Experimental Social Psychologist Research Articles

Reflections: Being an Eyewitness to Vocal Music History

Being an Eyewitness to Vocal Music History Kimberly Broadwater (bio) PROVENANCE prov·e·nance (prǒv´ ə nəns) n. Place of origin, source. [Lat. Provenire, to originate.] Eyewitness misidentifications are known to have played a role in 70 percent of the 349 wrongful convictions that have been overturned based on DNA evidence.1 If you are a connoisseur of law enforcement movies or television shows, you probably have seen a scene where the victim of a crime mistakenly selects an innocent person based solely on their own recognitions. The erroneously selected subject can be convicted merely on the words of the victim. However, over time experts have been able to document that eyewitnesses are not always the most reliable source of information. Experimental social psychologist Gary Wells told reporter Zak Stambor, "Like trace evidence, eyewitness evidence can be contaminated, lost, destroyed or otherwise made to produce results that can lean to an incorrect reconstruction of the crime."2 Contamination of eyewitness evidence can be affected by multiple variables, including: • diminished capacity (alcohol, drug use, exhaustion, etc.); • age; • sex; • predetermined biases; • time and distance away from the event; • instructions given to the eyewitness. Informed scientists, psychologists, and law enforcement have researched the reliability of eyewitness identification and have begun to create protocols and standards that have increased the reliability of eyewitness testimony. For instance, Klobuchar, Steblay, and Caliguiri discovered that "blind sequential identification procedures" was effective in reducing the potential for misidentifications (blind: law enforcement do not know which person in the "lineup" is the accused; sequential: eyewitnesses are shown the "lineup" one person at a time.)3 The Oxford Companion to Music defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres."4 Musicologist Winton Dean (1916–2013) stated, "music is probably the most difficult of the arts to criticize."5 (Point of personal privilege: using this quotation finds me at a moment of ambiguity, in that I had a professor who would not allow students to quote Winton Dean because they felt Dean based much of his research on opinion and not fact.) [End Page 243] Musicologists and music critics can be compared to eyewitnesses. If I were to witness a concert by a well known singer and wrote a review, I would be presenting my interpretation of the concert. Would it matter that the singer chose music that was not to my liking? Would it matter that the collaborative pianist hummed along with the performer? If I prefer a healthy chest voice and the performer had a lighter quality, would my preference affect my opinion? Regardless, if I write my interpretation down on paper, I have recorded "history." The old maxim "History is written by victors" does have relevance. We all have preconceived biases that lead our interpretations, and quite often our observations are more "commentary" than "news." In the early twentiety century, many singing teachers would market themselves as teachers of "So-and-So's Method." The consumer did not know if the advertised teacher personally worked with Professor So-and-So or had attended one master class and self-proclaimed as expert. Fortunately, today we have more legitimate ways of verifying credentials. We, as teachers of singing, should consider any source that purports to espouse the teaching method of another as suspect until we can establish the credentials of said teacher. For an example, I offer the teachings of Dr. Stephen Austin, a mentor and friend (and I am probably providing this example with my own internal biases). Dr. Austin often leads workshops and master classes, teaching from the precepts of Manuel Garcia (1805–1906). I have first hand knowledge of Dr. Austin's intimate relationship with Garcia's writings and teachings and am left with little doubt that he is an expert on the subject matter, able to quote "scripture and verse." This is not to say that Dr. Austin sat at the feet of Garcia taking copious notes as he observed the master teacher employing his methodology. However, Dr. Austin has taken the time to consider opposing views of the teachings of Garcia, has scrutinized...

Profile of Mahzarin R. Banaji

Harvard University experimental social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is on the frontlines of the “implicit revolution,” a paradigm shift in psychology that, since the 1980s, has been reconceiving the relationship between unconscious and conscious mental processes. Banaji and her colleague Anthony Greenwald applied the concept to social psychology via the intertwined concepts of attitude, belief, and identity. In 1995, the duo defined implicit social cognition, introduced the term “implicit bias,” and foreshadowed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to detect and measure automatic, unintentional biases. The IAT and other methods have enabled Banaji and her colleagues to uncover hidden biases in the form of attitudes and beliefs (stereotypes) of gender, race/ethnicity, age, sexuality, and other common social group identifiers. Elected in 2018 to the National Academy of Sciences, Banaji reports evidence in her Inaugural Article (IA) suggesting that implicit beliefs and attitudes are inextricably linked due to shared evaluative content. Photograph of Mahzarin Banaji. Image courtesy of Robert Taylor (photographer). Banaji was raised Zoroastrian in the Hindu and Muslim cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, India. “My family and I remained largely within the borders of a small and homogenous Parsi community, while voraciously learning about the world through the printed page,” she says. Her father Rustom shared his love of the arts with his children, but the scientist in Banaji was equally captivated by the inner workings of toys and mechanical objects. She says, “It seemed obvious that whatever was inside and hidden from view was infinitely more fascinating than whatever was outside and accessible.” Her mother Coomi was a teacher who, with Banaji’s aunt, opened a small school in their home. To keep her precocious daughter from getting bored, Coomi recruited five-year-old Banaji to mentor younger students. This continued until Banaji entered St. Ann’s, a local parochial school. Years later, after …

IX. Brains, variability, and inheritance: The relevance of Shields (1975) in 21st century times

I first met Stephanie Shields at the meetings of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology in 1998. I was in the midst of PhD research in social psychology, but it was also becoming clear to me that I had emerging interests in the history of psychology. In my early career, Stephanie was my existence proof that you could work on gender, do original historical work, be an experimental social psychologist, and be welcoming and encouraging to junior colleagues at major conferences. This retrospective allows me to repay debts I owe to her for support and inspiration, and I will try to do that by arguing for the continued relevance of Shields (1975) for 21st century times and its influence on my own work in particular.

How to Measure Motivation: A Guide for the Experimental Social Psychologist

AbstractThis article examines cognitive, affective, and behavioral measures of motivation and reviews their use throughout the discipline of experimental social psychology. We distinguish between two dimensions of motivation (outcome‐focused motivation and process‐focused motivation). We discuss circumstances under which measures may help distinguish between different dimensions of motivation, as well as circumstances under which measures may capture different dimensions of motivation in similar ways. Furthermore, we examine situations in which various measures may capture fluctuations in non‐motivational factors, such as learning or physiological depletion. This analysis seeks to advance research in experimental social psychology by highlighting the need for caution when selecting measures of motivation and when interpreting fluctuations captured by these measures.

Brands as intentional agents: Our response to commentaries

We are grateful for the stimulating and hospitable welcome to us as guests in consumer psychology. As sojourners, we share a keen interest, but know that we come to visit without knowing the territory intimately. Granted, Chris Malone is an experienced, senior marketing practitioner who now owns a research-based consulting firm with a particular interest and specialization in this area. In addition, Nicolas Kervyn, trained as an experimental social psychologist, has worked and consulted in marketing. Susan Fiske, trained as an experimental social psychologist, had kibitzed in consumer psychology since she first served on the JCP board as an assistant professor. However, none of us has imperialist ambitions in consumer psychology. We are happy nonetheless to offer our framework as what seems to us a potentially useful complement to prior and ongoing related work. These exceptionally thoughtful commentaries broaden and inform our framework (Kervyn, Fiske, & Malone, 2012--this issue). In return, we offer some responses regarding our own view of the Brands as Intentional Agents Framework (BIAF), its parent, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), and relationships with the commentators’ own contributions.

Obedience and Evil: From Milgram and Kampuchea to Normal Organizations

Obedience: a simple term. Stanley Milgram, the famous experimental social psychologist, shocked the world with theory about it. Another man, Pol Pot, the infamous leader of the Khmer Rouge, showed how far the desire for obedience could go in human societies. Milgram conducted his experiments in the controlled environment of the US psychology laboratory of the 1960s. Pol Pot experimented with Utopia in the totalitarian Kampuchea of the 1970s. In this article, we discuss the process through which the Khmer Rouge regime created an army of unquestioningly obedient soldiers – including child soldiers. Based on these two cases, we advance a framework on how obedience can be grown or countered.

Lessons Learned from a Lifetime of Applied Social Psychology Research.

Abstract I started life as an experimental social psychologist but migrated to applied social psychology research. Each time I have been involved in a major applied project I have learned things that have helped in subsequent projects. Most of the time the lesson has been about research design (e.g., you must know how the study should be done before you deal with the reality of how it has to be done). Examples of other lessons include using appropriate research technology, and the importance of program planner awareness of psychological research. In this paper I describe some of the major studies in which I was the investigator and the lesson (s) I learned from each. I also touch on the relevance of the scientist/practitioner model for the applied researcher. Phil Zimbardo, in his introduction to Pious (1993) wrote: In recent years, the field of social psychology has emerged as central in psychology's quest to understand human thought, feeling, and behavior. Thus, we see the inclusion-by-hyphenation of social psychology across diverse fields of psychology, such as social-cognitive, social-developmental, social-learning, and social-personality, to name but a few recent amalgamations. In their role as the last generalists in psychology, nothing of individual and societal concern is alien to social psychological investigation - from psychophysiology to peace psychology, from students' attributions for failure to preventive education for AIDS. . . . Indeed since the days when George Miller, former president of the APA called upon psychologists to give psychology back to the people, social psychologist have been at the forefront, (p. xi) I would add to Phil's comments that social psychologists are also the best general methodologists in psychology. One of the things we have to give hack to the is a method of learning about the world, studying problems, and suggesting solutions. The core of what we do is to try to ascertain causal relationships beyond the attributions made as part of the normal human attribution process. Aria Day (2003), in her column in The Canadian Industrial and Organizational Psychologist, wrote about the scientist/practitioner model in I/O. Until I had read her column I had thought that the s/p model was relevant to clinical practitioners, not to social psychologists. After reading Aria's column, I reali/cd that the model was relevant and that I am a s/p. The difference between my work and that of a clinical practitioner is that in the work I do there is usually a or ideal way to conduct the studies, whereas in clinical work there is not always a treatment. However, in applied social research the ideal study is not often possible so we must work as best we can and be aware of the threats to our conclusions. I am not an artist but I have always understood that in order to be able to draw like Picasso, you first have to know the ways to accurately represent the physical world in your pictures. Only then can you deviate to indicate the way the world really looks to you. Research methods are like art in that you have to know how it should be done to determine causality before you can deviate from the straight and narrow. For instance, you must know what threats you are introducing to your ability to ascertain causality (in other words, the validity of your results and conclusions) when you do not randomly assign people to experimental conditions. Luckily for me, I started as an experimental social psychologist, working with judson Mills and Elliot Aronson, both of whom trained me to do proper experimental research. I do not remember when I first came across Campbell and Stanley's little book, Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research (1963), but it was truly enlightening. It lists all of the threats to internal and external validity - and theirs was probably the first (and only) explanation of regression toward the mean that I have ever understood. …

Whether There's a Will, There's a Why: Understanding Illusory Feelings of Conscious Action

Whether There's a Will, There's a Why: Understanding Illusory Feelings of Conscious ActionDana S. DunnDana S. Dunn1. Moravian CollegeSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:June 2005https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.22.4.463.22896PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations AboutReferencesAnsfield , M. E., & Wegner, D. M. (1996). The feeling of doing. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior (pp. 482–506). New York: Guilford. Google ScholarBoswell , J. (1970). Life of Johnson (3rd ed.). London: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1791) Google ScholarWegner , D. M. (1989). White bears and other unwanted thoughts. New York: Viking Penguin. Google ScholarWegner , D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101, 34–52. Crossref, Google ScholarWegner , D. M., & Gilbert, D. T. (2000). Social psychology: The science of human experience. In H. Bless & J. P. Forgas (Eds.), The message within: The role of subjective experience in social cognition and behavior (pp. 1–19). Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Google ScholarWegner , D. M., & Vallacher, R. R. (1986). Action identification. In E. T. Higgins & R. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (pp. 550–582). New York: Guilford. Google Scholar Previous article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. Book ReviewsOnline publication date: 2 September 2005. Go to citation Crossref Volume 22Issue 4Sep 2003 Information© Guilford Publications Inc.PDF download

Psicologia Comunitária: teoria e metodologia

Este texto pretende analisar o caminho percorrido pelos psicologos comunitarios desde a emergencia da crise da Psicologia Social. Naquele momento, a critica incidia sobre o psicologo social experimental empirico-analitico, em contraste com o psicologo comunitario, atento as metodologias qualitativas. Se o primeiro estava convicto do objeto de sua disciplina, o segundo, sensivel aos aspectos sociais, historicos, antropologicos e politicos do contexto, nao tem clareza quanto a seu objeto de estudo. Dos pressupostos teoricos e metodologicos imbuidos nestas praticas sugerir-se-a um retorno a questoes psicologicas, enriquecidas com os referenciais das ciencias sociais, numa tentativa de melhor precisar o olhar do psicologo.

Mindfulness, an Important Concept for Organizations: a Book Review Essay on the Work of Ellen Langer

The intent of this essay is to review the work of Ellen Langer, principally her work on the psychology of control and the concept of mindfulness and mindlessness, which she has pioneered. Dr. Langer, an experimental social psychologist in the Department of Psychology at Harvard and author of the book Mindfulness, has been working in these areas for more than 15 years, producing a brilliant stream of work that is theoretically provocative and methodologically sophisticated. Because this work is about significant real-world issues, it can have powerful practical applications. The purpose of this review is to bring her work to the attention of management researchers in general and those in the field of organizational behavior specifically. Her work can be divided into two related streams of research, one dealing with the concept of mindfulness versus mindlessness and one dealing with processes of control. This review begins with the former because of its implications for the latter.

Jonsonian Comedy and the Discovery of the Social Self

The self in Jonson's comedies, like the self described by modern sociologists, is a reflection of other reflections, created by the society it creates. As Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority seems to show, the social self is radically contingent. Therefore the anagnorisis in Jonson's comedies is a catastrophe in more than the technical sense; it is the discovery of a self that cannot bear its own exposure. By contrast, the heroes and heroines of Shakespeare's romantic comedies discover themselves in relation to a nurturing family and a mature sexual family. Theirs is a psychological self. In the “comical satires,” Jonson encounters the problem of finding appropriate endings for plays whose characters can achieve no satisfying self-discovery. InVolponethe protagonist acts like an experimental social psychologist, exposing the pliability of the social self. The catastrophe shows that Volpone's own “substance” is only a reflection of his world's insubstantiality.