Is “Behavior” the Problem?

Authors

  • Arie W. Kruglanski
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD
  • Adam Factor
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD
  • Katarzyna Jaśko
    Jagiellonian University, Kraków

Abstract

Doliński (2018, this issue) deplores the near absence of “real behavior” in social and personality studies and attributes to that omission several problems in our research. We concur in the depiction of problems but take issue with the diagnosis. In a sense, most we ever study is behavior (the definition of the concept is quite broad). The problems are better understood as those of validity, generalizability and consequentialityin contemporary social/personality research and they stem from the “double whammy” of (occasionally unwarranted) IRB restrictions on social/personality research and unrealistic perfectionism that constrain our efforts.