The rhetoric of experimental social psychology, 1930-1960: from caution to enthusiasm |
| |
Authors: | MacMartin C Winston A S |
| |
Affiliation: | Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada. cmacmart@uoguelph.ca |
| |
Abstract: | Between 1930 and 1960, experimentation became the premier form of knowledge generation in social psychology. In journals, texts, and handbooks, experiment was now conceived as the active manipulation of an independent variable, and the sole method for the discovery of "causes." Understanding this change requires further investigation of the fine-grained discursive strategies used to promote experimentation during the 1930s and 1940s. In this paper we use discourse analysis to contrast the cautious rhetoric used by Gardner Murphy and Lois Murphy and the more enthusiastic, unhedged arguments for experimentation employed by Kurt Lewin. We argue that analysis of changes in discourse justifying experimentation can illuminate the processes by which methodological consensus was constructed. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 PubMed 等数据库收录! |
|