Abstract

The explanation of psychological phenomena is a central aim of psychological science. However, the nature of explanation and the processes by which we evaluate whether a theory explains a phenomenon are often unclear. We address this shortcoming by characterizing the nature of explanation in psychology along the following lines: a theory explains a phenomenon if and only if a formal model of the theory produces the statistical pattern representing the phenomenon. Using this account, we outline a workable methodology of explanation:

(a) explicating a verbal theory into a formal model,

(b) representing phenomena as statistical patterns in data, and

(c) assessing whether the formal model produces these statistical patterns.

Finally, we compare our proposal to other models of explanation from philosophy of science.