The mountain of cultural psychology and the mouse of empirical studies. Methodological considerations for birth control

Abstract

Cultural psychology has built up a powerful theoretical edifice, but it has not yet consolidated its own methodology of analysis. Thus, cultural psychologists adopt models of empirical investigation borrowed from other social science domains, taking it for granted that the latter are consistent with their theoretical framework. As a result, the mountain of powerful theory ends up giving birth to the mouse of empirical analyses which runs the risk of being just the translation into the language of psychology of what is already stated by the normative canons of common sense. This paper is divided into two parts. In the first, I provide arguments in support of my criticisms, focusing on the problematic role played by the interpreting empirical investigation in terms of inductive generalization. In the second part of the paper, I propose abductive generalization as an alternative ground for the empirical investigation of psychological phenomena, providing arguments highlighting why and how it may sustain a valid methodology for cultural psychology. In particular, attention is paid to the form of generalization (abstractive generalization) that abduction leads to, as well as to the search of boundary variability as a basic strategy of investigation.