On the Importance of Considering Investigative Practices in Attempting to Understand Operationism

Abstract

Grace (2001), by foregrounding the rhetoric surrounding method rather than examining the practices of psychologists in their labs, has provided an incomplete and possibly misleading picture of the complexities of operationism. His suggestion that adopting multiple measures solved one of the critical problems of the operationist position denies the long history of the use of multiple measures, which predated the introduction of operationism by 40 years. This indicates the need to tell a much more complex story than the one offered by Grace. For example, a more accurate analysis must address reasons why the early operationists chose to ignore extant practices of multiple operations. Further, this has to be considered in the context of the introduction of construct validity and logical empiricism in the mid-1950s. Grace's suggestion that multiple operations somehow salvaged the positivist project is therefore problematic.