“Simon Said,” We Didn't Jump

• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12330

Communication

Asmus Leth Olsen is assistant profes-

sor in the Department of Political Science at

the University of Copenhagen. His research

focuses on the effects of performance

information, political and administrative

psychology, and the application of experi-

mental methods in public administration.

His work has appeared in journals such as

Political Behavior, Public Choice, and

Judgment and Decision Making.

E-mail: ajlo@ifs.ku.dk

“Simon Said,” We Didn’t Jump 325

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 2, pp. 325–326. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12330.

behavioral science in public administration?  e name

is less important than the need for a clear and visible

psychology-based subf‌i eld of public administration

analogous to those in neighboring sciences.

How, then, do we come closer to placing a marking

stone between psychology and public administra-

tion?  e increasing use of experimental methods

in public administration paves the way for a close

methodological integration of the two f‌i elds: cognitive

and social psychology have long been def‌i ned by the

experimental paradigm. Clearly, this ef‌f ort needs to

be intensif‌i ed in order to make experimental designs

a mainstream tool for public administration scholars

and practitioners. We are slowly getting there.

 e main obstacle seems to be a theoretical one. Public

administration needs to engage with theories and

established facts in psychology. Any scientif‌i cally sound

study of perception, attitude formation, or decision

making in our f‌i eld must in some sense correspond to

the thousands of articles published in psychology on

these concepts over the course of the last 60 years.  is

may sound like an unbearable and impossible task. On

the contrary, it has the potential to help sort out cur-

rent disputes and ambiguous f‌i ndings in our own f‌i eld.

If a set of f‌i ndings in public administration are consist-

ent with research in psychology, this will lend credibil-

ity to the underlying theory. On the other hand, if a

set of f‌i ndings are at odds with current psychology, this

will call for further investigation and require us to ask

and determine why some processes play out dif‌f erently

in an administrative context.

Simon noted how the “marking stone” should help

travelers in both directions: psychologists can also

learn something from public administration. Public

administration of‌f ers an empirical setting in which

attention, information processing, and decision mak-

ing can be studied across time, countries, levels of

government, and diverse policy areas. As a f‌i eld, we

of‌f er an exciting empirical setting to test psychological

theories that have proved valid in experimental labs

[T]he distance is so great between our present

psychological knowledge of the learning and choice

processes and the kinds of knowledge needed for

economic and administrative theory that a mark-

ing stone placed halfway between might help trave-

lers from both directions to keep to their courses.

—Herbert Simon (1955, 100)

Kenneth J. Meier recently argued in this journal

that the f‌i eld of public administration has

failed to confront old criticisms formulated

by Herbert Simon (Meier 2015).  e year 2015 marks

60 years since Herbert Simon convincingly made the

case for one such criticism: the absence of a “marking

stone” to help connect current psychological research

and public administration. Sadly, today the distance

between research in psychology and in public admin-

istration seems greater than ever. Looking around in

the top journals of public administration, one can eas-

ily detect the absence of psychological theories. At the

same time, substantive questions in public administra-

tion are an infrequent topic for psychologists. By and

large, we conduct our research in separate worlds.

 e disconnect stands in sharp contrast to psycholo-

gy’s relationship with public administration’s academic

neighbors. For instance, political psychology is today a

dynamic subf‌i eld in political science and has been the

leading substantive f‌i eld in popularizing experimental

methods among political scientists. Behavioral eco-

nomics, likewise, has successfully integrated insights

from cognitive and social psychology into the study of

markets and economic behavior. Here, the “marking

stone” is f‌i rmly placed: Simon is credited as one of the

drivers of this development, highlighted by his receipt

of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978.

So why is there no administrative psychology? Or public

management psychology? Or a behavioral public admin-

istration to keep in line with the growing and vibrant

sister f‌i elds? Or, as the Nobel Prize–winning psycholo-

gist Daniel Kahneman (2011) would prefer, an applied

“Simon Said,” We Didn’t Jump

Asmus Leth Olsen

University of Copenhagen, Denmark