Showing papers in "American Psychologist in 1962"

On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications.

Abstract: Since the time of Galileo, scientists have employed the laboratory experiment as a method of understanding natural phenomena. This chapter focuses on some of the qualities peculiar to psychological experiments. The experimental situation is one which takes place within the context of an explicit agreement of the subject to participate in a special form of social interaction known as "taking part in an experiment". The demand characteristics perceived in any particular experiment will vary with the sophistication, intelligence, and previous experience of each experimental subject. It becomes an empirical issue to study under what circumstances, in what kind of experimental contexts, and with what kind of subject populations, demand characteristics become significant in determining the behavior of subjects in experimental situations. The most obvious technique for determining what demand characteristics are perceived is the use of post-experimental inquiry. In this regard, it is well to point out that considerable self-discipline is necessary for the experimenter to obtain a valid inquiry.

Schizotaxia, Schizotypy, Schizophrenia

Abstract: IN the course of the last decade, while spending several thousand hours in the practice of intensive psychotherapy, I have treated— sometimes unknowingly except in retrospect—a considerable number of schizoid and schizophrenic patients. Like all clinicians, I have formed some theoretical opinions as a result of these experiences. While I have not until recently begun any systematic research efforts on this baffling disorder, I felt that to share with you some of my thoughts, based though they are upon clinical impressions in the context of selected research by others, might be an acceptable use of this occasion. Let me begin by putting a question which I find is almost never answered correctly by our clinical students on PhD orals, and the answer to which they seem to dislike when it is offered. Suppose that you were required to write down a procedure for selecting an individual from the population who would be diagnosed as schizophrenic by a psychiatric staff; you have to wager $1,000 on being right; you may not include in your selection procedure any behavioral fact, such as a symptom or trait, manifested by the individual. What would you write down? So far as I have been able to ascertain, there is only one thing you could write down that would give you a better than even chance of winning such a bet—namely, \"Find an individual X who has a schizophrenic identical twin.\" Admittedly, there are many other facts which would raise your odds somewhat above the low base rate of schizophrenia. You might, for example, identify X by first finding mothers who have certain unhealthy child-rearing attitudes; you might enter a subpopulation defined jointly by such demographic variables as age, size of community, religion, ethnic background, or social class. But these would leave you with a pretty unfair wager, as would the rule, \"Find an X who has a fraternal twin, of the same sex, diagnosed as

Responsibility for Raw Data.

Abstract: Recently a colleague presented some data from his research and I asked him what he thought about a particular interpretation of his results which I suggested His response was to the effect that my interpretation was an interesting idea but that we did not really know the facts. My point is that he acted as if what he has thought about his extensive experience with the problem under discussion had no value because it was subjective. I believe this is a widespread attitude among psychologists. I am not saying that subjective functions are sufficient to the scientific process, but rather that they are very important to it, and even necessary except in the relatively few instances in which a deduction from a theory becomes the hypothesis. Much recent psychological research has been unproductive, I believe, not for lack of methodological sophistication or objectivity, but because of poorly reasoned hypotheses. It is the subjective process, the thinking about relevant data and our own relevant experiences, which is so important to framing hypotheses which are more likely to stand up under objective testing. Has the dominant point of view in psychology gone so far in the emphasis on objectivity that we have lost sight of the value of thinking, and further, have so much come to distrust any subjectivity that we are restricted, inhibited, unfree in the thinking process, afraid to trust our minds? EMANUEL M. BERGER Student Counseling Bureau University of Minnesota