video should be an ineffective depleting task, but emotion video should be the most effective one.
Ego depletion meta-analysis promoted discussion and progress, but they did not provide unequivocal evidence for or against the Ego depletion effect.
Registered replication reports - but restricted to 1 specific IV & DVs combinations.

Question 19

Key points lecture 1

Answer 19

Important to distinguish between the theoretical and the empirical perspective when working with theories
Failures to replicate the effect (or to find it in the first place) can be due to different causes:
- Theory could be wrong and original result was a false positive
- Theory could have merit, but empirical research was not good enough to adequately test it

Does a theory make plausible assumptions?
Are operationalization adequate ?