Abstract

The present article concerns the theoretical basis of the statistical techniques for cumulative analysis in psychological research, particularly on the domain of social psychology. Subsequently, characteristics of meta-analysis are considered that allow the construction and validation of psychological theories. The paper reviews different domain of social psychology in which meta-analysis brought to a disambiguation of apparently inconsistent results. Finally, meta-analysis is described as a set of techniques that can move social psychology toward hard sciences reducing the room for ambiguous interpretation of data.