ABSTRACT: Contends that theory entails the risk of overgeneralization and discusses the possibility of avoiding overgeneralizations. It is suggested that researchers display confirmation bias when they persevere by revising procedures until obtaining a theory-predicted result. This strategy produces findings that are overgeneralized in avoidable ways, and this in turn hinders successful applications. (The 40-yr history of an attitude-change phenomenon, the sleeper effect, is used to illustrate the point.) Confirmation bias is an expectable product of theory-centered research strategies, including both the puzzle-solving activity of T. S. Kuhn's (1970) "normal science" and K. R. Popper's (1934 [1959]) recommended method of falsification seeking. The alternative strategies of condition seeking (identifying limiting conditions for a known finding) and design (discovering conditions that can produce a previously unobtained result) are result centered; they are directed at producing specified patterns of data rather than at the logically impossible goals of establishing either truth or falsity of a theory. It is contended that result-centered methods are not atheoretical. Rather, they oblige resourcefulness in using existing theory and can stimulate novel development of theory.