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Journals 652 Experimental Psychology in World War II 653 Postwar Developments 654 STATUS OF THE FIELD TODAY 655 Practical but Not Atheoretical 655 An Interdisciplinary Field 655 Laboratory and Field Experimentation 656 Closely Related Disciplines 656 Employment 656 EXAMPLES OF RECENT APPLIED EXPERIMENTAL WORK 657 Memory Enhancement 657 Eyewitness and Earwitness Testimony 657 Human-Computer Interaction 658 Part-Task Training 659 Aviation Psychology 659 Highway Safety 660 Medicine and Health 661 Sensory, Motor, and Cognitive Aids for Disabled People 661 The Psychology of Aging 662 FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR APPLIED EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 663 Psychological 663 Social 663 Technological 664 Communicating and Effecting the Practical Implications of Experimentation 666 SOURCES OF ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 666 CONCLUDING COMMENTS 667 REFERENCES 668 Unlike other chapters in this book, this one does not focus on a psychological process or a specific area of psychological research; it deals instead with research that is defined by its methodology and its applicability to practical ends rather than by its subject matter One might reasonably question whether such a chapter belongs in a handbook of experimental psychology As the fundamental method by which theoretical hypotheses are tested, experimentation is essential to psychology, no less than to other areas of science The goal of all scientific activity is the discovery of regularities of nature and their representation in theories from which predictions can be made Theories that have proved to be robust—to have stood up under rigorous testing by experimentation—have often, perhaps usually, proved also to be useful to practical ends, sometimes in unanticipated and surprising ways So, one might argue, any well-designed experimentation aimed at testing a theory has the potential of being useful in a practical sense, even if none of the eventual applications of the theory is of interest to, or even known by, the experimenter We think that this argument, with some qualifications, has considerable force, and we not wish to contest it here We note, however, that experimenters differ in the degree to which applied interests motivate their work and that experiments differ with respect to the immediacy of the applicability of their results to practical ends In this chapter we focus on experimentation that has been motivated explicitly by practical concerns or that has yielded results whose practical implications are relatively direct BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCH The Distinction The distinction between basic and applied research is a familiar one, not only within psychology but in science 649 650 Psychological Experimentation Addressing Practical Concerns generally Within the psychological research community some investigators are seen primarily as basic scientists and others as explicitly applications oriented The perception of a cultural divide (Herrmann, Raybeck, & Gruneberg, 1997) is reinforced by association of theoretically oriented researchers mainly with the academy and of those who are more applications oriented mainly with industry or government laboratories The perception is further strengthened by the fact that some research journals emphasize the theoretical implications of research findings whereas others focus more on practical implications Prominent among the properties that are usually mentioned as distinguishing between basic and applied research is motivation: Basic research is said to be motivated primarily by questions of a theoretical nature, whereas applied research is motivated by an interest in solving practical problems This is not always an easy criterion to apply in specific instances because researchers’ motivations are generally more complex than this simple dichotomy suggests Many psychologists who research have both types of interest, although individuals undoubtedly differ with respect to the relative strengths of the influence of theoretical and practical concerns on their choices of problems on which to work We believe that basic and applied should not be thought of as two mutually exclusive categories, into one or the other of which all instances of research can be placed unambiguously Even thinking of basic and applied as representing ends of a continuum is an oversimplification because research often yields results that have both theoretical and practical implications We view the distinction as better considered a matter of emphasis than as representing a true dichotomy; and although our focus is on work for which the practical motivation is relatively strong, we believe that much of the best research in psychology (as in other areas) is motivated by both theoretical and practical concerns History of Distinction in Psychology Identifying the origin of the distinction between basic and applied research in psychology and tracking its history would prove an interesting study We make no effort to this here, but we note that the distinction was well established by the second decade of the twentieth century It was recognized explicitly by G Stanley Hall in an address prepared for the 25th anniversary of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1916 and later published as the lead article in the first issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology (Hall, 1917) Geissler (1917b), in the same issue, contrasted pure and applied psychology this way: The ultimate aim of pure psychology is to extend and improve our knowledge of mental life with regard to its structural, functional, genetic, and social aspects On the other hand, applied psychology aims to investigate and improve those conditions and phases of human life and conduct which involve mental life, especially in its social aspects, since practically all human activity is nowadays carried on as a function of social intercourse (p 49) In the foreword to the same issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, the editors, Hall, Baird, and Geissler (1917), in explaining the need for a journal focusing on applied psychology, noted that at the time there already existed several journals and associations that had been established to serve the interests of psychology, but that “none of the existing journals devote themselves to the task of gathering together the results of workers in the various fields of applied psychology, or of bringing these results into relation with pure psychology” (p 6) They implied that applied psychology did not command the same level of respect as did pure psychology, at least among some members of the profession: “The psychologist finds that the old distinction between pure and applied science is already obscured in his domain; and he is beginning to realize that applied psychology can no longer be relegated to a distinctly inferior plane” (p 6) Unfortunately, contention about the relative merits of basic and applied work did not end with this observation; many researchers in psychology and other sciences as well have continued to project attitudes of superiority with respect to their own approach to research, whether it is driven primarily by theoretical or practical concerns Current Interest in Applications We believe that interest among research psychologists—and among organizations that represent them—in seeing the results of psychological research applied to practical problems has been on the increase recently and is unusually high at the present time In saying this, we are mindful of the fact that the founders of the Journal of Applied Psychology noted “an unprecedented interest in the extension of the application of psychology to various fields of human activity” when they introduced the new journal (Hall et al., 1917, p 5), so possibly our belief is illusory—a consequence of the greater salience of recent than of more remote events and possibly of some wishful thinking on our part One indication of the currently high interest in applying psychology to real-world problems is the effort to inform policy makers and the general public of practical implications of psychological research through presentations (e.g., Science Basic and Applied Research and Public Policy Seminars) by psychologists to members of Congress and congressional staffers arranged by the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences (Farley & Null, 1987) Talks given at these seminars, which began in 1982 and have been held at the rate of approximately six per year, have dealt with the applicability of the results of psychological research to education, legal processes, effects of television on behavior, family violence, human error in medicine, and many other topics of general interest and relevance to public policy making A complete list of the talks that have been given can be obtained at the federation’s Web site, http://www.thefederationonline.org Many, though not all, of the talks have been published by the federation; information regarding whether specific talks exist in print can be obtained either from authors or by an e-mail request to federation@apa.org Further evidence of current interest in drawing attention to the practical applications of the results of psychological research is the APA’s recently established practice of issuing press releases regarding research findings that have been published in APA journals and that are deemed to be of public interest Recent releases mention findings regarding the effects of emotion suppression on cognitive functioning, the effects of insufficient sleep on preteen children’s physical and mental performance, the relationship between the playing of violent video games and aggressive behavior, effects of a cognitively demanding secondary task on driving performance, and personal and environmental barriers to exercise by older women Copies of the releases can be accessed at http://www.apa.org/releases In response to requests from experimentalists who wanted a journal dedicated to the publication of theoretically grounded experimental studies addressed to practical problems, in 1995 the APA launched the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied This journal is like the other Journals of Experimental Psychology in publishing articles that report experimentation and like the Journal of Applied Psychology in publishing those that address practical concerns, but it is unlike these in that it requires experimental methodology and applied orientation in combination Articles published during the first few years of the journal’s existence have addressed a wide variety of topics, including education and training, communication and information presentation, decision making, health care and maintenance, driving and highway safety, pilot performance, aging, computer interface design, stress management, eye- and earwitness testimony, consumer behavior, and many others In May 2000 the American Psychological Society published the first issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest as a supplement to Psychological Science The hope 651 expressed by the founding coeditors of this journal, which is scheduled to appear with one major article twice a year, is that the reports that appear in it, all of which are to be commissioned by its editorial board, “will come to be seen as definitive summaries of research on nationally important questions, much like the reports commissioned by the National Research Council, but focused on issues for which psychological research plays a central role” (Ceci & Bjork, 2000, p 178) The first issue describes ways—well researched by psychologists over many years—in which the accuracy of diagnostic decisions, which are constantly being made with serious consequences in a wide variety of real-world situations, can be enhanced (Swets, Dawes, & Monahan, 2000b; see also Swets, Dawes, & Monahan, 2000a) In the second issue, Lilienfeld, Wood, and Garb (2000; see also Lilienfeld, Wood, & Garb, 2001) critically reviewed research on projective testing instruments often used in clinical and forensic settings (Rorschach inkblot test, thematic apperception test, and human figure drawings) Among other topics for which Psychology in the Public Interest has commissioned papers are the relationship between academic achievement and class size, the question of whether certain herbal products affect cognitive functioning, the relationship of self-esteem to academic performance and social adjustment, the effectiveness of coaching for the Scholastic Achievement Test, and the best ways to teach reading to different types of learners One of the stated considerations that motivated the establishment of this journal and the approach it represents to publicizing findings from psychological research that are deemed to be of public interest was the concern that psychologists too often have presented research findings to the public prematurely and in conflicting ways There are other reasons for believing that interest in applications of psychological research is relatively high at the present (Nickerson, 1998) We note here the American Psychological Society’s identification, under the “Human Capital Initiative,” of six priority areas for psychological research: productivity in the workplace, schooling and literacy, the aging society, drug and alcohol abuse, health, and violence in America (“Human Capital,” 1992) To date the society has issued six reports as follow-ups to the announcement of this initiative: “The Changing Nature of Work,” “Vitality for Life: Research for Productive Aging,” “Reducing Mental Disorders: A Behavioral Science Research Plan for Psychopathology,” “Doing the Right Thing: A Research Plan for Healthy Living,” “Reducing Violence: A Research Agenda,” and “Basic Research in Psychological Science: A Human Capital Initiative Report.” These reports are available from the communications office of the American 652 Psychological Experimentation Addressing Practical Concerns Psychological Society, or they can be downloaded from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/newsresearch HISTORICAL ROOTS OF APPLIED EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Perhaps the first stimulus for applied experimental psychology is to be found in the work of astronomers in the late 1700s Before the development of accurate chronoscopes, the British Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, required a procedure by which he could accurately measure the time of transit of a star According to Sanford (1888), he used the “eye and ear” method, attributed to Bradley: When the star is about to make its transit, the observer reads off the time from his clock and then, while he watches the star in the telescope, continues to count the second beats He fixes firmly in mind (as the moving image approaches the wire) its place at the last beat before it crosses the wire, and its place at the first beat after, and from the distances of these two points from the wire, estimates by eye the time of the crossing in tenths of a second The role of the mind in observations by this method is fixing the exact place of the star at the first beat, the holding of the same in memory, the fixing of the place of the second beat, the comparison of the two and the expression of their relation in tenths (p 7) The story goes that Maskelyne fired his assistant, David Kinnebrook, because the latter’s star measurements differed by as much as 0.8 s from those of his supervisor The result of this event, 30 or more years later, was a series of behavioral experiments to study individual differences in what became known as the personal equation It was this very practical problem that motivated the initial studies of human reaction time Over the next 100 years investigators of the personal equation continued to modify their measurement methodology to take advantage of the improved technology for measuring and recording events in time Despite, or perhaps because of, the prevailing belief that the conduction velocity of nerves was infinitely short, or at least not measurable, several nineteenth-century scientists showed interest in the possibility of measuring the speed of neurological and mental processes The mid-nineteenthcentury experiments of Hermann Helmholtz on the speed of transmission of the neural impulse in frogs are widely recognized as outstanding examples of pioneering research in this area It was Frans Donders (1868/1969), however, who, building on the work of Helmholtz, firmly established the measurement of human reaction times and the taking of reaction-time differences as a means of measuring the speed of mental processes The approach that Donders developed was quickly adopted as a primary investigative tool by researchers for use in both theoretically and practically motivated experiments, and it remains so to this day (For more on the Kinnebrook incident and reaction-time research, see chapter by Proctor & Vu in this volume.) Extensive accounts of the earliest days of experimental psychology include Boring (1929/1950), Heidbreder (1935), Woodworth (1938), and Woodworth and Schlosberg (1954) Early Experimental and Applied Journals The Journal of Experimental Psychology and the Journal of Applied Psychology were established at about the same time, the first issue of the former appearing in 1916 and that of the latter in 1917 The Journal of Experimental Psychology was established under the auspices of the APA; the Journal of Applied Psychology began as a private journal, financed by its editors, and became an APA journal in 1943 The scope of the Journal of Applied Psychology, as described in the front material of the first issue, was to include the following: (a) The application of psychology to vocational activities, such as law, art, public speaking, industrial and commercial work, and problems of business appeal (b) Studies of individual mentalities, such as types of character, special talents, genius, and individual differences, including the problems of mental diagnosis and vocational prognosis (c) The influence of general environmental conditions, such as climate, weather, humidity, temperature; also such conditions as nutrition, fatigue, etc (d) The psychology of everyday activities, such as reading, writing, speaking, singing, playing games or musical instruments, sports, etc (pp i, ii) Contributors of original articles to the journal were admonished that emphasis was to be laid on “clear and accurate statement of results, together with their practical applications” (iii) There is no editorial or front matter in the first issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, so we could not make a direct comparison of the stated objectives of the two journals However, the main difference between them appears to have been that articles to be published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology were to report experiments but did not have to be applied (although they could be), whereas those to be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology had to be applied but did not have to report experiments (although they could) To get an idea of the overlap between the two journals, we scanned the first two volumes of each looking especially for applied studies in the Journal of Experimental Psychology and for experimental studies in the Journal of Applied ... task of gathering together the results of workers in the various fields of applied psychology, or of bringing these results into relation with pure psychology? ?? (p 6) They implied that applied psychology. .. the fact that the founders of the Journal of Applied Psychology noted “an unprecedented interest in the extension of the application of psychology to various fields of human activity” when they... consequence of the greater salience of recent than of more remote events and possibly of some wishful thinking on our part One indication of the currently high interest in applying psychology