Explaining Behavior With Mental Attributes
Florian G. Kaiser & Mark Wilson
What the paper says
Replicability is one essential aspect of genuine explanations in empirical science, whereas valid measurement is another. Particularly when people seek strong evidence that some leverage can be applied to change behavior the measurement of the attribute supposedly operating as the cause needs to be valid. Thus, before attitudes can be tested as causes of behavior, measurements of the strength of these attitudes must be empirically validated to an extent that goes beyond what is conventionally done in psychology. Because attitude is a mental attribute, the numbers assigned to people through measurement cannot be validated with some manifest reference point, as is typically the case in physical measurement (e.g., freezing point of water). We demonstrate how measurements of people’s mental attributes can be substantiated. Only when equipped with valid measures is the stage finally set to build a cumulative network of replicable knowledge.
6 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.44 × 0.4 = 0.18 |
| M · momentum | 0.65 × 0.15 = 0.10 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.