Jingle-Jangle Fallacy
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Jingle-Jangle Fallacy
In psychology, Jingle and jangle fallacies refer to conceptual inconsistencies and confusions where either different terms and constructs are labeled with the same term (jingle) or one construct is referred to with multiple terms (jangle).[1] In the context of Human Development and human spirituality, the Jangle Fallacy arises when the dozens of different terms coined, across cultures and centuries, to describe the common elements of the Connection Experience are mistaken for dozens of different phenomena. See also Nomenclature Confusion.
Concept Map
Syncretic Terms
Related LP Terms
Non-LP Related Terms
Notes
The Jangle Fallacy originates in the psychometric literature of the early twentieth century, where it was identified alongside the Jingle Fallacy as a source of invalid inference in psychological measurement: constructs were treated as distinct because they bore different labels, without any empirical demonstration that they were in fact distinct.
Recently, studies have begun to emerge in psychology in an attempt to "defragment" psychology.[2]
Jangle Fallacy in the Study of Connection Experience
The Jangle Fallacy is a persistent problem in the study of Connection Experience and human spirituality. Because every culture, epoch, and often every individual has coined its own terminology for what are often the same common elements of human experience, the scholarly literature is fragmented into dozens of seemingly separate research topics that are, at root, the study of the same thing. Mystical experience, religious experience, spiritual experience, awakening experience, peak experience, ecstatic experience, unitive experience, numinous experience, transcendental experience, samadhi, satori, kensho, and so on, are routinely treated as distinct phenomena, despite considerable congruence in the experiences being described (see Nomenclature Confusion for a review of the literature, including the sociological evidence that social position shapes which terms an experiencer uses).
The consequences are significant: knowledge fails to accumulate, literatures bifurcate, empirical findings cannot be compared or replicated across traditions, and theorization of Human Development and the Full Realization of Human Potential is impeded at both the individual and collective level. Modern psychometricians echo this assessment, noting that jangle fallacies "preclude knowledge convergence when we study the same psychological phenomena, but refer to it differently"[3] and calling for systematic detection strategies.[4]
Commentary
The Lightning Path rejects the Jangle Fallacy. Where convergent evidence indicates that different terms refer to the same underlying phenomenon, the Lightning Path maps them as Syncretic Terms and subsumes them under neutral, non-denominational, modern terminology. This is a deliberate act of Semantic Integration: the construction of a controlled vocabulary that allows knowledge about human Connection and human development to accumulate rather than fragment.
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Footnotes
- ↑ Hanfstingl, Barbara, Carina Mitterer, and Komal Abbas. "Uncovering Jingle and Jangle Fallacies: A Systematic Review Mapping Future Directions." _Zeitschrift für Psychologie_ 233, no. 4 (2025): 261-266. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000602.
- ↑ Anvari et al., "Defragmenting Psychology," 837.
- ↑ Gonzalez, O., MacKinnon, D. P., and Muniz, F. B. "Extrinsic Convergent Validity Evidence to Prevent Jingle and Jangle Fallacies." _Multivariate Behavioral Research_ 56, no. 1 (2021): 3-19.
- ↑ Hanfstingl, B., Oberleiter, S., Pietschnig, J., Tran, U. S., and Voracek, M. "Detecting Jingle and Jangle Fallacies by Identifying Consistencies and Variabilities in Study Specifications – a Call for Research." _Frontiers in Psychology_ 15 (2024): 1404060. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1404060.