Newsgroups: bit.listserv.psycgrad
Date:         Wed, 2 Sep 1992 00:54:13 -0400
              <PSYCGRAD@UOTTAWA.BITNET>
From:         TBN@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject:      'warm fuzzies' discussion

Doesn't the fact that Wundt got such 'inconsistent' results from his
introspecting subjects tell us something important about the richness and
complexity of human behavior?

It seems like we may sometimes sacrafice this complexity in our quest to
generate "scientific" (read "quantitative") data, and, as one of the
other letter writers in yesterday's digest points out, are introspective
and 'warm and fuzzy' data any less valid than quantitative data? Like, p < .05
, this may be just a convention in our field, a convention that makes life
more convenient in a lot of ways for many people (esp. journal editors who
no doubt have to review hundreds of manuscripts in a short period of time).
When such a convention becomes reified and/or a limitation to creativity
and new ways of thinking about human behavior is when it becomes detrimental
to the field--and when it becomes "the only reality" instead of being
recognized for the convention it is....

This brings me to the point about learning from one's own life
experiences (another person asks the question: can we as psychologists
learn anything from our own life experiences?). I don't know about
the rest of y'all, but I pick my research topics in social psych from
observing human behavior and asking myself, " Now, why the heck did
I do that? Why did she say that to him and why did he react in that
way to her? etc..". For a while, I tried to get ideas for research
from articles--this was when i was a young and impressionable
first year student in the social psychology program here at UT, and
I thought I would get 'better' and 'more scientifically valid' ideas
from reading 'real science' journal articles. What a miserable
failed experiment that was! What I forgot was the reason I got into this
field in the first place: to learn more about how and why people
behave and feel in the ways that they do, and to ultimately try and
make the world a better place with that knowledge...to do this
effectively, i needed to get out of the rarified atmosphere of
journal articles and "get my hands dirty" (at least to start with)
with hardcore, person-centered issues which ordinary folks experience
on a day-to-day basis....

This is not a criticism of those who can and do generate ideas from
journal articles. Rather, what I'm trying to say is, " Why not
collect as much information from as many different sources as
possible? " Plus, one needs to find the source of information
one feels most "in tune with". For example, on my research on self-estee
, I feel like I've learned as much, if not more about self-esteem from
my own struggles with self-esteem issues; self-help books,
group therapy (which absolutely blew my mind as a psychologist because
it was such a new way of looking at human behavior to me--no theories
and intellectualizing there--quite the opposite), talking with
friends, reading literature,
listening to stand-up comics, and cutting across disciplines
within psychology (e.g., going to lunch with clinical psych students
and asking them lots of questions about psychotherapy and self-esteem)
than I ever have from social psychology courses and journal articles.
I'd say that something like a traumatic childhood experience could
enhance one's understanding about such a problem, as a psychologist.
On the other hand, it could hinder understanding of the problem
for another person. It depends on the problem/issue, situation, and
the personality of the investigator/psychologist involved.
But, and this gets back to my earlier point above, what I think is
a real crime is to casually dismiss a childhood experience as a
source of information because it's not quantitative and 'scientific'
in nature...Ultimately, I think it's important to remember that
'scientists create data; they don't measure it'. How a person
operationalizes a construct, how a person defines a construct, how
a person 'measures' a 'construct', and what the person's sample is
are all ways in which we as psychologists really 'create' our
data. I won't even talk about choosing ways to analyze and present
results...this may be somewhat of a radical position to take, but
i really don't think measured data are any more 'scientific'
(i.e., valid) than one's own introspections. The best thing we
can do as researchers is to try and cull information from as
many different sources as possible and integrate it into a
coherent whole--and to be as forthright as possible about what
one did and why one did it (as one of my old stats profs said
when he was asked if a particular test was 'appropriate' and 'could
a person do this test': "You can do any test you want to. That's
up to you. You can do whatever you want to, as long as you tell
your audience what you did and why you did it. Others may then
disagree with you, and you can then defend your position, but it's
all straightforward and out in the open").

By the way, I do still read journal articles sometimes. Speaking of
which, there are a good series of articles in the latest personality
and social psychology bulletin on (guess what?!?) the state of
journal articles in social psychology--it's a good read, and I'd
encourage all your social psych mavens out there to give them a read.

I'd like to say in closing that this has been a most fascinating
discussion topic, and thanks to all of y'all who are contributing!

cheers,
Tor


Tor Neilands, Systems Analyst
Statistical and Mathematical Support Services
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Disclaimer: All views expressed above and herein are only those of
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