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‘Going to where the action is’ versus ‘creating the action’: A reply to Antaki
Author(s) -
Markman Keith D.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1348/014466600164525
Subject(s) - surprise , action (physics) , counterfactual thinking , argument (complex analysis) , psychology , epistemology , value (mathematics) , generalizability theory , social psychology , criticism , law , philosophy , political science , computer science , developmental psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning
My first reaction to Charles Antaki's commentary on Markman and Tetlock (2000) was one of surprise ‐ surprise that our admittedly modest and rather circumscribed paper on the psychological links between accountability, forseeability, and counterfactual denials of responsibility could generate such criticism. Upon reflection, however, it appears that Antaki is only superficially concerned with the specifics of our experiment per se and, rather, is seeking to use the Markman and Tetlock piece as a springboard for advancing some more general notions about the value of a laboratory‐based, experimental approach to social psychology. I believe that this is a useful and worthwhile debate, and I am pleased to participate in it. In his commentary, Antaki brings up two old arguments ‐ (i) the generalizability question; and (ii) the value of experimentally testing hypotheses that, a priori , appear to be derivable on purely logical grounds — as well as one new argument ‐ that one is on safer conceptual ground describing ‘real‐world’ social discourse (i.e., where the ‘action’ is) than using results derived from artificial and contrived laboratory experiments to develop causal explanations for such real‐world events. I will attempt to address each of these arguments in turn.