Under what conditions does theory obstruct research progress?

Abstract

Researchers display confirmation bias when they persevere by revising procedures until obtaining a theory-predicted result. This strategy produces findings that are overgeneralized in avoidable ways, and this in turn hinders successful applications. (The 40-year history of an attitude-change phenomenon, the sleeper effect, stands as a case in point.) Confirmation bias is an expectable product of theory-centered research strategies, including both the puzzle-solving activity of T. S. Kuhn's "normal science" and, more surprisingly, K. R. Popper's recommended method of falsification seeking. The alternative strategies of condition seeking (identifying limiting conditions for a known finding) and design (dis-covering conditions that can produce a previously unobtained result) are result centered; they are directed at producing specified patterns of data rather than at the logically impossible goals of estab-lishing either the truth or falsity of a theory. Result-centered methods are by no means atheoretical. Rather, they oblige resourcefulness in using existing theory and can stimulate novel development of theory. Imagine looking at a projected photographic image that is so badly focused that identification is impossible. The picture is gradually focused until it is just slightly blurred, at which point