2025-06-26 –, Second floor 214
Because many strong theories make clear predictions, in principle there may be no advantage to registering such a theory’s predictions in advance of data collection (Szollosi & Donkin, 2021). Some researchers have therefore argued that preregistration is not worthwhile (Szollosi et al., 2020). Yet psychologists have not prioritized the development of strong theories, or even the use of existing ones. Can we do something about this? I will argue that preregistration is, ironically, an important part of the answer. Strong theories are underappreciated in part because of the scarcity of both the skills and the time required to determine that a theory is strong and makes clear predictions. But because everyone recognizes the value of correct predictions, preregistration can help strong theories rise to the top. However, additional practices such as head-to-head comparisons of competing theories (Dutilh et al., 2018) may also be necessary.
