Our efforts here were motivated by the fact that researchers often formulate interaction hypotheses imprecisely. If interaction hypotheses are phrased non-specifically, misfit between theoretical formulations and trends in data may go unrecognized. If methods for testing specific interaction hypotheses were developed, researchers could be challenged to provide more detail regarding the expected form of interactions. Without clear predictions, no definitive evidence regarding confirmation or disconfirmation of theoretical predictions is generated, aside from statistical significance of the interaction effect. Indeed, researchers often present disordinal interaction plots that appear inconsistent with their theories, but theory-data mismatch is rarely, if ever, noted. Armed with clearer predictions, misfit between predictions and results might be more readily recognized, leading to the need to revise theories to accord better with data.
