Jingle-jangle fallacies
Published: January 27, 2023Jingle-jangle fallacies are erroneous assumptions that either two different things are the same because they bear the same name (jingle fallacy); or two identical or almost identical things are different because they are labeled differently (jangle fallacy).[1][2][3] In research, a jangle fallacy is the inference that two measures (e.g., tests, scales) with different names measure different constructs. By comparison, a jingle fallacy is the assumption that two measures which are called by the same name capture the same construct.[4][5]
An example of the jangle fallacy can be found in tests designed to assess emotional intelligence. Some of these tests measure merely personality or regular IQ-tests.[6] An example of the jingle fallacy is that personality and values are sometimes conflated and treated as the same construct.[7] Jingle and jangle fallacies make it challenging to review literatures for meta-analysis. Machine learning tools have been created to discover relevant papers even when the same construct is named differently in different articles. [8]