Un costruzionismo sperimentale? L'eredità dell'operazionismo nella psicologia sperimentale

Operationism, an approach grounded in Percy W. Bridgman’s operational analysis of scientific concepts, holds that the meaning of theoretical terms depends on the operations through which they are measured. Although closely associated with Logical Empiricism and often regarded as an outdated philosophical position, operationism has exerted a profound and lasting influence on psychology, not only within behaviorism but also in subsequent methodological debates and contemporary cognitive psychology. The main criticisms directed at this approach – including the assumption of a one-to-one correspondence between a concept and the procedures used to measure it, and the resulting proliferation of operational definitions – have not led to its disappearance from scientific practice. More recently, Uljana Feest has offered a reinterpretation of operationism in psychology, presenting it as a heuristic for exploratory experimentation rather than as a tool for the empirical testing of pre-existing concepts, as traditionally understood. On this view, operationism serves to identify, stabilize, and determine the objects of psychological inquiry, which typically originate in intrinsically vague common-sense notions. This paper examines operationism as a still-active component of psychological research and critically evaluates its compatibility with scientific realism. We argue that, despite being deeply rooted in empirical and experimental practice, operationism cannot be adequately understood within a realist framework. Instead, it embodies a form of experimental constructivism that contributes to the theoretical fragmentation characteristic of contemporary psychology.