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The social structure of psychological experimentation Psych 304
I noted that the establishment of psychological laboratories always involved the
institutionalization of certain social arrangements. Psychological experimentation
became a collaborative effort dependent upon the division of labor among individuals
who carried out different functions in the experimental situation. Broadly between those
who acted as the source of experimental “data” (subjects) and those who manipulated the
apparatus/experimental conditions (experimenters). While this social arrangement was
largely due to the “brass instruments” (technology) that were a part of the 19th c.
institutionalization of psychology as an academic discipline, it also quickly became part
of tradition.
What was not noticed at the time, and not noticed for another century, was that this social
arrangement created a very special kind of “social system” one – a system of
“psychological experimentation”. The interaction between subjects and experimenters
was regulated by a series of constraints that set limits to what passed between them. Their
communication in the experimental situation was governed by the roles they assumed
included implicitly adopted proscription and prescriptions.
However, the specific features of this social system were not necessarily fixed. The
division of labor between subjects and experimenters still left much room for local
variation. Thus, there was nothing in the practical requirements of psychological
experimentation that dictated a permanent separation between experimenter and subject
roles. The experimental practices in Leipzig (Wundt’s lab) were ones of convenience; it
did not necessarily prescribe that the roles of experimenter and subject could not be
reversed from session to session. However, other factors did serve to distinguish the roles
between experimenter and subject more permanently.
Thus we can ask what factors might be expected to result in a permanent separation
between experimenter and subject? One such factor is obviously that psychological
experiments were not conducted in a vacuum. Thus, it is impossible to keep participants’
identity outside the laboratory from having an impact on their roles or identity inside the
laboratory. Who would serve as experimenter and as subject may well be bound up with
their status outside the laboratory. Similarly, the possibility of exchanging roles may
depend on the social identity of those who are occupying these roles.
Apart from these social factors external to the experimental situation, there is the question
of how the distribution of roles ties in with other activities that are a part of the social
practice of investigation. Thus, there are other activities that pertain to conducting the
experiment such as its theoretical conception, data analysis, and the writing of the
research report (article for a journal). The fact that these activities are today routinely
done by the experimenter does not mean that this was always the case. Let’s see what the
case was in Wundt’s lab.
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If you examine Philosophische Studien (Wundt psychology journal) we see that the
person who authored the article was not necessarily the experimenter. Nor was the person
who conceptualized the experiment necessarily the data source in the experiment. Wundt
often appeared as the subject or data source in experiments conducted by his students,
although he clearly also contributed to the conceptualization of the experiments.
Interestingly, Wundt hardly ever took the role of experimenter which suggests that the
person who functioned as the data source (subject) had a more sophisticated task than the
person in the experimenter role did and which Wundt left to his students. Obviously, this
seemingly practical exchange of roles meant that there was no reason to make the
distinction between experimenter and subject permanent. In fact, in Wundt’s lab
experimenter and subject often exchanged roles.
The participants in the early Leipzig lab were engaged in a common endeavor in which
they were all regarded as collaborators, including the data source or “subject”.
Characteristically, authors of the published articles would refer to their experimental
subjects as “co-workers” especially given that their proper names were often included in
the article as well. Importantly, playing the roles of subject or experimenter was part of
the participants’ relationship outside the lab. They often knew each other well, were
friends, fellow students, or professor and student. Thus, experiment collaborators were
not strangers. Of course, Wundt held a special position as professor but once he
participated in a study his responses (data) were treated like everyone else’s. Most of the
subjects in the Leipzig lab were members of the lab (usually students) but also others
who had theoretical interests and were well-acquainted with experimentation. The
scientific community at Leipzig produced their own data on the human mind!
This style of experimentation was the result of (1) a tradition in German universities of
linking the training of intellectual elites with the production of new knowledge, and (2)
the idea that psychological experimentation was intended to investigate the general states
and processes of the normal, mature human mind. That’s is, psychological
experimentation was designed to analyze this psychological “object” just as physiological
experimentation was designed to investigate the biological processes in the normal
mature organism.
Just as the philosophical practice of introspection had helped to construct the object it
was meant to investigate, so Wundt’s systematic introspection (which was really a report
on the direct experience of the stimulus) constructed it own object. Experimental subjects
were not studied as individual persons but rather as examples of certain common human
characteristics (e.g., sensory discrimination). Hence, the role of subject could be taken on
by anyone in the research community since they did not represent themselves but their
common mental processes. The “elementary mental processes”, as Wundt called them,
were assumed to be “natural objects” that could be studied quite independently of the rest
of the subject’s personality (very much like we assume today). All that was necessary to
achieve this was to restrict the conditions of the laboratory and give the subject some
training in “introspection”. But this preparation (both in restricting the conditions of the
laboratory set-up and the training of the subjects in introspection) together with the social
arrangement wherein the experimenter and subject could be exchanged resulted in the
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construction of the very research “object” which the research program was designed to
investigate. This did not make the “object” any less “real” but it did mean that the
“object” of Wundt’s lab had to compete with other psychological “objects” constructed in
different ways.
Alternative models of psychological investigation
Clinical experiment
While Wundt’s model of experimentation has a profound influence in the early years of
psychology (which was aspiring to become a “science”), it was not the only model of
psychological experimentation at the time. The clinical experiment had different goals
(objects) and different social arrangements. The first major research program using this
type of experimentation was the study of hypnotic phenomena. This French program
involved the systematic use of experimental hypnosis as a tool of psychological research.
In this kind of research various psychological functions were investigated under
experimentally induced hypnosis. Unlike the Leipzig program, in the clinical method
there could be no exchange of experimental roles as the clinical method depended on the
permanent distinction between experimenter and hypnotic subject. Moreover, the
experimenters were almost always male and the subjects almost always female. This
arrangement is much like the modern conception of experimentation in psychology in
that there was clear segregation between experimenter and the source (subject) of the
data.
The clinical method originated in the medical context. Those who functioned as subjects
(and were labeled “hysterics” or “somnambulists”) were usually patients of the physician
who was also the experimenter. When normal or healthy subjects were used they were
always used to make comparison to diagnosed clinical subjects (patients). The
experimenters were physician and had a medical background and hence prior to the
experiment the experimenter and subject were in a doctor-patient relationship and the
experiment was essentially a continuation of this medical relationship. Thus, the whole
situation of the experiment was defined in medical terms. A crucial feature of this
definition was the understanding that the psychological states and processes that were
being studied were something that the subject or patient suffered or underwent (“patient”
means to be “suffering” to passively undergo a disorder).
In this context of the clinical method we find the first use of the term “subject” in a
psychological experiment. These medically oriented experimenters quite spontaneously
referred to their patients as “subjects” (Fr.: sujet) because that term since the 18th c. been
a practice of medical care or “naturalistic observation”. Before that time, “subject”
referred to a corpse used for anatomically dissection and by the early 19th c. one spoke of
patients as being good/bad “subjects” for surgery (i.e., would they suffer surgery well or
not). When hypnosis came to be seen as a medical matter (certainly in Paris 1880s) there
was nothing more natural than to extend the already linguistic practice to yet another
object of medical scrutiny. However, within the medical context we immediately get the
formulation of “healthy subject” (Fr.: sujet sains) when it is a matter of comparing the
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performances of normal and abnormal individuals. From this it is a short step to the
generalized use of the term subject to refer to any individual under psychological
investigation – a step Alfred Binet, for example, took immediately. Binet after some work
on hypnosis turned to the study of infants which was possible without altering the clinical
method (something that was clearly not possible however using Wundt’s introspective
method).
The English term “subject” had also, like the French term, assumed medical
connotations. In the 18th c. it was used to refer to a corpse for anatomically dissection but
by the middle of the 19th c. it could also mean “a person who presents himself for or
undergoes medical or surgical treatment” – hence its use in the context of hypnosis.
Thus, in the English language literature the first use of the term “subject” was in the
context of the study of hypnosis (G. S. Hall one of the first American psychologists, used
“subject” in this context of hypnotic research and referred to the subject as “percipient”
or “observer” when he reported on experimental work with normal individuals).
James McKeen Cattell in 1889 appears to be the first to use the term “subject” in
psychological experiments using normal adults as data sources. However he was not at all
sure about this use as he writes “subject or observer” and also uses “subject” always in
inverted commas, a common custom at the time probably indicating that it was borrowed
from the French.
The third method: Galton
Thus, the earliest years of experimental psychology were marked by the emergence of
two very different models of psychological experiment. The Leipzig model allowed for a
great deal of fluidity in allocating social functions between experimenter and subject and
if anything the subject was more important than the experimenter. In contrast these roles
were rigidly segregated in the Paris clinical method of experimentation. Here the
experimenter was clearly in charge and only the experimenter was fully informed about
the nature of the experiment. The roles of experimenter and subject were definitely not
interchangeable. The “objects” of study that these two experimental situations were
meant to clarify (explain understand) were also very different. The clinical experiment
was meant to display the effects of an abnormal condition for the benefit of a
knowledgeable experimenter (and his research community of other physicians/
experimenters). In contrast the Leipzig experiment was meant to display the universal
states/processes that characterized all normal adult minds and the significance was
therefore open to all (not just the experimenter).
Now while these two models of psychological investigation were very different and both
very influential, there were several other models that began to emerge before the end of
the 19th c. The earliest of these was in 1884 at the International Health Exhibition in
London where Frances Galton set up a laboratory for “testing” the “mental faculties” of
members of the general public. Galton’s experimental situation was clearly very different
from both the Leipzig and the Paris models. Thus the people Galton investigated
(“tested”) were not medically stigmatized but ordinary people. Nevertheless the roles of
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investigator and “tested” individuals were definitely not interchangeable. Also there was
a clear difference in the status of the two roles. Galton had expert knowledge about the
individuals he tested, and he was willing to share this knowledge with them for a fee.
That is, Galton charged every person who availed himself of his services in exchange for
a card on which he recorded the individual’s “anthropomorphic” test results. While there
was a fee for service this was definitely not a medical procedure; in fact, Galton referred
to those who presented themselves for testing as “applicants” (cf. the modern term
“client”).
In fact, there were no lack of applicants (9000 applicants before the World Exhibition
ended) which would suggests that the idea of being tested was probably familiar to he
times so much so that they were willing to pay for the service. One reason for this
familiarity was the existence of competitive school examinations. There was also the
common practice of phrenology (by this time discredited) but which had been very
persuasive and pervasive in the previous generation. Phrenologists offered people a
“measurement” of their mental faculties for a fee (even Queen Victoria used
phrenologists for her children and Galton himself had gone to a phrenologist and had
taken it very seriously).
If we compare the Leipzig or Paris model of experimentation to the social arrangement or
structure of Galton’s investigative practice we see some revealing divergences. Galton’s
social practice contained utilitarian and contractual elements that are quite original.
Obviously what Galton offered was deemed valuable to his applicants, namely
information (on a contractual basis) which they believed could be useful to them. It is
likely that Galton’s applicants were interested in this information for the same reason
their parents had been interested in phrenology. That is, knowledge about one’s mental
abilities was very useful at a time when they depended on having marketable skills to
obtain work in a rapidly technologically changing society (machines etc.). If one could
obtain scientifically objective and reliable information on one’s mental skills this was not
only of instrumental value in obtaining work but it was also relevant to one’s self-image
and the desire for self-improvement (cf. self-help).
From Galton’s own perspective, his large-scale “anthropological measurements” were not
to make money (he was independently wealthy) but a way of implementing his eugenics
program of selective breeding among those with outstanding anthropological scores. That
is, Galton’s interest in a selective breeding program would be facilitated if it could be
based on scientific data of human abilities. Thus, Galton’s interests were just as practical
as those of his applicants; the difference being that the latter were interested in their
individual advancement while Galton was interested in developing a rational foundation
for his social-political program of eugenics. (Galton was not only related to Darwin; he
bought into his later speculations about eugenics, the first evolutionary psychology.)
Comparing the three models of experimentation
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The “object” of investigation that Galton and his applicants created through their
structured social interaction in the testing situation was very different from the “objects”
in either the Leipzig or Paris laboratories, although it also had elements in common.
Galton essentially produced sets of individual performances that could be compared to
one another. Obviously they had to be individual performance – and not collaborative
ones. While the performances were individual, the fact that they were a product of
collaboration between the anthropometrist and his subjects (applicants) was not
considered important. The performances were thus defined as characteristics of socially
isolated, individuals which were designated as “abilities”. An ability belonging to an
individual (something an individual could do) and the “object” of research converged to
become (1) the individual defined as an assembly of characteristics (abilities), and (2) the
distribution of performance abilities in the population [Galton played around with the
idea “distributions” and their “moments” (measurements e.g., mean) as well as with
Pearson’s correlation coefficients]. It was obviously the latter (comparison of individual
performances) that interested Galton whereas the former (individual performance) were
of interest to his applicants.
Locating the object of research within the isolated individual person was of course a
basic common feature of all forms of psychological investigation; that is, this is what
constitutes Psychology as an intellectual discipline and psychological investigation rather
than some other kind of scientific investigation. But Galton’s experimental method was
uncompromising in this respect. As we saw, Wundt was uncomfortable about the way in
which the experimental method isolates the individual from his/her social cultural context
and hence he limited the experimental method to “elementary” mental processes (and
experimental psychology to only a small part of the discipline of Psychology with the
largest portion going to his Volkerpsychologie). The French clinical experimentalists
were interested in the inter-individual process of hypnotic suggestion (the experimenter
induced hypnosis in his subject) which they regarded as a fundamental condition for the
appearance of their subject’s abnormal states/processes which they wanted to investigate
using hypnosis. But Galton’s anthropometry was quite radical in its conception of
severing the links between the individual’s performances from his/her social-cultural
conditions of those performances. He accomplished this by defining individual
performances as an expression of innate biological factors thereby sealing them off from
environmental influences (thus, Galton treated the individual person on the analogy to an
organism, and he held that it was inheritance (of abilities) that was crucial in the
performance of abilities).
In fact, the appeal of Galton’s anthropometric method was based on three features.
1. A radical individualism which claims that abilities were stable and unalterable
individual characteristics which owed nothing to the social conditions of the
environment. This was the necessary theory behind the notion that performance of
individuals in test situations could be used as a guide to their performance outside
the test situation in the real world.
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2. There was built into this method the implicit element of inter-individual
competition; that is, what was of interest was not the individual first of all but the
individual compared to other individuals. This meant that any one episode of
experimenter-subject interaction (measurement) was only of interest as part of a
series of such interactions each one with a different subject. While in the other
forms of experimental investigation this was also true, in these other
investigations the series was constituted by variations of the conditions with the
same subject. But in Galtonian experiments the series of experimental episodes
was essentially defined by difference among subjects. Of course, the duplication
of an experiment with different subjects was known both in the Leipzig and Paris
modes of experimentation, but this was merely to replicate for the purpose of
reliability of the observations made. In case of Galton’s anthropometry the
experimental episodes with different subjects formed a statistically linked series,
and it was this series, rather than any of the individual episodes, that formed the
essential unit or object in this form of investigation. Only in this way could
Galton generate knowledge of the desired “object”: namely, a set of performance
norms against which the individual could be compared.
3. Whereas the Leipzig model of experimentation only made use of the division of
labor between experimenter and subject roles, Galton added to this the
multiplication of subjects as a necessary component of the method. This was
closely linked to a third feature of the method’s practical appeal namely the
statistical nature of the information provided by Galton. To be of practical value,
the comparison of individual performances had to be unambiguous, so that
individual and social policy decisions could be based on it. The way to achieve
this was to assign quantitative values to performances thereby allowing each
individual performance to be related precisely to every other performance. In this
context the individual’s performance and the individual subject became a mere
“statistic”. This was of course very different from the “case” which was the
object of the clinical method, or the exemplar of the generalized normal adult
human mind which was the object of the Leipzig method.
These differences in the status of the knowledge of the object were linked to certain
features of the interaction between investigators and their subjects.
In Galton’s method, the experimenter and his subjects were strangers, collaborating just
for the duration of the experiment or “testing” (and contractually it turns out, although
this was not a necessary feature of Galton’s method). In the clinical method the
experimenter and subject were related outside the laboratory as doctor-patient. In the
Leipzig lab the participants in an experiment were fellow investigators whose common
interests and friendships often extended for many experiments over years.
Thus in each method there was a certain fit between the kind of knowledge “object”
sought and the nature of the experimental interaction (social arrangement) that was used
to produce this “object”.
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1. Galton: brief contractual interaction between strangers was the perfect vehicle for
producing an object whose construction required a brief encounter with a large
number of successive human subjects.
2. Wundt: The collaborative interaction of colleagues in exchangeable experimentersubject roles nicely suited the construction of an object defined in terms of
common universal processes of the normal adult mind.
3. Clinical method: the object constructed in clinical experimentation depended in
large measure on the tacit agreement among participants in order that the medical
care context can be carried over into the experimental situation.
Each of the three investigative situations constitutes a coherent pattern of theory and
practice in which it is possible to distinguish three kinds of interdependent factors.
1. The factor of custom which provides a set of shared taken-for-granted meanings
and expectations without which the interaction of the participants in the
experimental situation could not proceed predictably. Much of this also involves
general social-cultural meanings. For example, I distinguished several varieties of
custom: those of the German 19th c. university research institute (Wundt), those of
medical investigative practices (clinical method), and those of school,
examination competition and phrenological assessment (Galton). These were
sources of social interaction that were adapted to the purposes of psychological
experimentation. Hence, psychological research practices were not invention out
of nothing; yet once established, these psychological adaptations themselves
produced new variants and established their own traditions.
2. The actual practices of psychological investigation, though derived from cultural
patterns, were not identical with these patterns and therefore constituted a second
distinguishable element in the emergence of local styles.
3. A third element was constituted by the diverging knowledge interests that I have
already alluded to. Thus, the three kinds of psychological research were by no
means interested in the same kind of knowledge. There is a world of difference
between knowledge of elementary mental processes in the generalized normal
human mind (Wundt), knowledge of psycho-pathological states/processes
(clinical method), and the knowledge if individual performance comparisons
(Galton). From the very beginning of the founding of psychology in the late 19th
c. psychological investigators pursued distinct knowledge goals and worked out
experimental situations appropriate to achieving these goals. None of this was a
matter of rational choice. The knowledge goals were rooted in traditions as were
the experimental practices employed to attain these goals. Different theoretical
interests and practices were usually absorbed in a single cultural complex of
theory and practice (we might call this a “disciplinary project”). Each kind of
disciplinary project led in turn to the construction of the kind of knowledge
“object” it has posited.
In sum, Psychology emerged with a number of different models of psychological
investigation and the differences were rather profound. Psychology then exists only as a
number of different historical incarnations. While some models achieve dominance for a
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considerable period of time, this should not lead to believe that there is only one method.
While questions about the scope and limits psychological experimentation usually
presuppose one method, it is historically more meaningful to compare the implications of
very different forms of experimental practice.
The triumph of the aggregate
Psychology may have started out with three different kinds of investigative practice but
very quickly (within less than 20 years; certainly by WW I, around 1914) one had
completely disappeared (Wundt’s). In contrast, Galton’s method was to achieve
dominance for the first fifty years of the 20th c.
When one examines psychology journals and the kind of knowledge claims that are being
made, one finds that they always have a basic propositional form. Some set of attributes
is said to be true, of certain subjects, under certain conditions. What the “results” section
of the article says is that one or more persons (subjects) did such and such when in a
particular situation. The knowledge objects that were the legitimate focus of interest for
scientific psychology involve the attributes of a specially constituted subject, namely the
research subject. Usually it is the attributes rather than the subject whose attributes these
are, that are considered problematic for psychological research. But if we are going to get
some insight into the changing investigative practices of the discipline, we will have to
reverse this perspective and recognize the problematic nature of the research subjects
themselves. For when the nature of the subject changes then the nature of the attributes
do as well. For instance when a subject is defined as an individual consciousness its
attributes will be very different from a subject defined as a biological population.
Subjects are constructed in accord with various conventions about the proper objects of
psychological knowledge – and we need to deconstruct these subjects to understand
something about the changing nature of investigatory practices in psychology.
Virtually all research reported up to WW I, in various journals shows that experimental
results were attributed to individual experimental subjects. Individuals were identified by
proper name, letter, or initials but the report is one of attributing certain response to
specific individuals – usually competent “observers” (and not naive subjects). Thus, it
was typically individual response patterns and not averages that were reported of
individual competent observers whose testimony was deemed to be more reliable than
naïve observers. The question is how was this pattern of reporting related to
psychological knowledge claims?
Obviously, the individually identified research subject could only function in this way
because of the way the psychological object of knowledge was defined (as contents of an
individual mind). So the basic propositions were constructed with the individual mind as
the subject of the sentence and the mental contexts as the predicate of the sentence.
Attaching the name of a reputable observer was a way of establishing the scientific
credibility of the data.
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Now this reporting of patterns of individuals observers did not mean that the phenomena
studied were idiosyncratic; on the contrary, claims for the general or even universal
significance of the data were commonly made – usually because of a presumed (same)
underlying physiology say in case of the study of sensations. The claims for generality
were supported by repeating the experiment with a few individuals. Where replication
was not successful, relevant personal information on the observer was used to rationalize
the lack of replication. There were essentially two versions of this model: (a) a strong
version inspired by Wundt for whom the individual mind was a synthetic unity
constituted by real processes of psychic causation, and (b) a weaker version of Titchener
who dropped all reference to real causal processes (Titchener was a “positivist” whereas
Wundt was a “realist” with respect to mental content).
There was in fact continuity between this tradition of psychological experimentation and
physiological experimentation. Thus what distinguished physiological experimentation
from say biochemical/biophysical studies on the one hand and biological population
studies on the other hand, was that physiological experimentation restricted itself to the
universe of the individual organism. In fact, the physiologist Pavlov whose work with
conditioned reflexes provided a kind of objective analogue to the experimental work in
mentalistic psychology was similar to Wundt’s in that both saw the purpose of
experiments in terms of exploring a specific system of causal processes, although for
Wundt this system was mental whereas for Pavlov it was physiological. Both took the
individual or organism as a unit of study. Obviously there was an asymmetry between
how Wundt allowed mentalistic knowledge claims to be a function of the individual and
Pavlov who maintained that physiological knowledge claims were always strictly a
function of the universal organism.
Nor did knowledge claims as attributions of individuals have anything to do with whether
the claims were qualitative or quantitative in nature; in fact, whether the claims were
physiological or mentalist the data was usually quantitative (as witnessed by the
quantitative nature of the psychophysical experiments which were still the mainstay of
psychology). Error was calculated on population of observations not on individual
subjects. Using more than one subject as in conducting another experiment was merely a
replication. If inter-individual variability was large this was deemed to be prima facie
evidence that the attempted isolation of the critical determining factors had failed to be
controlled for in the experiment.
Alternative basis for knowledge claims: psychological consensus
Where this early tradition of experimentation proved to be inadequate was when
psychology changed it object. Psychological knowledge claims were now attributed to
the collective rather than individual subjects. In other words, like Galton’s method, the
aim was now to make attributions of psychological features to aggregates of individuals.
This meant that knowledge claims necessarily took on statistical form. For example, one
could compare different age groups on some psychological characteristic. Usually such
comparisons were restricted to averages or ratios of the population meeting some
criterion.
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This change in methodology (which reflected a move away from the model based on
experimental physiology) was the result of the emergence of quantitative social research
which had emerged earlier in the 19th c. Indeed, statistical studies of human conduct in
the aggregate were already better established than were laboratory studies of
psychological processes. Interest in statistics of crime, suicide, poverty, and public health
was widespread even prior to the middle of the 19th c. both in Europe and NA. The
statistical depiction of social problems seemed to promise a more scientific approach to
their solution than simple political ideology (this was obviously important to the
establishment of Sociology/Economics). On a practical level the development of social
statistics was closely linked to the spreading use of the questionnaire as a method of
investigation. Thus, G. S. Hall used the Berlin municipal statistical office model to
investigate the minds of American children which, along with the developing field of
medical statistics, led to the compilation of psychological information on children by
circulating questionnaires to their mothers.
The popularity of descriptive statistical inquiry in the 1880s made the questionnaire
method seem like an appropriate tool for investigating questions of a psychological
nature. Darwin used it in studying emotional expression and his cousin Galton used it to
study mental imagery and heredity. The use of statistical data based on questionnaires
was used by many who were deeply influenced by Darwin and hence less concerned
about individual minds than about the distribution of psychological characteristics in
populations. Hall who became the chief promoter of child development studies in the US
used questionnaires extensively to study children.
What made the questionnaire an acceptable tool of psychological research was not just
practical convenience, but there was the belief that mass data constituted a valid basis for
psychological knowledge. This belief was quite new in the late 19th c. and required some
social and conceptual reformulations to make it plausible. [After all what could mass data
tell us about the individual mind?] Let’s see what the background to this belief was.
The scientific appeal of statistical tables depended on more than the reduction of complex
issues to countable “facts”. It depended upon numerical regularities that began to appear
when the actions of many individuals were aggregated. Rates of crime for example
remained fairly constant in a particular area and variations among areas could be
accounted for in terms of identifiable environmental influences (living in poor
neighborhoods). It was not experimental psychology but the repeated demonstration of
striking regularities in social statistics that first convinced the public that human conduct
was subject to quantifiable scientific laws. The major methodological implication of these
highly selective demonstrations was that the inherent lawfulness would become only
apparent if the observation so a large number of individual cases were combined. This led
to the infatuation of large samples. We see here the convergence of administrative
concerns of public bureaucracies (which instigated large scale statistical information for
practical purposes of legislating social policy) and the theoretical claim that large
numbers were also necessary to establish scientific laws of human conduct. It was this
convergence that was perpetuated throughout the 20th c. in psychological statistics.
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The road from social statistics to psychological statistics depended on two conceptual
steps: (1) Quetelet the pioneer of statistical science early in the 19th c. explained
differential but stable rates of social indexes such as crime in terms of propensities
attributed to the “average” individual (e.g., “propensity to crime” as a disposition of an
average individual). Thus, if crime rates varied with gender, social class, education etc.
this was because these social factors affected the “propensity to crime” as an attribute of
the average individual. By analogy one could think of propensities to suicide, homicide,
insanity, etc. What Quetelet did was to substitute a continuous magnitude (statistically
gathered on large numbers of people who committee say crime in a particular population)
for distinct acts of separate individuals (so we get 50 acts of murder in 100,000 people
and hence the rate of murder was 50/100,000 and this ratio was then attributed to the
propensity for murder of the “average individual” in that population.
(2) In Germany there was widespread criticism of this inference from the
sample/population ratio to the individual; in England however this methodology quickly
became accepted. Buckle for example maintained that statistical regularities were clear
evidence for the lawfulness of individual actions. Obviously, such a claim depended on a
very specific view of the relationship between collectivities and their individual members.
Not only were individual attributes freely composed into aggregates (the continuity
assumption, above) but conversely group attributes were regarded as nothing more than
summations of individual attributes. The latter, as we have seen, was consistent with
Darwin’s conception of a biological species as an inbreeding population of individuals
rather than as a “type” (which was deemed a hangover from essentialism).
This assumption was one that Galton also relied on in his research on individual
differences. Galton’s contribution and those of his follower Karl Pearson (of the Pearson
“correlation coefficient” fame), finally made possible a psychology that could plausibly
claim to be scientific while not being experimental. A new method for justifying
psychological knowledge claims had become feasible. Thus, to make useful and
interesting claims about individual people it was not necessary to subject them to
experimental or clinical exploration (in the Leipzig and Paris traditions). It was only
necessary to compare their performance with that of others, and then to assign the
individual a place in an aggregate of individual performances. Individuals were now
characterized not by observing what goes on in their minds, or even inside the organism,
but simply by their deviation from a statistical norm established from a population with
which they had been aggregated.
As a result of this Galtonian turn, Psychology was left with two very different
frameworks for justifying its knowledge claims: (1) based on individual attribution of
psychological data; (2) the other based on statistical norms. Both maintained that their
knowledge claims rested on the demonstration of regularities that could be interpreted as
having psychological significance. Of course the nature of the regularities was
fundamentally different in the two cases.
13
In Wundt’s traditional experimental paradigm, the regularities demonstrated were of an
immediate causal significance. That is, the (introspective) observations by a subject in a
psychophysical system changed as the (stimulus) conditions to which he was exposed
changed. This was a classically experimental method (physiological, of of physics for
that matter).
In contrast, regularities established on the basis of testing groups and the attributed, by
inference, to an average individual was a statistical system constituted by the attributes of
a constructed collective subject (i.e., the average subjects). This method was clearly not
experimental but had more in common with census taking and social and biological
population studies.
The discrepancy between these two alternative knowledge claims was enormous.
Experimental knowledge claimed its special status on the basis of the kind of knowledge
the older laboratory sciences had built their success. Its appeal was to use skilled
observers, unambiguous reactions/observations, and systematically controlled conditions.
None of this was true for the population studies. Different criteria for assessing the worth
of knowledge claims operated there. The simply practice of using large numbers of
subjects seem to have compensated for their lack of skill and experience. An intuitive
notion of individual deviations cancelling out in a large samples became in due course
more precise by the use of calculus of probabilities (probability theory).
The earliest statistical approach to psychological knowledge in the spirit of Quetelet was
still fascinated in deriving average values from group data and where these averages were
then regarded as indexes of some human type (like an age type or sex type). Just as such
official categories as “suicide”, “crime”, “violence”, “sickness” etc. had been uncritically
accepted as social phenomena, just so conventional social categories were now
transferred to psychology. The relationship between individual and aggregate was still
defined or mediated by the “type” concept (“Joe belongs to type ‘male’, ‘black’, ‘over 16
years of age’”) which was usually deemed to be biologically given, but obviously this
could hardly compete with the scientific credentials of traditional experimental
psychology.
Most psychologists wanted to emulate the harder sciences. Proper scientific knowledge
was knowledge of particular changes in the psychophysical system under systematically
varied conditions. Merely statistical knowledge was regarded as superficial and incapable
of leading to explanations of determinate processes taking place in actual psychophysical
organisms. From this perspective statistical knowledge could not advance science. Thus,
the subjects in these studies were often children, the most unreliable of observers and
their reactions were complex, variable, and unanalyzed, and the conditions under which
the information was collected were uncontrolled and open to the influence of unknown
factors. Indeed, this kind of study (later “correlational” studies) never attained the
respectability in the discipline as a whole; yet it had influential supporters like G. Stanley
Hall, and J. McKeen Cattell who had both worked in Wundt’s lab and were wellacquainted with experimental research. The reason they supported statistical knowledge
claims was of course because they were interested in alternative kinds of psychological
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knowledge. They did not want to limit psychology to the study of individual minds but
wanted to extend it to include the distribution of psychological characteristics in
populations.
What the early statistical studies had going for them was that they were socially relevant
and close to life. It operated both for the choice of populations and for the choice of the
psychological characteristics attributed to these populations. The groups investigated
were defined in social and cultural terms or in administratively relevant categories such
as boys and girls of a certain age in certain schools, or Columbia University
undergraduate students born in America. The kind of psychological categories were also
simply drawn from daily life such as, for example, the activities of dreaming, playing,
writing, recollecting, etc. It was their practical utility that compared favorably to the
seemingly esoteric experimental studies which depended on a sophisticated intellectual
community.
There were several developments that prepared the way for the popularity of these
statistical studies: (1) universal education which had to deal with the evaluation of large
numbers of students and involved preparing standard curricula, age grading, written
examinations which created the kinds of statistical populations that Galtonian psychology
took as its basis. (2) There was also the increasing tendency to conceptualize social
problems in terms of populations especially in the US where urbanization, industrial
concentration, and immigration were problems of individuals were conceived as
problems of individuals as members of aggregates. Crime, delinquency, and
feeblemindedness were easily attributed to the statistical distribution of individual
characteristics. This meant that structural social problems were now seen as individual
problems which were to be dealt with not by social/economic change but by
administrative means (selecting individuals for particular tasks). Even William James,
America’s first and foremost psychologist, was not immune from this kind of research
and conceptualization: “all natural sciences aim at the practical prediction and control,
and in none of them is this more the case than in psychology”. Controlling states of
mind is what every educator, asylum administrator, business CEO wanted advice on; they
want to improve the conditions/productivity of their students, clients, inmates, etc.
Psychology could contribute to the management of all kinds of social problems one that
could be defined in terms of statistical variation of individual traits.
In sum, on the one hand there was the Wundt legacy of experimental psychology,
analogous to the hard sciences) but which Wundt gave only a limited place in the
discipline and without immediate practical value; on the other hand, especially in the
context of American progressivism, industrialization, expanding frontiers, demanded
socially relevant knowledge, knowledge that had to be applicable to social categories and
practical concerns. This kind of knowledge the Galtonian method provided even as this
kind of knowledge could never meet the demands and standards of genuine scientific
research.
By 1914 (WW I) journals of psychology were publishing group data more frequently,
especially in “applied journals” while individual data studies decreased.
15
Collective subjects
In distinguishing among various kinds of collective subjects that were featured in
psychological knowledge claims, the most obvious division to make is between
collectivities that are the result of the investigator’s intervention (experiment) and those
that exist irrespective of this intervention (“testing”). Laboratory science generally
constructs its own artificial objects which do not exist in nature while field science works
with naturally occurring objects. Thus age and sex grouping exist naturally whereas
experimental studies include experimental treatment groups which are constituted in the
experimental situation. Of course, what psychology meant by “natural” grouping were
really social categories of importance to everyday life [for example, heterosexual and
homosexual are social categories, not biological or psychological ones]. The natural
groups of psychological research were important to social life outside the laboratory;
psychologists did not create these categories, rather they simply took them over from the
prevailing social order/language.
A very different situation existed where psychologists constructed the collective subjects
of their research in terms of their own criteria. In this case the population about whom the
research process provided specific information was not related to a specific social
category but simply the product of the investigator’s intervention. The earliest examples
of this were when the experimental responses of a number of subjects were averaged to
yield a group mean. This seems innocent enough even as it implied a profound
conceptual change. Such a group mean is obviously not an attribute of any particular
individual but an attributed of a collectivity. But what kind of collectivity is this? It is the
group of individuals who happen to participate as sources of data in a particular
investigation. Their common activity in the experimental situation defined them as a
group. Before the experiment, the group did not yet exist as a social category.
This shift is an important one. It points the way to a science that supplies its own
categories for classifying people rather than rely on social categories. There are three
basic ways in which the psychologist’s intervention produced new groupings that do not
correspond to traditional social categories.
1. By way of common experimental treatment and subjects’ responses are pooled. A
learning curve for example is based on the average responses of a number of
subjects. The relationship between some response measure and number of trials is
attributed to a group of subjects and hence is not expected to be demonstrable in
one individual person (member of the group). Such a group is then an artifact of
the experimental situation, and what defines the group is a particular pattern of
treatment intervention. Presenting average results for the group (instead of for
each individual) suggest as that the function (learning curve) is a general scientific
law that holds across all individual members of the treatment group.
2. A second kind of artificial group is created when the individual subjects in the
experiment are divided on the basis of their differential exposure to different
experimental treatment conditions. What is of interest now is not the actual
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pattern of group responses as is the difference between these patterns in the
different intervention groups (group-control design studies using different
treatment groups or treatment and comparison groups). Obviously different
groups have a different history because they are the recipients of different
interventions (and hence are constituted as “subjects” in the experiment).
3. There is also the psychometric group. In this case the defining characteristic of
group membership is based on the performance of some psychological measuring
or assessment instrument. In the first half the 20th c. this is usually a psychological
test, say an intelligence test, or a personality scale. Groups are then defined by
their performance on this test or scale designed by a psychologist and hence these
are not natural social categories. These groups are different from intervention
defined groups since the latter are “modifying” (e.g., exposure to systematically
varied stimulus conditions) whereas the former are deemed to be performances
based on some stable characteristic of group membership (e.g., extroversion).
Given that in any investigative situation the responses of psychological subjects will
depend both on what they “bring” to the situation and on what the experimental situation
brings to them, all three kinds of artificial groups are artificial in two senses: (a) the
groups are created in the process of investigation and do not exist outside in the socialhistorical world, and (b) since these groups do not exists naturally in society, they are
also in some fundamental sense artificial at the psychological level.
The existence of experimental and treatment groups were defined solely in terms of
certain modifying factors (tasks required of the subjects or imposed on the subjects) in
the investigative situation, and hence the more or less stable characteristics of individuals
were relegated to the category of “error” (error variance). That is, individual
characteristics were “sacrificed” for the sake of the isolating the effects of treatment
conditions by averaging over the responses to treatments.
However, psychometric groups which were defined solely in terms of supposedly stable
individual characteristics (e.g., IQ or introversion, or sex/gender) ignored the situational
effects (in which IQ, introversion, or sex makes a difference or is put into practice).
Thus, all such groups were based on an abstraction (idealization). In the experimental
context, the idealization was that of a collective organism that exhibited only
modifiability (as a result of exposure to stimulus treatment), whereas in the psychometric
case the collective organism exhibited only stable traits (e.g., sex, introversion, selfesteem). [The term organism goes back to Fechner who used it to describe statistically
constituted entities; it also has Darwinian influence and reflected the extensive animal
research in the Darwinian tradition.]
The distinction is important for the kinds o knowledge claims psychologists were
interested in making. In order to make universal claims (i.e., laws-like claims),
psychologists presented their data as attributes of collectives rather than individual
subjects. These collectives were constructed and assumed the existence of a collective
organism that already exhibited the assumed general characteristics on which their
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knowledge claims depended. Thus, to demonstrate the effects of supposedly stable
characteristics, they constructed experimental groups defined by such assumed
characteristics (e.g., all people have some degree of introversion so one could divide
people into groups of “high” and “low” introversion), and to demonstrate the effects of
experimental intervention they constructed groups entirely defined by their exposure to
such intervention (e.g., “treatment” versus “comparison” groups). Such a procedure was
inevitable if knowledge claims were to be made through the medium of a myriad of
separate small-scale empirical studies. Problems arose only when the hypothetical nature
of the collective subjects was forgotten and attempts were made to transfer such
knowledge to the world of real subjects (hence the whole question of “external
validation”).
At this time in the history of psychology such transfers to the real world were often made
in terms of social ideological positions. Thus, intelligence testers maintained that IQ was
radically hereditary (e.g., in service of eugenics program that many psychologists adhered
to) or the behaviorists claimed that they found techniques on which the effectiveness of
programs of social control depended. It was probably these ideological positions (innate
versus environmental “causation”) that were more important than their experimental
procedure of using either experimental or psychometric means of constituting the
artificial collective subject. Thus, it has often been pointed out that they shared the same
undemocratic goals (e.g., using IQ to admit immigrants, or using learning curves to
allocate resources). They also shared a simplistic intellectual style that was inseparable
from their real political role in mobilizing support for broad social programs (e.g.,
Watson’s “give me a dozen healthy infants…”, or say Skinner’s reinforcement strategies
to raise infants).
Identifying the subject in psychological research
Making psychological knowledge claims involves an ordered set of attributions attached
to a particular kind of artificially constructed subject. The significance of these
attributions depends in a crucial way on the nature of the subject whose attributes these
are claimed to be. If the subject is an individual consciousness we get a very different
kind of psychology than if the subject is a population of organisms. The predominance of
the latter subject in psychology is that it results in knowledge that is applicable to
populations outside the lab but that knowledge was also as abstract as the generalizations
in the natural sciences (why does it work there but not in Psychology?). Thus, it meant
working with artificially collective subjects in research situations and then imposing
these findings on people outside the lab.
That is, psychological research on populations tended to replace the social categories that
defined populations in real life with populations defined in terms of non-social
categories. American psychology aimed to be socially relevant but it did not aim to be a
social science. Its approach was that of natural science. Hence, research on socially
defined populations tended to be regarded as “applied” research, whereas “basic”
research worked with abstract populations. In the extreme case, these abstract populations
18
need not even be human; in fact rats fulfilled the role of a population of completely
abstract organisms more adequately than human populations could hope to do.
But even where human populations were retained, the making of knowledge claims faced
a problem. Obviously each empirical investigation (each experiment) was a historically
unique event, involving the interaction of particular participants at a certain time and
place, even as the product of that research had to be presented as valid independently of
historical context. To convince that the experimental social situation was indeed ahistorically valid (unlike, obviously, other social situations) psychologists has to note
some special features of the experimental situation. These features were sought (1) in the
nature of the participant, (2) the nature of the activity in the experiment, and the (3)
nature of the circumstances in which the activity happened and the participant took part.
Let’s start with the last.
1. One could control the circumstances by reducing the complexity, ambiguity, and
irregularity (or “meaningfulness”) of the circumstances. Thus, one could control
the stimulus conditions carefully (e.g., listening to pure tones, reducing the visual
field, presenting regular stimulus series, meaningless syllable, etc.). Note that
such control over the stimulus also permitted the use of recording devices (brass
instruments).
2. One could also control the nature of the activity to which subjects were limited.
Activity was segmented into artificial units that count be counter and aggregated,
thus leading to quantitative data that permitted the precise comparison of various
treatment effects.
3. Both these features aligned psychology with the natural sciences and hence gave
the impression that psychology was a natural science. But of course in psychology
experiments something else happens namely the data were attributed to a
(human) data source. The nature of that data source had much to do with the
knowledge claims made. The apparent similarity of psychology to the natural
sciences resulted in the total neglect of this third point, namely that the subject in
the psychology experiments were historical human beings who were being
investigated at a particular time and place.
In view of the latter we need to distinguish between the identity of the research
subjects and their identification in the research report. These two need not coincide.
John’s identity as a person in his society is not his identity (even such blatantly social
categories as age, profession, education, sex, etc. were often not reported) in the
research report. The former (identity as research subjects) was deemed irrelevant to
the experiment (John could be any person- he was merely a “subject”) and nothing
was said in the research report about the identity of John or anyone else (they were
simply “subjects” as distinguished from the experimenter). Thus, the “experimental
identities” of the subjects were constructed precisely to construct the “experimental
situation”.
Social identity of research participants
19
The social identity of “data source” participants (subjects) may be highly relevant
because the goals of the investigation treat the participant (data source) as a
representative of a particular socially defined group (e.g., as belonging to the group of
male, grade-three children). It is this function that makes Psychology into a social
science.
The social identity of other participant (experimenters) making the observations,
recording them, and reporting them also required an appropriate social identity (e.g.,
PhD, professor, researcher, investigator, etc.) one which vouchsafes the reliability of
the observations. These two functions Psychology shared with the other natural
sciences.
There is no reason in principle why these two functions should not be carried out by
the same person. There may be practical difficulties in doing so of course but, as we
haves, the early psychophysicists (like Fechner and Weber) combined the two
functions and in Wundt’s lab they were interchangeable. Also in Ebbinghaus’s early
work on memory he functioned in both roles. In this way psychology was like the
natural sciences (except for the interpretation of the data of course). In case of physics
the data were interpreted in terms of the observed object, in case of psychology in
terms of the observing subject.
We have seen that the departure from the Leipzig model involved the investigation of
psychological processes in representatives of populations with social identities that
were believed to be psychologically interesting. The clinical model of investigation
was of this kind: the blind, hysterics, somnambulists, intellectually deficient, or the
musically gifted functioned as subjects of investigation much like those with
pathological/physiological conditions might do in medical research. The difference
was that the medical profession in selecting its subjects had already imposed it own
medical categories, whereas psychology had essentially adopted social-cultural
categories and treated them as if they were psychological or biological. In any case, in
this kind of research, social identity was directly relevant to experimental identity.
There were also other studies that amounted to a kind of psychological census taking
and hence these were essentially descriptive in nature. Mental phenomena were not
studied as processes but as isolated instances to be counted. They were not related to
any kind of context and the individuals who conducted these studies acted merely as a
medium through which these phenomena manifested themselves. These studies
seemed to be modeled on quantitative natural history, requiring no special
observational skills from the data source. Thus, virtually any unimpaired adult with a
certain level of literacy could act as a subject these investigations; the only
requirements were that they were available in sufficiently large numbers - and
undergraduates seemed perfectly fitted for this role.
Children constitute the last major category of subjects for psychological research as
these were a major source of data at least for American investigators. Children shared
with undergraduates the advantage that they were available in large numbers and in a
20
well-defined institutional context which compelled their participation. School
children also presented potential objects for practical psychological intervention.
Children also presented special deficiencies and were therefore appropriate for
clinical experimentation.
In addition to members of the general public, undergraduates, and children there were
animals of course (and the rat bred especially well, and was cheap to maintain). All
these subjects were used as “abstract subjects” whose only identity was that they
participated in the experiment. That is, American psychology was largely derived
from biology not from sociology or history. So any comparison among subjects was
interpreted in biological categories (like “age”) or innate endowment (like “IQ”).
Gradually these biological categories were replaced by descriptive categories of
human action (behaviorism). But the more this became a trend the more subjects
became substitutable (e.g., one could study action - behavior – in animals or human
being, children or undergraduates, the pathological and the normal) one for the other.
Individuals simply became the media through which abstract laws of behavior
expressed themselves (S-R psychology). Because it was these abstract laws (S-R
laws) and not their carriers which were the primary object of investigation, social and
biological categories became less and less relevant. The choice of subjects was
simply determined by convenience – and animals and undergraduates were very
convenient.
The rhetoric of experimental identities
Referring to subject identities in research reports depended on prevailing norms and
conventions among the community of investigators. These norms in turn reflected the
prevailing conception of psychological knowledge. One might think this to be a
trivial matter but it is not. Thus, initially the data source was referred to by name or as
co-worker etc., later as subject or observer; but it took until the 1930s until the term
“observer” totally disappeared (of course since “observer” is reminiscent of selfconscious introspectionism or systematic experimental introspectionism). Thus, it was
the emergence of behaviorism in American psychology that set the terms “observer”
and “subject” in conflict - because clearly in the behaviorist focus, the subject was
never engaged in observation (it was the experimenter who did the observing). This
conflict was one that set the “cult of objectivism” over and against “organism” as
“agent” (free will etc.). The fact that there was such conflict over several decades also
reflected continuing controversy over the essential function of the human data source.
There appears to have been a general feeling that the data source ought to be referred
to by what it actually does in the experimental situation. What was the function of the
data source? The objectivists felt that it consisted of providing material for the
experimenter to observe and use and the term “subject” had long ago acquired this
meaning (although the medical use of “subject” was forgotten it remained a practice).
A minority who still held to the idea that psychology was about consciousness
resisted and felt that the function of the data source was to competently comprehend
the experimental task and to act appropriately.
21
But both “subject” and “observer” refer strictly to an intra-experimental identity.
That is, participants only have these identities insofar as they play a role in the social
situation of the experiment. Of course, as I pointed out, these participants do not lose
their social identity outside the lab. When their extra-experimental identity was at
stake, participants were usually referred to as children or pupils, or boys or girls,
occasionally men, women, and students. Journals differed as to the use of the intraexperimental term “subject” and extra-experimental terms. Journals that reported
applied research, research relevant to the world used extra-experimental identities
whereas pure research journals used the term subject. Moreover, undergraduates were
more likely to be referred to as subjects whereas children and non-academic adults
were referred to by their extra-experimental identity.
One reason is that the conferral of particular identities in experimental situations is
that such identity is relevant to the experimental situation. For example the identity of
children was identified in the experimental situation because being a child was
relevant to the experiment; in contrast, undergraduates were not identified because
their identity was not deemed to provide specific information about college students
(but about the general public). When educational status or age were provided these
variables were deemed essential to the purpose of the research. When children were
not referred to as children but as subjects this was a way to emphasize the pretension
that the psychological research was about abstract relationships rather than people.
Experimental psychologists were concerned to establish a kind of knowledge about
human beings that would be a-historical and universal. Yet in order to obtain this
knowledge they had to work with specific, historically defined human data sources,
and they had to extract their data from these sources in investigative situations that
too were historically specific. To cope with this paradox, psychologists commonly
used rhetorical devices when reporting their data. Thus, the experimental results were
attributed to subjects whose identity was entirely established within the experimental
situation. In this way the experiment stands apart from the historical context; it is an
abstraction from life leading directly to universal – most frequently biological ones.
There are other effects due to this practice of not attributing the results to historical
individuals but merely to individuals who have an experimental identity (i.e.,
“subjects”). Thus, sometime the results are simply attributed to the “treatment” whose
anonymous members have no individual existence apart from the experimental
identity. This served to further isolate the lab from the personal and social contexts.
Of course, just because scientific reports employed rhetorical devices does not mean
that the knowledge claims are necessarily false. It only means that they have not been
empirically secured – and that the issue remains wide open. Of course, Psychology
as a scientific discipline, or at least one with scientific aspirations to autonomy, was
intent on producing universal knowledge claims – that is, claims beyond
individuality, history, and local meanings – but these claims were based on the
appropriate manipulation of the identity of the sources of data. With a few exceptions
claims to universality were not empirically grounded but established by fiat. The role
22
of the experimental report was to create the illusion of empiricism. Thus, by the way
the results were presented, psychologists created the illusion that the results were not
really the product of social interaction among certain human personalities in historical
time, but that they were the manifestation of abstract transpersonal and transhistorical processes. Increasingly psychological reports dealt with “abstractions”
and became less and less accounts of particular investigations.
See Danziger 4, 5, 6