ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some historical perspective on the question of how quantitative methods came to be so heavily favored over qualitative methods within the mainstream of psychological science. Particular attention is devoted to the rise and continuation of the “quantitative imperative” in mainstream psychologists’ views about the importance of measurement in the credentialing of psychology as a genuine science. This is followed by a consideration of the “statisticizing” of psychological research, beginning with the establishment of differential psychology around the turn of the twentieth century and the subsequent adoption of the treatment group approach to experimentation so compatible with analysis of variance methods for null hypothesis significance testing. The final section of the chapter addresses critically the long-ignored conceptual problem of relying on population-level statistical findings as the empirical basis for claims to knowledge about the psychological doings of individuals. It is concluded that a better understanding among mainstream psychologists of their own discipline’s history and of the quantitative methods on which they themselves rely so heavily would greatly facilitate a much-needed relaxation of the abiding resistance to qualitative methods.
