Falsifiable Theories In Psychology

What scientists most often mean by a solvable problem is a testable theory. The definition of a testable theory is a very specific one in science: It means that the theory is potentially falsifiable. If a theory is not falsifiable, then it has no implications for actual events in the natural world and, hence, is useless. Psychology has been plagued by unfalsifiable theories, and that is one reason why progress in the discipline has been slow. Good theories are those that make specific predictions, and such theories are highly falsifiable. The confirmation of a specific prediction provides more support for the theory from which it was derived than the confirmation of a prediction that was not precise. In short, one implication of the falsifiability

criterion is that all confirmations of theories are not equal. Theories that receive confirmation from highly falsifiable, highly specific predictions are to be preferred. Even when predictions are not confirmed (i.e., when they are falsified), this falsification is useful to theory development. A falsified prediction indicates that a theory must either be discarded or altered so that it can account for the discrepant data pattern. Thus, it is by theory adjustment caused by falsified predictions that sciences such as psychology get closer to the truth.