Reconsidering theoretical naïveté in psychological qualitative research

Abstract

This article proposes a reconsideration of the view that, in order to better grasp the objects they study, qualitative researchers should bracket their preconceived ideas, particularly their theoretical assumptions. This view has led to the advocacy of theoretical naïveté in the context of research, particularly in qualitative settings. We argue that such naïveté presupposes a simplistic dichotomy between theory and empirical data and, therefore, drawing from current developments in the philosophy of science, we propose reconsidering the view of theoretical naïveté in light of the distinction between theory, phenomena, and data. After discussing approaches that do not recognize the phenomenon as a mediator between theory and data or that do so only partially, we propose an approach that explicitly assigns a mediating role to phenomena. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications that substantive rehabilitation of theory in the construction of scientific phenomena will have for qualitative research in general and for psychology in particular.