Summary
The episode works through four questions that students often find difficult in the lesson on the roots of social and behavioural theory. It uses the competing accounts of cholera offered by William Farr and John Snow to show why confirming cases prove little, turns an invented program rationale into a testable theory, and describes the published debate over whether the Theory of Planned Behavior should be retired. The hosts consider what the ideas of Wittgenstein and Foucault about ground rules imply for judging accounts, clarify the meaning of empirical evidence, and disagree about whether the empirical standard is enough for a small community program before settling on a shared practical rule. Further worked examples sort an invented hand-hygiene program into the four schools of psychology and distinguish dissonance from self-perception. A harder example states the testable hypothesis behind each part of an invented after-school activity program and finds that its prize stamps and its self-chosen goals rest on conflicting assumptions, drawing on research on how expected rewards can weaken interest and naming the observation that would show whether the stamps undercut the goals.