Beyond the “Variables”: Developing Metalanguage for Psychology

Abstract

Over the 20 th century, psychology has adopted the scheme of causal thinking that involves the SR (StimulusResponse) basic structure. It brings into the thinking of psychologists the axiomatic acceptance of linear causality ("S causes R") without a focus on elaboration of how the supposed process of causing actually operates. In the experimental and quasi-experimental practices of research that scheme has become contextualized as the practice of specifying "independent" (manipulable) and "dependent" (outcome) factors called "variables", creating the illusion of researcher's control over the processes under investigation in a context of an experiment (or its derivatives: questionnaires, interviews, etc). This is unrealistic in the case of human psychological processes that are of the character of open systems that are characterized not by "effects" but by exchange relations with environment (e,g, as exemplified by Dewey in his "reflex circle" replacement of the "reflex arc") which operate on the basis of cyclical (catalyzed) rather than linear causality. The result is a situation-well captured by Ludwig Wittgenstein-that in psychology the problems and methods pass each other by. We trace the history of the terminology of "independent" variable as it became used in psychology, discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the notion of "variable" in a universe of dynamically structured and normatively guided psychological phenomena, and suggest that thenotion of "variables" be abandoned and replaced by other concepts that would capture the qualitative nature of the human phenomena more adequately.