The experiment in physics has often been pictured as an ideal for the less mature social sciences, especially by positivist philosophy of science. The thesis to be presented here is that the physical experiment as a paradigm for psychology is merely a pretext, a smoke-screen for a more fundamental and concealed technological paradigm for the study…

Findings of this survey indicate that important differences exist between experimenters and students on various issues of human research--psychologists expressing views much more ethically stringent than those by their most typical human subjects. (Authors)

Results of psychological experiments usinganimals are presented. Use of the animal-human analogy to generalize these findings to humans is discussed. Ethological studies are interpreted in light of the total environment and situation involved. The completeness of the ethological model compared to the animal-experimental model is discussed. (LS)

Describes a Stanley Milgram type obedience experiment conducted with 192 Jordanian children ages 6-16. Seventy-three percent of the children responded via administering supposed dangerous electrical shocks to test subjects. (SL)

Examines earlier studies relating to human memory, extracts estimates of parameters that appear to be crucial to performance in complex tasks, and illustrates how these parameter values predict behavior in a range of laboratory situations. (JR)

The authors examined the evolution of cognitive and emotional responses to terror risks for a nationally representative sample of Americans between late 2001 and late 2002. Respondents' risk judgments changed in ways consistent with their reported personal experiences. However, they did not recognize these changes, producing hindsight bias in…

This document discusses and critically reviews problems existing with utilizing traditional experimental methods in psychology and the behavioral sciences. Experimental and correlational data collection methods are reviewed and a new data collection method merging the more productive features of each is proposed. The philosophy, strategy, and…

Examines how the contributions of animal research are presented in eight of the most widely used introductory psychology textbooks. The authors show that, with the exception of principles of conditioning and learning, the contributions of animal research are often not explicitly acknowledged or are obscured to look like they had been obtained with…