Neglected Sources of Flexibility in Psychological Theories: from Replicability to Good Explanations

Abstract

How useful are methods aiming to make research findings more replicable—particularly preregistration—for developing good psychological theories? We distinguish between two kinds of flexibility—the flexibility of a theory and the flexibility of a model—and argue that even when attempts are made to reduce model flexibility, the lack of attention to theoretical flexibility renders the utility of such methods questionable. We speculate that psychology’s current issues with replicability and model flexibility would grow increasingly irrelevant as the underlying theories become less flexible. The path towards better theory development requires us to place more attention on the assessment and evaluation of theoretical flexibility.