On the necessity of rigorous modeling in psychology

Abstract

In the last decade, psychology faced a serious crisis, called the reproducibility problem. To solve the problem, several methodological and institutional changes have been proposed and implemented such as the promotion of replication studies and publication of negative results, the introduction of a preregistration system in academic journals, and the implementation of novel statistical methods for suppressing false-positive results. In this paper, based on a previously proposed formal model of population dynamics of scientific discovery, I first explain that these changes are insufficient for avoiding the reproducibility problem. Based on two examples in social psychology, I also discuss that what is necessary for fundamental reformulation of psychology is rigorous modeling, which has already been widely applied in many scientific fields outside psychology.