1. Building and Testing theories:
Experiences from Conducting Social Identity
Research
By lixiaobo

2. Building and Testing Theories
authors
Ying-yi Hong et al
Editor in chief
Advances in Culture and
psychology
Professor of NTU and
UIUC

3. Building and Testing Theories
Outline of the article
What is a theory
Propose a four-step approach in building and
testing psychological theories (1)selecting
phenomena;
(2)finding critical commonalities;
(3)abstracting(theorizing);
(4) hypothesis testing
Three examples: hierarchical identity, identity
hegemony, bridging identity
To suggest guidelines for conducting
programmatic research in social and
personality psychology.

4. Building and Testing Theories
Topic in this presentation
Theory in research
Overview of the four-step
approach to test theories

5. Building and Testing Theories
There is nothing
so practical as a
good theory.
…Kurt Lewin

6. Building and Testing Theories
The value and importance of theory
Fundamental to research and scientific
discoveries.
Guide researcher in
Formulating research questions and
hypotheses
Selecting or creating methods and
analytical strategies

7. Building and Testing Theories
Methods and Theory : a metaphor

8. Building and Testing Theories
What is a theory?
A comprehensive explanation
of an important feature of
nature supported by facts
gathered over time . Theories
also allow scientists to make
predictions about as yet
unobserved phenomena.
----United States National Academy of
Sciences(2005)

9. Building and Testing Theories
A good theory should be
Falsifiable, that it can refuted by empirical
testing (Popper,1959)
Coherent(logical and internally consistent)
Economical
Able to explain a good range of known
findings
Able to predict future observation
(Higgins,2004)

10. Building and Testing Theories
Be generative of new ideas and new
discoveries.
Scientists are not in the business of
testing hypotheses . They are in business
of making discoveries …..research that
ends in a discovery.
(Higgins,2004)
A good theory should be

11. Building and Testing Theories
Building theories : a metaphor
 The building of theories is a process.
 Higgins (2006):
 a theory ,like a child, must be allowed to develop
through contact with the world… To begin with,
good parents do not assume what their child’s
actual behaviors are like. They observe how their
child’s actual behaviors in the world unfold in
order to learn what their child is like.
 Similarly, scientists should not be concerned with
confirming their theory’s predictions. They should
observe the data produced by theory-driven
research to learn more deeply about the
theoretical mechanisms and processes.

12. Building and Testing Theories
Four-step Approach to Test
Theories
Step1:Selecting phenomena
Step2:Finding critical commonalities
Step3:Abstracting(Theorizing)
Step4:Hypothesis testing

13. Building and Testing Theories
4-step approach
“Socially grounded” approach of
theory testing.
Allow researcher to base their scientific
investigation on real-life social events.
Guidelines for conducting
programmatic research in social and
personality psychology.

14. Caution
• There are many possible
approaches to research.
• The four-step approach
should be treated as a
guideline for researchers,
rather than as the only
approach.

15. Building and Testing Theories
Step1:Selecting phenomena
 Lewin :social theories have to be
grounded in social phenomena.
 Observing events , incidents ,and
phenomena that happen around us and
around the world
 We examine multiple phenomena that
occur in different countries and across
different times, link these together via
some common underlying psychological
mechanisms.

16. Building and Testing Theories
Example: political transition
Hong Kong 1997 handover
Unification of East and
West Germany 1989
1994 the transition of
the Afrikaan White
government to a
democratically
elected government
in South Africa

17. Building and Testing Theories
What be examined
Whether people’s social identities gave
rise to subsequent change in their
intergroup attitudes during political
transition,
or whether their prior intergroup
attitudes gave rise to changes in their
social identities.

18. Building and Testing Theories
Step2: finding critical commonalities
Identifying common
components across the
different events
The goal is to analyze the
particular psychological
mechanisms underlying the
phenomena and to identify
their commonalities and/or
their differences.

19. Building and Testing Theories
Example: political transition
 All of the three political transitions involved an
integration or a merger of two social groups.
 Research on these can answer
Does political transition evoke a sense of
belongingness to the over-arching or merged group
and thus heighten people’s identification with the
common ingroup?
Alternatively , does political transition evoke a threat
to group distinctiveness and thus heighten people’s
identification with the subordinate group?
Would identification with common ingroup verse the
subordinate ingroup be related to people’s
perceptions of the other group involved in the merger

20. Building and Testing Theories
Step3: Abstracting(Theorizing)
 Extracting the underlying psychological
processed inform the observed
commonalities, and relating the
processes to new or existing theories.
 General processes :the critical
commonalities identified are converted
into general processes that are defined
by abstract concepts, parameters, or
variables.
 The goal is to shift the focus of
explanation from the particular to the
general so that the proposed processes
can be compared and tested against
new or extant theories.

21. Building and Testing Theories
Example: political transition
Abstracted two constructs:
1) levels of social identity/self-
categorization( an over-arching versus
a subordinate identity)
2)intergroup attitudes toward the
outgroup in the merger

22. Building and Testing Theories
Linked them to existing theories
Minimal group paradigm
Self-categorization theory
Common Ingroup Identity Model
Realistic group conflict theory
Relative deprivation theory
Prior identities are the
antecedents for their
attitudes to
the other group
Prior intergroup attitudes
are the antecedents for
their social identities

23. Building and Testing Theories
step 4: hypothesis testing
Examining and testing
the theories empirically.
a reversal of abstracting
 from the general to the
specific
The derived hypotheses
would constrain the
choice of method

24. Building and Testing Theories
Example: political transition
Social
identity
Intergroup
attitude
Social identity
theories
Realistic group
conflict theory

25. Building and Testing Theories
 H1:Social identity theories would predict that Hong Kong
people holding a common ingroup identity (Chinese
identity) would show more positive attitudes toward the
other group in the merger (Chinese Mainlanders) over
time, whereas Hong kong people holding a subordinate
group identity (Hongkonger identity) would show less
positive attitudes toward the Chinese Mainlanders at a
later point in the transition.
 H2:Realistic group conflict theory would predict that the
Hong Kong people who had more(less) positive attitudes
toward the Chinese Mainlanders would be more likely to
increase their endorsement of the Chinese (Hongkonger)
identity at a later point during the political transition.

26. Building and Testing Theories
Method selecting
A longitudinal design
The participants’ social identification
(Hongkonger vs. Chinese) and their
attitudes towards Chinese Mainlanders
were assessed at several points in time
during the political transition.
Cross-lagged Statistical model

27. Building and Testing Theories
conclusion
These four steps allow us to test social
theories against the real world.
As noted, scientific theories are always
tentative and subject to correction or
replacement.
The bottom line is that this process
should be conducive to new ways of
looking at the world, asking new
questions , and eventually making new
discoveries.

28. Building and Testing Theories
If you want to know more…
For details of this article:
 Acta psychologica Sinica (心理学报).
2010,Vol.42,No.1,22-26
For details of example:
Hong,Y.et al. the temporal causal link
between outgroup attitudes and social
categorization: The case of Hong Kong
1997 transition. Group Processes and
Intergroup Relations ,2006,9,265-288

29. Building and Testing Theories
Thank you!