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Most branches of psychology, including health psychology, have been criticised for not properly specifying their theories. Their still predominant use of so-called narrative theories entails a number of significant impediments to cumulative scientific progress (e.g., ambiguity, [partial] redundancy, lack of refutability). Stricter formalization of theories, which has been common in other branches of science for decades, has been proposed as a solution. Here, we showcase how to formalize a theory, starting from two narrative paragraphs detailing a fictitious “two-factor-theory of burnout” and ending with a formal model representing a version of this theory. Given that narrative theories are almost always underspecified, one typically has to introduce many explicit, auxiliary assumptions to arrive at a formal model that is actually testable. To promote this challenging but crucial type of work in psychology, better training and a significant change of incentives (rewarding thoroughness more than quantity) are required.
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