Keywords: Clinical Psychology; Complex Dynamical Systems; Computational Modeling; Formal Theory; Network Approach; Theory development.

Author Jonas Haslbeck on the article: 

Over the last decade, there has been a surge of empirical research investigating mental disorders as networks of interacting symptoms. This rapidly growing empirical literature has raised a critical question: How can we best make use of these empirical findings to achieve our aim of explaining, predicting, and controlling mental disorders?

In our paper, we argue that achieving these aims requires the construction of formal theories and we investigate how empirical research can best inform the construction of well-developed formal theories. We begin by reviewing the philosophy of science literature to clarify the nature of formal theories, data models, and the relationship between them. We identify three plausible ways in which empirical data models can be used to develop formal theories. In the first, data models are treated as formal theories. In the second, data models are used to make direct inferences about the real world and, thereby, inform the development of a formal theory.

In the third, we adopt a computational modeling approach as it is common in complex systems science. Here, the empirical data model is compared to a theory-implied data model, and any differences between them is used to inform subsequent theory development. Using simulations from a computational model of panic disorder, we investigate which of these three routes best informs the development of formal theories of psychopathology and conclude that the third approach is most promising.

We then build on this evaluation by proposing the abductive formal theory construction (AFTC) framework: a three-stage framework rooted in abductive inference and the comparison between theory-implied and empirical data models. We argue that this approach provides a challenging, yet promising way forward for using empirical research to construct formal theories and thereby advance clinical science.

Haslbeck J. M. B., Ryan O., Robinaugh D. J., Waldorp L. J., Borsboom D. (in press). Modeling Psychopathology: From Data Models to Formal Theories. Psychological Methods. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/jgm7f