The Flatland Fallacy: Moving Beyond Low–Dimensional Thinking

• Published in: Topics in cognitive science Vol. 11; no. 2; pp. 433 - 454
• Main Authors: Jolly, Eshin, Chang, Luke J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.04.2019; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: Behavioral Research; Biomedical Research; Computational; Computational Approaches to Social Cognition Editors: Fiery A. Cushman and Samuel J. Gershman; Decision‐making; Dual‐processing; Forthcoming Topic: Computational Approaches to Social Cognition; Humans; Models, Theoretical; Psychological education; Psychology - education; Social; Thinking; Decision-making; Social; Psychological education; Computational; Dual-processing
• ISSN: 1756-8757; 1756-8765; 1756-8765
• DOI: 10.1111/tops.12404

Psychology is a complicated science. It has no general axioms or mathematical proofs, is rarely directly observable, and is the only discipline in which the subject matter (i.e., human psychological phenomena) is also the tool of investigation. Like the Flatlanders in Edwin Abbot's famous short story (), we may be led to believe that the parsimony offered by our low‐dimensional theories reflects the reality of a much higher‐dimensional problem. Here we contend that this “Flatland fallacy” leads us to seek out simplified explanations of complex phenomena, limiting our capacity as scientists to build and communicate useful models of human psychology. We suggest that this fallacy can be overcome through (a) the use of quantitative models, which force researchers to formalize their theories to overcome this fallacy, and (b) improved quantitative training, which can build new norms for conducting psychological research. In rebellion against low‐dimensional (e.g., two‐factor) theories in psychology, the authors make the case for high‐dimensional theories. This change in perspective requires a shift towards a focus on computation and quantitative reasoning.