Abstract

PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 2018, VOL. 29, NO. 4, 200–202 https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2018.1537315 Progress in Understanding Requires Modeling with Faithfulness to the Phenomenon, and Precise Mechanisms Brian M. Monroe Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama The target article is a much-needed creative attempt to syn- So, given an attitude about Donald Trump, for example, thesize much of what we know about attitudes into a coher- one’s association of him producing a reliable stream of state- ent framework that is more quantifiable and precise than ments that contradict known facts would have equal weight what has come before. If the field is to make progress in the network (and thus in producing the attitude) with the toward a truly scientific understanding of social cognitive arguably far-less-strongly-related quality that he settled a phenomena, attempts like this are not only desirable but federal lawsuit in the 1970s where he was accused of hous- necessary. Particularly outstanding is the attempt to use ing rental racial discrimination. Both associations might models from other areas of science to describe knowledge ultimately impact one’s attitude toward him to different networks. In more general terms, many phenomena from degrees, but this difference in strength of association simply psychology exhibit