postulated. A great deal of research in psychology is conducted to evaluate current theories about human behavior. In a classic article, Darley and Latane (1968) offered a theory about why the many people who could hear, from their apartments, a young woman being attacked outside did nothing to help her. They postulated that the responsibility to be good citizens was diffused among the many people, and as a result, no one person felt compelled to help. One hypothesis that can be derived from this theory (called the bystander effect) is that the greater the number of people present, the less likely any one person is to help someone in distress. And, indeed, this hypothesis has been confirmed in numerous experiments.
Let’s look at another example. Developmental psychologists call the emotional bond between children and their primary caregivers attachment. But why does this happen? Behaviorists proposed that attachment develops because the primary caregiver, usually the mother, is associated with food, a strong positive reinforcer to hungry babies. Harlow and Harlow (1966) tested this theory in a classic set of studies. Their results did not support the behaviorists’ claim. Contact comfort, not feeding, was shown to be the source of attachment, at least in rhesus monkeys.
Theories provide a wealth of ideas for research topics.
To Satisfy Our Curiosity
Science often develops because scientists are very curious people. We have heard it said that you could get rid of warts by visiting a graveyard around midnight. We will not provide all the details of this activity, but chasing away evil spirits, and presumably your wart, by tossing a cat is involved (see The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Spanos, Williams, and Gwynn (1990) were curious about the idea that you can rid yourself of warts by nonmedical means; they decided to investigate whether you could get rid of warts through hypnosis. They conducted a controlled experiment in the laboratory and found support for the hypothesis. They published their results in a scientific journal. But they were more than a little embarrassed when their study made the cover of The National Enquirer—not exactly something you want to brag about at your university!
To Demonstrate a New Technique
As we learn new ways to do things, it is important to determine if those new ways are better than the old ways. Professors are always interested in better ways of teaching. Textbooks these days come with all sorts of fancy supplementary materials. But do they improve learning? At our school, we conducted an experiment to try to answer that question. Different groups of students taking introductory psychology received instruction with various technological accompaniments. Some received traditional lecture instruction. Some received computer-assisted instruction. We measured several variables, including performance and more psychological variables. Are you wondering what we found? Well, very simply, the students with added technology did not learn more, but they had more fun!
To Demonstrate a Behavioral Phenomenon
After observing behavior that tends to recur under certain circumstances, we need to demonstrate it under precise conditions before the phenomenon can be confidently added to the body of knowledge about a discipline. The idea that organisms do things because they receive rewards was known for a long time before Skinner demonstrated this in his laboratory. Indeed, Skinner’s career was spent demonstrating the behavioral phenomena of operant conditioning.
Perhaps you have noticed that when you are out walking your dog, people seem a lot friendlier than when you are out walking alone. You could design a simple experiment to see if your perception that people are friendlier is a demonstrable phenomenon. You could take the same walk at the same time each day for several weeks, sometimes with your dog and sometimes without. You might collect data on how many people engage you in conversation and how long they talk to you, for example. If you find that when your dog is with you, more people initiate conversation more often, you have evidence of a behavioral phenomenon.
To Investigate the Conditions Influencing Behavioral Phenomena
Darley and Latane’s (1968) bystander effect has been the focus of numerous experiments. Researchers have studied not only the influence of the number of bystanders on helping behavior but also many other factors, such as the apparent degree of need of the victim and the bystanders’ ability to help. Skinner and others have investigated how the size, frequency, and quality of a reward (reinforcer) affect behavior, as well as many other conditions affecting operant behavior.
We have discussed some of the reasons why researchers do what they do. Now let’s discuss the various ways they go about doing what they do.
Approaches to Research
Over many years of schooling, students are trained to be convergent thinkers, to converge on the one correct answer. But research requires divergent thinking. It is a creative endeavor with many approaches. Here we summarize the diversity of research by organizing various approaches on a number of typical continua you have probably come across in your undergraduate career.
Descriptive Versus Explanatory Research
Descriptive research involves describing a population of measurements. Usually, inferences are made from a representative sample to a population, except in the case of censuses, in which entire populations are measured. This is the type of research we see in the media from polling agencies, and the primary interest is in describing how the population thinks. Descriptive research has applications in business, where it is used to understand the consumer, and in social services, where you need to understand the needs of your community.
The focus of explanatory research is to answer “why” questions. For example, you may find that there are more women than men in your psychology program. That finding alone is a description, but you may want to know why there are more women than men. In explanatory research, you are interested in explaining why there is a gender difference. You are trying to account for the difference. The simplest explanation would be that there are just more women in the university. You could test this by comparing the gender ratio in psychology with the gender ratio in other disciplines. In this case, you are investigating a relationship between gender and university discipline. Finding a difference may lead to an explanation of why there are more women than men in your psychology program.
Often research may contain aspects that are both descriptive and explanatory. For example, researchers studying drug use in schools may want to describe the prevalence of drug use and also try to account for why some students take drugs and others do not.
Quantitative Versus Qualitative Research
In essence, quantitative research in psychology measures differences in the amount of behavior. What causes people to become more or less aggressive? What factors increase or decrease interpersonal attraction? Does a particular treatment reduce symptoms of depression? Do children diagnosed with autism engage in less play behavior than children not diagnosed with autism? In other words, we are measuring the quantity of a behavior, often because we wonder what causes the behavior to increase or decrease in quantity.
Qualitative research in psychology, on the other hand, describes differences in the kind or quality of behavior. What does aggressive behavior look like compared with nonaggressive behavior? What is the nature of interpersonal attraction? What do depressed people think or say about themselves? What kinds of play behavior are typical of children diagnosed with autism? It is the nature or quality of the behavior that interests the
