About a Questionable Criticism: Some Precision on the Current Theory of the Norm of Internality
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74
In a paper published in the International Review of Social Psychology, Delmas (2009) challenges the interpretation of the results obtained with internality questionnaires. He criticizes a confusion of variables and an erroneous attribution to the internal/external construct of results supposedly due to the mere “value” of the explanations. We answer that several researches, in which the bias discussed by Delmas cannot be evoked, show that internal explanations have a specific value which external explanations do not have. We then insist on the fact that this value is linked to social utility and not to social desirability, two dimensions of value which Delmas does not distinguish. We also discuss the methodological bias which consists in contrasting the (quantitative) value of internal explanations with internal (qualitative) construct. The article concludes with a discussion of the validation of internality questionnaires.
Réseaux sociaux