Measurement in Psychology A Critical History of a Methodological Concept [Paperback]

Traces history of measurement in social sciences/sciences to question whether psychological attributes are quantitative.It is now widely believed that psychologists are able to measure many attributes once thought unmeasurable, such as intelligence, personality, and social attitudes. What is not widely known is that, in promoting such claims, psychologists have their own special definition of measurement, one that trivialises the conception relative to its meaning in the established physical sciences. By considering the history of psychology and related disciplines over the past 150 years, this book explains how this anamolous situation arose and concludes by urging a new direction for research in quantitative psychology.It is now widely believed that psychologists are able to measure many attributes once thought unmeasurable, such as intelligence, personality, and social attitudes. What is not widely known is that, in promoting such claims, psychologists have their own special definition of measurement, one that trivialises the conception relative to its meaning in the established physical sciences. By considering the history of psychology and related disciplines over the past 150 years, this book explains how this anamolous situation arose and concludes by urging a new direction for research in quantitative psychology.This book traces how such a seemingly immutable idea as measurement proved so debatable when it collided with the subject matter of psychology. This book addresses philosophical and social influences (such as scientism, practicalism, and Pythagoreanism) reshaping the concept of measurement and identifies a fundamental problem at the core of this reshaping: the issue of whether psychological attributes really are quantitative. The author argues that the idea of measurement now endorsed within psychology actually subverts attempts to establish a genuinely quantitative science, and he urges a new direction. This volume relates views on measurement by tlz