Abstract
The experimental method is the cornerstone of psychology as a science. So we are told—over the past century in various disguises—by various experts and deep believers in the promise that psychology will one day become a “real” science. The label method is supposed to add credibility to what psychologists do, and the constant parallels made with the dependence of physics on experiments set the stage for playing the game of experimenter being in control of all the “variables” selected for inspection in a given study.
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Notes
- 1.
Note the historical changes in the labeling of these actors in the experimental situation (Bibace et al., 2009). First, they were called observers—as the experiments used introspective techniques. Then, they were called Versuchsperson in the German areas and subjects in English. Finally, by the twenty-first century, they are research participants who sign forms of giving up their rights of ownership of the data they produce for the anonymization of their person and the place. Note that the organizer of the study—the experimenter—is not considered to belong to the category of participants—even as her role in setting up an experiment is clear key participation. By that exclusion it becomes possible to remain uninformed of what actually happens in the experiment.
- 2.
The audience here is the readership of the published experimental results that judge these results through the culturally set prisms of societal relevance or through the sieve of moral responsibility.
- 3.
In psychology, several other genres of comparable structures are used: “interview,” “testing,” “therapy,” etc. These all have their own theatrical setup that differs in some details from that given in Fig. 9.2 but remains similar in the focus on scientific encounter as a form of performance art.
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Valsiner, J., Gozli, D. (2022). Conclusion: From Experimental to Experiential Psychology. In: Gozli, D., Valsiner, J. (eds) Experimental Psychology. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17053-9_9
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