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The epistemic status of inter‐item correlations in Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire: the a priori versus the empirical in psychological data
Author(s) -
SMEDSLUND JAN
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1987.tb00904.x
Subject(s) - psychology , a priori and a posteriori , empirical research , confusion , personality , eysenck personality questionnaire , social psychology , cognitive psychology , big five personality traits , epistemology , extraversion and introversion , psychoanalysis , philosophy
Judgements of the semantic relatedness of items in Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire and the corresponding inter‐item correlations were found to be significantly related. The results are taken to indicate that the inter‐item correlations are knowable a priori and, hence, are not empirical. It is also argued that the reported findings themselves are knowable a priori , and that the study, therefore, is pseudoempirical, that is, attempts to test necessarily true propositions empirically. The study was intended to demonstrate concretely the distinction between a priori and empirical in psychological data, and to indicate the confusion arising when that distinction is not made.