It has been argued that the field of psychology is experiencing a replication crisis (Anvari & Lakens, 2018; Makel et al., 2012; Nosek et al., 2022) or an inability to replicate many previously published results. While this may stem from improper use of statistical tools (e.g., p-hacking and low-powered studies, Stanley et al., 2018), it has been said that this replication crisis is more likely a symptom of a “theory crisis”—a focus on specific “effects” rather than the development of general theories (van Rooij, 2019) and a lack of theoretical formalization or mathematization (Borsboom et al., 2021; Fried, 2020; Robinaugh et al., 2021) of theories, which simultaneously are argued to lack proper conceptualization and coordination (Eronen & Romeijn, 2020) and ontological commitment (Oude Maatman, 2021).

A problem-centric view would frame this as the result of an expansive, but disconnected, problem space (each effect reflects an isolated problem) and the corresponding development of problem-specific theories which are inherently brittle due to their limited coverage of problem space. This aligns with recommendations that the field focuses on developing theories with attention to their causal adequacy and explanatory depth (Guest & Martin, 2021), perhaps even at the expense of their evidential accuracy, as such theories can cover more of the problem space. Further, the crisis can be seen to reflect a communal problem which problem space itself is fragmented; that is, each experimental effect corresponds to its own unique problem, rather than experiments that have the potential to inform multiple problems and problems that encompass observations from different experimental modalities. Together, the arguments presented in this paper suggest that theories that are able to unify problem space should be selected and developed due to their communal facilitation (cf. finding a foundational theory; Muthukrishna & Henrich, 2019).