Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T15:28:53.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Defining and Redefining Phenotypes

Operational Definitions as Open Concepts

from Part I - Clinical Psychological Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2020

By
Peter Zachar ,
Eric Turkheimer  and
Kenneth F. Schaffner
Edited by
Aidan G. C. Wright  and
Michael N. Hallquist
Aidan G. C. Wright
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Michael N. Hallquist
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Get access

Summary

Focusing primarily on descriptive phenotypes for psychopathology, this chapter reviews the history and philosophy of operational definitions, emphasizing their provisional nature under the auspices of open concepts. It also reintroduces an important feature of operational definitions as originally proposed, namely the role of conventions in both defining and redefining the meaning of empirical concepts. It tentatively suggests that a shift toward a scientific realist conception of construct validation had the perhaps unintended consequence of obscuring the intrinsically provisional nature of concepts for psychological phenotypes. It explicates open concepts with the examples of schizophrenia, the five factor model of personality, and endophenotypes.

Keywords

endophenotyperadexfacet theoryconventionalism factor analysisfive-factor modelPercy Bridgman
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology , pp. 5 - 17
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almagor, M., Tellegen, A., & Waller, N. G. (1995). The Big Seven Model: A Cross-Cultural Replication of the Basic Dimensions of Natural Language Trait Descriptions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 300–307.Google Scholar
American Psychological Association. (1954). Technical Recommendations for Psychological Tests and Diagnostic Techniques. Psychological Bulletin, 51(2, Pt. 2), 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentall, R. P. (Ed.) (1990). Reconstructing Schizophrenia. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bergsholm, P. (2016). Is Schizophrenia Disappearing? The Rise and Fall of the Diagnosis of Functional Psychoses: An Essay. BMC Psychiatry, 16, 387. Retrieved from https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12888-016-1101-5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bilder, R. M., Howe, A. G., & Sabb, F. W. (2013). Multilevel Models from Biology to Psychology: Mission Impossible? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 122, 917–927.Google Scholar
Blashfield, R. K., Reynolds, S. M., & Stennett, B. (2012). The Death of Histrionic Personality Disorder. In Widiger, T. A. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Personality Disorders (pp. 603–627). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bridgman, P. W. (1927). The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Cannon, T. D., & Keller, M. C. (2006). Endophenotypes in the Genetic Analyses of Mental Disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2, 267–290.Google Scholar
Carnap, R. (1936). Testability and Meaning. Philosophy of Science, 3, 419–471.Google Scholar
Carnap, R. (1937). Testability and Meaning ‒ Continued. Philosophy of Science, 4, 1–40.Google Scholar
Caspi, A., Houts, R. M., Belsky, D. W., Goldman-Mellor, S. J., Harrington, H., Israel, S., … Moffitt, T. E. (2014). The P Factor: One General Psychopathology Factor in the Structure of Psychiatric Disorders? Clinical Psychological Science, 2(2), 119–137.Google Scholar
Chang, H. (2004). Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chang, H. (2009). Operationalism. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/operationalism/Google Scholar
Chodoff, P. (1982). Hysteria and Women. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 139(5), 545–551.Google Scholar
Clark, L. A. (2005). Temperament as a Unifying Basis for Personality and Psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114(4), 505–521.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cloninger, C. R. (1998). The Genetics and Psychobiology of the Seven-Factor Model of Personality. In Silk, K. R. (Ed.), Biology of Personality Disorders (pp. 63–92). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Cronbach, L. J., & Meehl, P. E. (1955). Construct Validity in Psychological Tests. Psychological Bulletin, 52(4), 281–302.Google Scholar
De Raad, B., Barelds, D. P. H., Levert, E., Ostendorf, F., Mlačić, B., Blas, L. D., … Katigbak, M. S. (2010). Only Three Factors of Personality Description Are Fully Replicable across Languages: A Comparison of 14 Trait Taxonomies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(1), 160–173.Google Scholar
Feigl, H. (1950). Existential Hypotheses. Philosophy of Science, 17, 35–62.Google Scholar
Fine, A. (1986). The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, B. L., & Klein, D. N. (2014). A Review of Selected Candidate Endophenotypes for Depression. Clinical Psychology Review, 34(5), 417–427.Google Scholar
Gottesman, I. I., & Gould, T. D. (2003). The Endophenotype Concept in Psychiatry: Etymology and Strategic Intentions. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 636–645.Google Scholar
Gottesman, I. I., & McGue, M. (2015). Endophenotypes. In Cautin, R. L. & Lilienfeld, S. O. (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology (Vol. II, pp. 1068–1075). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Gottesman, I. I., & Sheilds, J. (1972). Schizophrenia Genetics: A Twin Study Vantage Point. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Guloksuz, S., & van Os, J. (2017). The Slow Death of the Concept of Schizophrenia and the Painful Birth of the Psychosis Spectrum. Psychological Medicine, 48, 229–244.Google Scholar
Guttman, L. (1954). A New Approach to Factor Analysis: The Radex. In Laxarsfeld, P. S. (Ed.), Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences (pp. 258–348). New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Heinzmann, G., & Stump, D. (2017). Henri Poincaré. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=poincareGoogle Scholar
Hyman, S. E. (2010). The Diagnosis of Mental Disorders: The Problem of Reification. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 6, 155–179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Israel, H., & Goldstein, B. (1944). Operationism in Psychology. Psychological Review, 51(3), 177–188.Google Scholar
Jablensky, A. (2010). The Diagnostic Concept of Schizophrenia: Its History, Evolution, and Future Prospects. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 12(3), 271–287.Google Scholar
Jackson, D. N. (1994). Jackson Personality Inventory ‒ Revised. London, Ontario: Research Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, M. (1983). A Woman’s View of DSM-III. American Psychologist, 38(7), 786–792.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendler, K. S., & Neale, M. C. (2010). Endophenotype: A Conceptual Analysis. Molecular Psychiatry, 15(8), 789–797.Google Scholar
Köhler, S., Vasilevsky, N. A., Engelstad, M., Foster, E., McMurry, J., Aymé, S., … Robinson, P. N. (2017). The Human Phenotype Ontology in 2017. Nucleic Acids Research, 45(Database issue), D865‒D876.Google Scholar
Kroenke, K., Strine, T. W., Spitzer, R. L., Williams, J. B. W., Berry, J. T., & Mokdad, A. H. (2009). The PHQ-8 as a Measure of Current Depression in the General Population. Journal of Affective Disorders, 114(1), 163–173.Google Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. In Lakatos, I. & Musgrave, A. (Eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (pp. 91–196). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lenzenweger, M. F. (2013). Endophenotype, Intermediate Phenotype, Biomarker: Definitions, Concept Comparisons, Clarifications. Depression and Anxiety, 30(3), 185–189.Google Scholar
Mach, E. (1903). Critique of the Concept of Temperature (McCormack, T. J., Trans.). In Carus, P. (Ed.), The Open Court: A Monthly Magazine Volume XVII (pp. 154–161). Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Mackinnon, D. M., Waismann, F., & Kneale, W. C. (1945). Symposium: Verifiability. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 19, 101‒164.Google Scholar
Maraun, M. D. (1997). Appearance and Reality: Is the Big Five the Structure of Trait Descriptors. Personality and Individual Differences, 22(5), 629–647.Google Scholar
McCrae, R. R., & John, O. P. (1992). An Introduction to the Five Factor Model and Its Implications. Journal of Personality, 60, 175–215.Google Scholar
Meehl, P. E. (1978). Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the Slow Progress of Soft Psychology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46(4), 806–834.Google Scholar
Meehl, P. E. (1986). Paul E. Meel Extended Autobiography. Retrieved from http://meehl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1696/f/139autoextended.pdfGoogle Scholar
Meehl, P. E. (1990). Appraising and Amending Theories: The Strategy of Lakatosian Defense and Two Principles That Warrant It. Psychological Inquiry, 1(2), 108–141.Google Scholar
Micale, M. S. (1993). On the “Disappearance” of Hysteria. Isis, 84, 496–526.Google Scholar
Micale, M. S. (2008). Hysterical Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, G. A., & Rockstroh, B. (2013). Endophenotypes in Psychopathology Research: Where Do We Stand? Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 9, 177–213.Google Scholar
Munafò, M. R., Nosek, B. A., Bishop, D. V., Button, K. S., Chambers, C. D., du Sert, N. P., … Ioannidis, J. P. (2017). A Manifesto for Reproducible Science. Nature Human Behaviour, 1, 0021. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0021Google Scholar
Norton, J. D. (2010). How Hume and Mach Helped Einstein Find Special Relativity. In Dickson, M. & Domski, M. (Eds.), Discourse on New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science (pp. 359–386). La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Pap, A. (1953). Reduction Sentences and Open Concepts. Methodos, 5, 3–30.Google Scholar
Pap, A. (1958). Semantics and Necessary Truth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Parnas, J., & Bovet, P. (2015). Psychiatry Made Easy: Operation(al)ism and Some of Its Consequences. In Kendler, K. S. & Parnas, J. (Eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry III: The Nature and Sources of Historical Change (pp. 190–212). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Plomin, R., & Daniels, D. (1987). Why Are Children in the Same Family so Different from One Another. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 1–16.Google Scholar
Poincaré, H. (1905/2007). Non-Euclidean Geometries. MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive. Retrieved from www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Poincare_non-Euclidean.htmlGoogle Scholar
Poldrack, R., Kittur, A., Kalar, D., Miller, E., Seppa, C., Gil, Y., … Bilder, R. (2011). The Cognitive Atlas: Toward a Knowledge Foundation for Cognitive Neuroscience. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 5(17). Retrieved from www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fninf.2011.00017Google Scholar
Poldrack, R. A., & Yarkoni, T. (2016). From Brain Maps to Cognitive Ontologies: Informatics and the Search for Mental Structure. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 587–612.Google Scholar
Ribes-Iñesta, E. (2003). What Is Defined in Operational Definitions? The Case of Operant Psychology. Behavior and Philosophy, 31, 111–126.Google Scholar
Robins, E., & Guze, S. B. (1970). Establishment of Diagnostic Validity in Psychiatric Illness: Its Application to Schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 126(7), 983–986.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schaffner, K. F. (2012). A Philosophical Overview of the Problems of Validity for Psychiatric Disorders. In Kendler, K. S. & Parnas, J. (Eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry II: Nosology (pp. 169–189). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schaffner, K. F., & Tabb, K. (2015). Hempel as a Critic of Bridgman’s Operationalism: Lesson for Psychiatry from the History of Science. In Kendler, K. S. & Parnas, J. (Eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry III: The Nature and Sources of Historical Change (pp. 213–220). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, M. A., Wiggins, O. P., & Norko, M. A. (1995). Prototypes, Ideal Types, and Personality Disorders: The Return to Classical Phenomenology. In Livesley, W. J. (Ed.), The DSM-IV Personality Disorders (pp. 417–432). New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Showalter, E. (1985). The Female Malady. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Sklar, L. (2000). Convention, Role of. In Newton-Smith, W. H. (Ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science (pp. 56–64). Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stevens, S. S. (1935). The Operational Definition of Psychological Concepts. Psychological Review, 42(6), 517–527.Google Scholar
Sullivan, J. A. (2014). Stabilizing Mental Disorders: Prospects and Promises. In Kincaid, H. & Sullevin, J. A. (Eds.), Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds (pp. 257–281). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sullivan, J. A. (2017). Coordinated Pluralism as a Means to Facilitate Integrative Taxonomies of Cognition. Philosophical Explorations, 20(2), 129–145.Google Scholar
Sydenham, T. (1734). The Whole Works of That Excellent Practical Physician, Dr. Thomas Sydenham (Pechey, J., Trans. 10 edn.). London: W. Feales.Google Scholar
Trillat, E. (1995). Conversion Disorder and Hysteria: Clinical Section. In Berrios, G. E. & Porter, R. (Eds.), A History of Clinical Psychiatry (pp. 433–441). London: The Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Turkheimer, E. (2000). Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5), 160–164.Google Scholar
Turkheimer, E. (2016). Weak Genetic Explanation 20 Years Later: Reply to Plomin et al. (2016). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 24–28.Google Scholar
Turkheimer, E. (2017). The Hard Question in Psychiatric Nosology. In Kendler, K. S. & Parnas, J. (Eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry IV (pp. 27–44). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Turkheimer, E., Ford, D. C., & Oltmanns, T. F. (2008). Regional Analysis of Self-Reported Personality Disorder Criteria. Journal of Personality, 76(6), 1587–1622.Google Scholar
Turkheimer, E., & Gottesman, I. I. (1991). Is H2 = 0 a Null Hypothesis Anymore. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, 410–411.Google Scholar
Turner, J. A., & Laird, A. R. (2012). The Cognitive Paradigm Ontology: Design and Application. Neuroinformatics, 10(1), 57–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Loo, H. M., & Romejin, J.-W. (2015). Psychiatric Comorbidity: Fact or Artifact. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 36, 41–60.Google Scholar
Walter, M. L. (1990). Science and Cultural Crisis: An Intellectual Biography of Percy Williams Bridgman (1882‒1961). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Welsh, G. S. (1956). Factor Dimensions A and R. In Welsh, G. S. & Dahlstrom, W. G. (Eds.), Basic Reading on the MMPI in Psychology and Medicine (pp. 264–281). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Wiggins, J. S. (1968). Personality Structure. Annual Review of Psychology, 19, 293–350.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zachar, P. (2014). A Metaphysics of Psychopathology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zanderson, M., Henrikson, M. G., & Parnas, J. (2019). A Recurrent Question: What Is Borderline. Journal of Personality Disorders, 33, 341–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×