Abstract
We join others in envisioning a future for affective science that addresses society’s most pressing needs. To move toward this vision, we consider a research paradigm that emerged in other disciplines: use-inspired basic research. This paradigm transcends the traditional basic-applied dichotomy, which pits the basic goal of fundamental scientific understanding against the applied goal of use in solving social problems. In reality, these goals are complementary, and use-inspired basic research advances them simultaneously. Here, we build a case for use-inspired basic research—how it differs from traditional basic science and why affective scientists should engage in it. We first examine how use-inspired basic research challenges problematic assumptions of a strict basic-applied dichotomy. We then discuss how it is consistent with advances in affective science that recognize context specificity as the norm and consider ethical issues of use being a complementary goal. Following this theoretical discussion, we differentiate the implementation of use-inspired basic research from that of traditional basic science. We draw on examples from recent research to illustrate differences: social problems as a starting point, stakeholder and community engagement, and integration of research and service. In conclusion, we invite affective scientists to embrace the “lab meets world” perspective of use-inspired basic research as a promising pathway to real-world impact.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahmed, S. M., & Palermo, A.-G.S. (2010). Community engagement in research: Frameworks for education and peer review. American Journal of Public Health, 100(8), 1380–1387. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.178137
Aizik-Reebs, A., Yuval, K., Hadash, Y., Gebremariam, S. G., & Bernstein, A. (2021). Mindfulness-based trauma recovery for refugees (MBTR-R): Randomized waitlist-control evidence of efficacy and safety. Clinical Psychological Science, 9(6), 1164–1184.
Amara, N., Olmos-Peñuela, J., & Fernández-de-Lucio, I. (2019). Overcoming the “lost before translation” problem: An exploratory study. Research Policy, 48(1), 22–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.07.016
Anckaert, P.-E., Cassiman, D., & Cassiman, B. (2020). Fostering practice-oriented and use-inspired science in biomedical research. Research Policy, 49(2), 103900. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2019.103900
Armani, A. M., Jackson, C., Searles, T. A., & Wade, J. (2021). The need to recognize and reward academic service. Nature Reviews Materials, 6(11), 960–962. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021-00383-z
Barrett, L. F. (2022). Context reconsidered: Complex signal ensembles, relational meaning, and population thinking in psychological science. The American Psychologist, 77(8), 894–920. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001054
Barrett, L. F., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2019). Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20(1), 1–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100619832930
Brooks, H. (1979). Basic and applied research. In Categories of scientific research (pp. 14–18). National Science Foundation.
Bush, V. (1990). Science—The endless frontier: A report to the President on a program of postwar scientific research. National Science Foundation.
Cikara, M., Martinez, J. E., & Lewis, N. A. (2022). Moving beyond social categories by incorporating context in social psychological theory. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(9), 537–549. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00079-3
Cunsolo, A., & Ellis, N. R. (2018). Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss. Nature Climate Change, 8(4), 275–281. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0092-2
Cunsolo Willox, A., Harper, S. L., Edge, V. L., Landman, K., Houle, K., & Ford, J. D. (2013). The land enriches the soul: On climatic and environmental change, affect, and emotional health and well-being in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Canada. Emotion, Space and Society, 6, 14–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2011.08.005
DeJesus, J. M., Callanan, M. A., Solis, G., & Gelman, S. A. (2019). Generic language in scientific communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(37), 18370–18377. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817706116
Duea, S. R., Zimmerman, E. B., Vaughn, L. M., Dias, S., & Harris, J. (2022). A guide to selecting participatory research methods based on project and partnership goals. Journal of Participatory Research Methods, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.35844/001c.32605
Eaton, A. A., Grzanka, P. R., Schlehofer, M. M., & Silka, L. (2021). Public psychology: Introduction to the special issue. American Psychologist, 76(8), 1209–1216. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000933
Fine, M., Torre, M. E., Oswald, A. G., & Avory, S. (2021). Critical participatory action research: Methods and praxis for intersectional knowledge production. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 68(3), 344–356. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000445
Flagg, M. (2022). Reward research for being useful—Not just flashy. Nature, 610(7930), 9. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03131-7
Flusberg, S. J., van der Vord, J., Husney, S. Q., & Holmes, K. J. (2022). Who’s the “real” victim? How victim framing shapes attitudes toward sexual assault. Psychological Science, 33(4), 524–537.
Gandhi, T. K., Singh, A. K., Swami, P., Ganesh, S., & Sinha, P. (2017). Emergence of categorical face perception after extended early-onset blindness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(23), 6139–6143. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1616050114
Green, R. G. (2008). Tenure and promotion decisions: The relative importance of teaching, scholarship, and service. Journal of Social Work Education, 44(2), 117–128. https://doi.org/10.5175/JSWE.2008.200700003
Harper, S. I., Edge, V. I., & Cunsolo Willox, A. (2012). “Changing climate, changing health, changing stories” profile: Using an EcoHealth approach to explore impacts of climate change on Inuit health. EcoHealth, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-012-0762-x
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2019). Put your data to use: Entering the real world of children and families. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(1), 37–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618815161
Hoekstra, F., Mrklas, K. J., Khan, M., McKay, R. C., Vis-Dunbar, M., Sibley, K. M., Nguyen, T., Graham, I. D., Anderson, K., Anton, H., Athanasopoulos, P., Chernesky, J., Forwell, S., Maffin, J., Martin Ginis, K., McBride, C. B., Mortenson, B., Willms, R., Gainforth, H. L., SCI Guiding Principles Consensus Panel. (2020). A review of reviews on principles, strategies, outcomes and impacts of research partnerships approaches: A first step in synthesising the research partnership literature. Health Research Policy and Systems, 18(1), 51. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-020-0544-9
Holmes, K. J. (2020). Addressing twenty-first-century problems by engaging undergraduates in use-inspired basic research. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 3(3), 46.
Holmes, K. J., Doherty, E. M., & Flusberg, S. J. (2022). How and when does syntax perpetuate stereotypes? Probing the framing effects of subject-complement statements of equality. Thinking & Reasoning, 28(2), 226–260.
Leach, C. W., & Bou Zeineddine, F. (2021). A systems view of emotion in socio-political context. Affective Science, 2(4), 353–362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00051-z
Legette, K. B., Halberstadt, A. G., & Majors, A. T. (2021). Teachers’ understanding of racial inequity predicts their perceptions of students’ behaviors. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 67, 102014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2021.102014
Lewis, N. A. (2021). What counts as good science? How the battle for methodological legitimacy affects public psychology. American Psychologist, 76(8), 1323–1333. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000870
Lewis, N. A., & Wai, J. (2021). Communicating what we know and what isn’t so: Science communication in psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1242–1254. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620964062
Lewis, N. A., Bravo, M., Naiman, S., Pearson, A. R., Romero-Canyas, R., Schuldt, J. P., & Song, H. (2020). Using qualitative approaches to improve quantitative inferences in environmental psychology. MethodsX, 7, 100943. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2020.100943
Lewis, N. A., Green, D. J., Duker, A., & Onyeador, I. N. (2021). Not seeing eye to eye: Challenges to building ethnically and economically diverse environmental coalitions. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 42, 60–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.02.025
Lindau, S. T., Makelarski, J. A., Chin, M. H., Desautels, S., Johnson, D., Johnson, W. E., Miller, D., Peters, S., Robinson, C., Schneider, J., Thicklin, F., Watson, N. P., Wolfe, M., & Whitaker, E. (2011). Building community-engaged health research and discovery infrastructure on the south side of Chicago: Science in service to community priorities. Preventive Medicine, 52(3–4), 200–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2011.01.001
Loughman, A., & Haslam, N. (2018). Neuroscientific explanations and the stigma of mental disorder: A meta-analytic study. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 3. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-018-0136-1
Lozada, F. T., Riley, T. N., Catherine, E., & Brown, D. W. (2022). Black emotions matter: Understanding the impact of racial oppression on black youth’s emotional development. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 32(1), 13–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12699
Mahoney, J. L., Weissberg, R. P., Greenberg, M. T., Dusenbury, L., Jagers, R. J., Niemi, K., Schlinger, M., Schlund, J., Shriver, T. P., VanAusdal, K., & Yoder, N. (2021). Systemic social and emotional learning: Promoting educational success for all preschool to high school students. American Psychologist, 76(7), 1128–1142. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000701
Mook, D. G. (1983). In defense of external invalidity. American Psychologist, 38(4), 379–387.
Newman, S. D., Andrews, J. O., Magwood, G. S., Jenkins, C., Cox, M. J., & Williamson, D. C. (2011). Community advisory boards in community-based participatory research: A synthesis of best processes. Preventing Chronic Disease, 8(3), 1–12.
Oren-Schwartz, R., Aizik-Reebs, A., Yuval, K., Hadash, Y., & Bernstein, A. (2023). Effect of mindfulness-based trauma recovery for refugees on shame and guilt in trauma recovery among African asylum-seekers. Emotion, 23(3), 622–632. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001126
Ortiz, K., Nash, J., Shea, L., Oetzel, J., Garoutte, J., Sanchez-Youngman, S., & Wallerstein, N. (2020). Partnerships, processes, and outcomes: A health equity–focused scoping meta-review of community-engaged scholarship. Annual Review of Public Health, 41, 177–199. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040119-094220
Pearson, A. R., Schuldt, J. P., Romero-Canyas, R., Ballew, M. T., & Larson-Konar, D. (2018). Diverse segments of the US public underestimate the environmental concerns of minority and low-income Americans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(49), 12429–12434. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804698115
Racine, E., Waldman, S., Rosenberg, J., & Illes, J. (2010). Contemporary neuroscience in the media. Social Science & Medicine, 71(4), 725–733. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.05.017
Rodriguez Espinosa, P., & Verney, S. P. (2021). The underutilization of community-based participatory research in psychology: A systematic review. American Journal of Community Psychology, 67(3–4), 312–326. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12469
Sinha, P. (2013). Once blind and now they see. Scientific American, 309(1), 48–55. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0713-48
Sinha, P. (2016). Neuroscience and service. Neuron, 92(3), 647–652. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2016.10.044
Sinha, P., Chatterjee, G., Gandhi, T., & Kalia, A. (2013). Restoring vision through “Project Prakash”: The opportunities for merging science and service. PLOS Biology, 11(12), e1001741. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001741
Skinner, J. S., Williams, N. A., Richmond, A., Brown, J., Strelnick, A. H., Calhoun, K., De Loney, E. H., Allen, S., Pirie, A., & Wilkins, C. H. (2018). Community experiences and perceptions of clinical and translational research and researchers. Progress in Community Health Partnerships : Research, Education, and Action, 12(3), 263–271. https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2018.0050
Song, H., Lewis, N. A., Ballew, M. T., Bravo, M., Davydova, J., Gao, H. O., Garcia, R. J., Hiltner, S., Naiman, S. M., Pearson, A. R., Romero-Canyas, R., & Schuldt, J. P. (2020). What counts as an “environmental” issue? Differences in issue conceptualization by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 68, 101404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101404
Stokes, D. E. (1997). Pasteur’s quandrant: Basic science and technological innovation. Brookings Institution Press.
Thibodeau, P. H., & Boroditsky, L. (2011). Metaphors we think with: The role of metaphor in reasoning. PLoS ONE, 6(2), e16782.
Wall, T. U., McNie, E., & Garfin, G. M. (2017). Use-inspired science: Making science usable by and useful to decision makers. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 15(10), 551–559. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.1735
Wallerstein, N. (2021). Engage for equity: Advancing the fields of community-based participatory research and community-engaged research in community psychology and the social sciences. American Journal of Community Psychology, 67(3–4), 251–255. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12530
Warren, M. R., Calderón, J., Kupscznk, L. A., Squires, G., & Su, C. (2018). Is collaborative, community-engaged scholarship more rigorous than traditional scholarship? On advocacy, bias, and social science research. Urban Education, 53(4), 445–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085918763511
Wolfe, J. M. (2016). Rethinking the basic-applied dichotomy. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 1(1), 1, s41235–016–0011–x. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-016-0011-x
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dan Grupe, Dekila Chungyalpa, Maya Kairavi Vikas, Kevin Riordan, and Hadley Rahrig for helpful conversations related to ideas developed in this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Funding
This work was supported by the National Center for Complementary & Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U24AT011289.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Data Availability
Data availability is not applicable to this manuscript.
Code Availability
Not applicable.
Author Contributions
Not applicable.
Ethics Approval
Not applicable.
Consent to Participate
Not applicable.
Consent for Publication
Not applicable.
Additional information
Handling editor: Linda Camras
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Wilson-Mendenhall, C.D., Holmes, K.J. Lab Meets World: the Case for Use-Inspired Basic Research in Affective Science. Affec Sci 4, 591–599 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00200-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00200-6