Perspectives in Psychological Experimentation

Perspectives in Psychological Experimentation
Author: Viktor Sarris
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2024-03-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1003828116

One response to questions about the future of psychology is to attempt an answer to another question: What have we learned from psychology’s past? Originally published in 1984, reissued here with a new preface, this book presents a collection of original papers by authorities with international reputations in various fields of psychology at the time. Contributors were invited to appraise the past of their own research specialties, with an eye toward the future. The emphasis is upon the more scientific areas of psychological research. The catalyst for this book was an international conference honoring Gustav A. Lienert held in 1981. Psychologists from both Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America, and representing fields as different as psychophysics is from clinical psychology, or animal memory from human decision making, described their research and argued the prospects for the future of experimental psychology. Most of the arguments found their way into this book where readers could confront the different viewpoints at the time and those reading it today can see how accurate their predictions were for the future.

Opening Skinner's Box

Opening Skinner's Box
Author: Lauren Slater
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2004
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780393050950

Traces developments in human psychology over the course of the twentieth century, beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of the child raised in a box.

Doing Psychology Experiments

Doing Psychology Experiments
Author: David W. Martin
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2000
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780534248710

Even if you have no background in experimentation, this clear, straightforward book can help you design, execute, interpret, and report simple experiments in psychology. David W. Martin's unique blend of informality, humor, and solid scholarship have made this concise book a popular choice for methods courses in psychology. Doing Psychology Experiments guides you through the experimentation process in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step manner. Decision-making aspects of research are emphasized, and the logic behind research procedures is fully explained.

Experimental Design in Psychology

Experimental Design in Psychology
Author: M. Kimberly MacLin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2023-12-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1003810942

This text is about doing science and the active process of reading, learning, thinking, generating ideas, designing experiments, and the logistics surrounding each step of the research process. In easy-to-read, conversational language, Kim MacLin teaches students experimental design principles and techniques using a tutorial approach in which students read, critique, and analyze over 75 actual experiments from every major area of psychology. She provides them with real-world information about how science in psychology is conducted and how they can participate. Recognizing that students come to an experimental design course with their own interests and perspectives, MacLin covers many subdisciplines of psychology throughout the text, including IO psychology, child psychology, social psychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, health psychology, educational/school psychology, legal psychology, and personality psychology, among others. Part I of the text is content oriented and provides an overview of the principles of experimental design. Part II contains annotated research articles for students to read and analyze. New sections on how to critically evaluate media reports of scientific findings (in other words, how to identify ‘fake news’), authorship guidelines and decisions, survey research methods and AI tools have been included. Further, expanded information on the Open Science movement, and on ethics in research, and methods to achieve clarity and precision in thinking and writing are included. This edition is up to date with the latest APA Publication Manual (7th edition) and includes an overview of the bias-free language guidelines, the use of singular "they," and an ethical compliance checklist.. This text is essential reading for students and researchers interested in and studying experimental design in psychology.

Critical Thinking in Psychology

Critical Thinking in Psychology
Author: Robert J. Sternberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2007
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0521845890

Explores key topics in psychology, showing how they can be critically examined.

Behind the Shock Machine

Behind the Shock Machine
Author: Gina Perry
Publisher: New Press, The
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2013-09-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1595589252

When social psychologist Stanley Milgram invited volunteers to take part in an experiment at Yale in the summer of 1961, none of the participants could have foreseen the worldwide sensation that the published results would cause. Milgram reported that fully 65 percent of the volunteers had repeatedly administered electric shocks of increasing strength to a man they believed to be in severe pain, even suffering a life-threatening heart condition, simply because an authority figure had told them to do so. Such behavior was linked to atrocities committed by ordinary people under the Nazi regime and immediately gripped the public imagination. The experiments remain a source of controversy and fascination more than fifty years later. In Behind the Shock Machine, psychologist and author Gina Perry unearths for the first time the full story of this controversial experiment and its startling repercussions. Interviewing the original participants—many of whom remain haunted to this day about what they did—and delving deep into Milgram's personal archive, she pieces together a more complex picture and much more troubling picture of these experiments than was originally presented by Milgram. Uncovering the details of the experiments leads her to question the validity of that 65 percent statistic and the claims that it revealed something essential about human nature. Fleshed out with dramatic transcripts of the tests themselves, the book puts a human face on the unwitting people who faced the moral test of the shock machine and offers a gripping, unforgettable tale of one man's ambition and an experiment that defined a generation.

Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics

Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics
Author: Philip E. Tetlock
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 1996-09-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780691027913

Political scientists often ask themselves what might have been if history had unfolded differently: if Stalin had been ousted as General Party Secretary or if the United States had not dropped the bomb on Japan. Although scholars sometimes scoff at applying hypothetical reasoning to world politics, the contributors to this volume--including James Fearon, Richard Lebow, Margaret Levi, Bruce Russett, and Barry Weingast--find such counterfactual conjectures not only useful, but necessary for drawing causal inferences from historical data. Given the importance of counterfactuals, it is perhaps surprising that we lack standards for evaluating them. To fill this gap, Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin propose a set of criteria for distinguishing plausible from implausible counterfactual conjectures across a wide range of applications. The contributors to this volume make use of these and other criteria to evaluate counterfactuals that emerge in diverse methodological contexts including comparative case studies, game theory, and statistical analysis. Taken together, these essays go a long way toward establishing a more nuanced and rigorous framework for assessing counterfactual arguments about world politics in particular and about the social sciences more broadly.

My Biggest Research Mistake

My Biggest Research Mistake
Author: Robert J. Sternberg
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1506398839

My Biggest Research Mistake helps students and professionals in the field of psychological science learn from the diverse mistakes of successful psychological scientists. Through 57 personal stories drawn from the experiences of fellows in the Association for Psychological Science (APS), editor Robert J. Sternberg presents the mistakes of experts in the field as opportunities for learning, allowing students to avoid making the same mistakes in their own work.

Computational Social Psychology

Computational Social Psychology
Author: Robin R. Vallacher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 694
Release: 2017-05-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351701673

Computational Social Psychology showcases a new approach to social psychology that enables theorists and researchers to specify social psychological processes in terms of formal rules that can be implemented and tested using the power of high speed computing technology and sophisticated software. This approach allows for previously infeasible investigations of the multi-dimensional nature of human experience as it unfolds in accordance with different temporal patterns on different timescales. In effect, the computational approach represents a rediscovery of the themes and ambitions that launched the field over a century ago. The book brings together social psychologists with varying topical interests who are taking the lead in this redirection of the field. Many present formal models that are implemented in computer simulations to test basic assumptions and investigate the emergence of higher-order properties; others develop models to fit the real-time evolution of people’s inner states, overt behavior, and social interactions. Collectively, the contributions illustrate how the methods and tools of the computational approach can investigate, and transform, the diverse landscape of social psychology.