The challenges and opportunities of first-person inquiry in experimental psychology

Abstract

Psychology is concerned with outward (behavioural) and inward (mental and experiential) dimensions of inquiry. To study behaviour, psychologists are equipped with a comprehensive repertoire of measurement instruments. These instruments are not well suited to study the qualitative nature of inner experience, however: they yield data which, by their very nature as symbolic representations, abstract away from the primary phenomenon. To study qualitative experience, it would hence appear logical to engage a first-person, introspective method of inquiry. Psychology has a turbulent relationship to introspective research, however. In this article we review the concerns regarding the introspective approach; delineate the strengths – and also the limitations – of the experimental method; and, critically, outline a hybrid approach towards studying experience by exploring how important ingredients of the experimental approach can be transferred to the study of qualitative experience. This approach is a methodological proposal rather than an epistemological or ontological defence of introspection.