Table Of ContentTHE PSYCHOLOGICAL
EXPERIMENT:
A Practical Accomplishment
EDITORS
Harold B. Pepinsky
The Ohio State University
and
Michael J. Patton
University of Utah
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This book is dedicated to the late Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., beloved
friend, teacher, and sponsor.
Contributors
Kumar, Usha
Assistant Professor, Department of Social Science and the
Humanities
Indian Institute of Technology
Kanpur, India
Lifshitz, Michaela N.
Lecturer, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv; Clinical Research
Psychologist at the Oranim Child Guidance Clinic of the
Kibbutzim
Carmel, Haifa, Israel
Lipe, Dewey
Research Scientist, American Institutes for Research
Palo Alto, California
Pattern, Michael J.
Dean of Students and Assistant Professor of Educational
Psychology, University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Pepinsky, Harold B.
Professor of Psychology; Professor of Computer and
Information Science, The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Smith, David H.
Associate Professor of Speech, University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Warehime, Robert G.
Associate Professor of Psychology and Counselor, Coun
seling Center,
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, Ohio
Preface
The idea of editing this book, which centers upon selected
experimental studies of encounters between two persons, was
itself stimulated by our encounters with a very special person.
In loving memory, the book is dedicated to him: the late Edgar
S. Furniss, Jr. Professor Furniss was then Director of the
Mershon Program in the Social Sciences and Mershon Professor
of Political Science at The Ohio State University. The encoun
ters took place during 1965-1966 in a series of faculty-student
seminars on international behavior with special reference to the
North Atlantic alliance of nations. We had been invited to par
ticipate by virtue of a research grant from the Mershon Center
for Education in National Security under its Social Sciences
Program. Although other disciplines were represented, we were
primarily historians, political scientists, and psychologists. As
is usual in such confrontations, we did not easily accomodate to
each other's subject matter and the ritual of its acquisition.
Argument was often heated, but it was Edgar Furniss who held
us together and inspired us to seek knowledge from as well as hurl
revealed truth at each other.
Not unexpectedly, most participants in these seminars had
little previous exposure to the laboratory experiment as a means
of studying individual and collective human behavior. And some
of the experimentalists, it seemed, had much to learn about
inductions to be made from the study of naturally occurring
events. From this and related experiences, several of us who had
conducted experimental research together later concluded that
a book of clear and pertinent exhibits would be useful to persons
in the social and behavioral sciences. We had in mind, especially,
persons interested in the comparative analysis of social phenom
ena whose occurrence in everyday life appears to be highly
probable.
We were well aware of alternative strategies for doing
a comparative analysis of behavior. The comparative analysis
of human and infrahuman organisms could provide one such
comparison; developmental comparisons within species could
offer another; cross-organizational or cross-national inquiry
could yield a third; still another could be contributed by alter
native methods of collecting and transforming information into
PREFACE
data, e.g., the case study, the survey, or simulation research.
We recognized the laboratory experiment to be merely one of
many among the last named comparative methods; as such, it
could be applied to intra- and interspecies comparisons, e.g.,
across a species' "cultures." To us, the experiment had the
special virtue of obligating its user to be logically clear and em
pirically straightforward in his treatment of a subject matter.
Deficiencies in these respects, we believed, could be glaringly
obvious.
All of us who have contributed to this volume appear to have
been, at the time of deciding to participate, sincerely informed by
these beliefs. We, as editors, believed further that if laboratory
conditions could be clearly specified and made relevant (i.e.,
"isomorphic") to "natural" events by virtue of common formal
properties, a comparative analysis of manifestly different natural
events would also be made possible through controlled laboratory
research. This provided an initial act of faith for us in the drafting
of proposals for research (see last section, Chapter 1). In selec
ting the reports of experiments to be exhibited in this book, we
abided by three additional restrictions: (1) the experiments were
limited to encounters between two persons; (2) the encounters
studied were limited to those purportedly corresponding to
"counseling" and "negotiation" in everyday life; and (3) all
experimenters had some discussion with each other about the
planning of their experiments —five out of six had extensive
discussions with each other in conducting their research. The
last condition helped to create an ethos in which it became
interesting to attempt a conceptual linkage between the two kinds
of natural events selected for study. This suggested that our
understanding of manifestly disparate interpersonal events, such
as "counseling" and "negotiation," could be increased if they
could be (a) abstractly represented as formal properties and thus
detached from their "natural" place-settings and (b) thus iden
tified as defining attributes of a more inclusive concept.
While editing and interpreting the experimental reports now
exhibited in Chapters 2 through 7, however, the two of us, as
editors, have had intriguing "second thoughts." Our retrospec
tive interpretation of the experiments has dwelt more upon how
they were accomplished than what the reports say they accom
plished "in fact." Perhaps this is because the relationship
between these things has always been tenuous for us. It seems
easier to think back upon actions undertaken in the research
than to keep clearly in view what the "scientific problem" was.
PREFACE
And so, an impelling motive for editing the book becomes that
of reconstructing the whole experience of "doing" an experiment.
To try to interpret and assess each experiment as a kind of
scientific exercise routinely accomplished and reported has,
therefore, not been satisfying. For us, the "doing" experiences
were much more than that, featuring things that would look
"strange" in the conventionally accepted world of scientific
talk. Yet these experiences were not strange to us when they
happened. And we feel impelled to make them "credible" and
"relevant" to others.
We suspect that the "true believer-and-doer" of the psycho
logical experiment is able to reduce discomfort for himself by
marking off what, for him, are clear boundaries between the
laboratory and everyday life outside. For us, that line of demarca
tion has never been as evident. Nor need it be, we think. The
first and last chapters of our book illustrate how reference to
the experiment itself may provide a means of discovering what
meanings the participant attaches to his social interactions. Doing
so has placed us in the camps of both the "cognitive" and "phen-
omenological" psychologists and has impelled us to search harder
for a sound acquaintance with philosophy. Our ruminations have
pushed us to expand our thinking beyond focus on the social
psychological experiment in the laboratory as a place for testing
attitude change models. We find ourselves trying to discover
how the creation of meaning and its management are made
possible for human participants, not alone in the experiment, but
on many other social occasions. Perhaps that is part of what
Koch (1969) would like to be up to in his search for a "meaning
ful psychology."
The writing we have done in Chapters 1 and 8, accordingly, has
made necessary a good deal of "unlearning" on our part. If
we have been in despair at times over "getting it said," we have
not been at all uncomfortable about the quest. What makes us
different from the person for whom such an exercise would be
a disrupting event? Harold Garfinkel (1967), who has helped
to make the present search possible, might argue that this
person —as a "believer" —would have a greater subscription
to and compliance with the "natural facts" of the experiment
as a morally required way of doing things. Our own "morality,"
in contrast, seems now to consist in believing that it is "good"
to question one's own routines. Some of the justification for this
will be found at the end of Chapter 8.
The idea behind this book, as we have progressed toward sub-
PREFACE
mitting it for public scrutiny, can be summarized as follows.
Zimmerman and Pollner (1970) have pointed out that the usual
"doing" of social science consists of treating conventionally
accepted matters of evidence as unanalyzed resource (e.g.,
classification as "male" or "female," an "arithmetic mean," or
a "culture-fair" test). These authors propose, instead, that such
matters be regarded as topic. Something "put out there" for dis
play by the social scientist, i.e., as "data" produced in a manner
that is inherently veridical and not open to question, is now to be
considered as problematic and open to inquiry in its own right.
How did "it" get put out there and how is "it" made recognizable
for others to take note of as part of an "objective structure,"
so that all concerned can get on with their work? As editors, we
have chosen thus to treat the experiments exhibited in Chapters
2 through 7 as topics, preparing the reader in Chapter 1 for our
retrospective analysis of them in Chapter 8. In the terms of Alfred
Schutz, another mentor for us in our task, our having looked at
the experiments in this unfamiliar way is illustrative of our own
"in-order-to" motive. We invite the reader, in his turn, to view
what we have done as "meaningful action," a product of intellec
tual curiosity left unsatisfied by conventional modes of review and
criticism.
There are many persons whose direct and indirect contribu
tions to this volume ought to be acknowledged. Notable among
them are J. Eugene Haas, Philip M. Burgess, Rogelio Diaz-
Guerrero, Victor M. Castillo Vales, Marshall C. Yovits, Carroll
L. Shartle, Franklin P. Knower (who served as adviser to Profes
sor David Smith), Mira Caldwell, Alice F. Egge, Wilma Witt,
and the late Kathryn Dockeray, Samuel H. Osipow, Thomas
M. Ostrom, and David Maxey read and helpfully criticized
drafts of Chapter 1, and David Maxey helped to edit Chapter 8.
A special debt is owed to Pauline N. Pepinsky, laboratory partner
to one of us over a period of many years and a particularly good
teacher. Karl E. Weick has been more than a critical reader for
us now; his continued and devoted interest has been rendered
all the more valuable by virtue of his own brilliantly productive
scholarship. Harold E. Pepinsky, though more recently launched
in his own scholarly career, has responded in kind. Their well-
informed and hard-nosed "jurying" in the first chapter have
guided our shaping of the last one.
We cannot thank James A. Robinson enough for the blend
of encouragement and tough-minded insistence upon quality
that have kept us at this task for several years. His generous
PREFACE
support of this work, through material assistance under a current
research grant from the Mershon Center for Education in
National Security at The Ohio State University, is appreciated.
The Mershon Grant of 1965-1966 did more than provide direct
financial resource for several of the experiments reported in
this volume. It also made possible the development of a research
milieu in which "scientific talk" about the experiments could
be lively and challenging. Anne Trupp, then and now Assistant
to the Director of the Mershon program, has continued to extend
herself in making resources of the Mershon Center available
to us. Finally, we wish to thank our colleagues, Usha Kumar,
Robert Warehime, Dewey Lipe, Michaela Lifshitz, and David
Smith, for their work with us in preparing the reports of their
experiments for inclusion in this book. We have been guided by
helpfully critical reviews of earlier manuscript drafts in editing
the reports down to their present length and format.
There remains the one person to whom so many of us owe this
and other evidences of accomplishment through the Mershon
Program. It is saddening to think that Edgar S. Furniss, Jr. is not
available to give it the benefit of his informed, trenchant, and
kindly criticism. Edgar Furniss died in August 1966, and he
has been terribly missed. We can but hope that he would have
been pleased with this small tribute to his memory.
Harold B. Pépinsky
Columbus, Ohio
MichaelJ. Patton
Salt Lake City, Utah
REFERENCES
Garfinkel, H. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall,
1967.
Koch, S. Stimulus/response — psychology cannot be a coherent science. Psychol
ogy Today, 1969,3, (No. 4), 14, 64-68.
Zimmerman, D. H., & Pollner, M. The everyday world as a phenomenon. In
H. B. Pepinsky (Ed.), People and information. Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon
Press, 1970. Pp. 33-65.
CHAPTER 1
Informative Display and the Psychological
Experiment1
Harold B. Pépinsky and Michael J. Patton
To many psychologists in the United States of America,
the "experiment" has become a key term. For anyone "in the
know," it implies a clearly prescribed way of doing things. For
one who needs to be told about the experiment in psychology,
manuals are available which describe what it is and how and why
it is to be accomplished (e.g., Andrews, 1948; Festinger & Katz,
1953; Sidman, 1960; Skinner, 1953; Underwood, 1957; Wood-
worth, 1938). Anyone who has examined several of these will
not be surprised to read that they contain divergent rationales
and procedural instructions. This may be explained, in part,
by the fact that the subject matter of psychology —as with the
social and behavioral sciences, in general — abounds in trivial
names: i.e., labels for things that, when coded, transformed,
and stored as items of information, are either highly limited
in their generality or extremely difficult to retrieve. In the absence
of labels that are generic in this sense, even a mathematical
psychology has limited application. Perhaps that is why the
psychologist, when seeking to generalize, is apt to make ambig
uous pronouncements. To cite but three examples from the
"basic" language of experimental psychology: the term, "func
tion," is most often used to express an imprecisely defined
relationship between variables (cf. Kershner & Wilcox, 1950),2
at least three distinct meanings of the term "control" —e.g., as
check, guide, or restraint—may be inferred (Boring, 1963),3
and the existence of a "reinforcement" can only be affirmed by
1 Work on this chapter has been supported by grants from the Ohio State University's Mershon
Center for Education in National Security and the Computer and Information Science
Research Center at The Ohio State University, under Grant No. GN-534 from the National
Science Foundation, Office of Science Information Service. We are especially grateful to
Karl E. Weick and Harold E. Pepinsky for constructive editing.
2In the social sciences, generally, the term is even more broadly and loosely employed
(Nagel, 1961).
3A fourth idea of control as "power amplifier" seems to have come from electrical engineering.
Just as the mere closing of a switch can be said to "turn on" a disproportionately powerful
electric motor, so the narrowly focused, comparatively mild stimulation of a human brain
can be inferred to elicit molar and violent bursts of activity.
1
