Lecture Outline
 Developing Research Ideas


Inductive techniques
 1) Case studies
 2) Paradoxical incidents
 3) Analyzing the practitioners rule of thumb
 4) Serendipity
Deductive techniques
 1) Reasoning by analogy
 2) Applying a functional or adaptive analysis
 3) Hypothetico-deductive method
 4) Account for conflicting results
 5) Accounting for exceptions
Developing Research Ideas
 Inductive techniques

From specific to general
 Deductive techniques

From general to specific
induction
vs.
deduction.
ideas,meaning,abstract,conclusions,interpretions,theories
–---------------------------------------------------life, data, concrete, evidence, reality, facts
Inductive Techniques
 1) Case studies
 2) Paradoxical incidents
 3) Analyzing the practitioners rule of thumb
 4) Serendipity
Case Studies and Paradoxical
Incidents
 1) Case Studies
 Generating hypotheses from carefully documented
observations of a particular group or person
 For example, the case of Phineas Gage
 2) Paradoxical Incidents
 Generating ideas from puzzling or nonsensical
observations
 For example, noticing that ppl are less likely to receive
help when around a lot of other people than when
around only a few others
Bystander Intervention
 Kitty Genovese murder

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Thirty-eight witnesses
People feel less personally responsible when
they are in a group than when they are alone
Latane and Darley studied this phenomenon
Diffusion of Responsibility
 The Smoke-Filled Room (Latane & Darley, 1970) SS

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showed up for an experiment and were asked to fill
out a set of questionnaires. While filling out these
questionnaires, the room began to fill up with smoke.
SS were tested in three conditions:
1) Alone in room
2) w/ 2 confederates
3) w/ 2 other "real" subjects
DV: Time to notice smoke and time to get help
Diffusion of Responsibility
80
70
60
Percentage
of SS
Reporting
Smoke
50
40
30
20
10
0
Alone
2 confederates 3 naïve subjects
Interpretation:
–The Presence of Others decreases our ability to notice other
factors in our environment and our tendency to interpret an
emergency as an emergency.
3) Practitioner’s Rule of Thumb
 Analyzing things that experts, or failures, do
in a particular area to achieve specific
outcomes.

How do car salespeople sucker us into
spending more money than we want to but
leave the interaction feeling like we got a good
deal??
Persuasion Techniques
 Foot-in-the-door
 Get person to consent to small task first, then ask for
larger task
 That’s not all technique
 Begin with high-priced product, then improve the deal
 Door in the face
 Begin with a very large request (which will be refused),
then make a smaller request
 Smaller request is what you want in the first place
 Why?

Norm of reciprocity
Door in the Face
 Cialdini (1975)
 First (large) request:
Counsel delinquent boys,
2hrs/wk/2yrs
 Second (smaller) request:
100
 Take delinquent boys to
80
zoo?
Percent 60
 Experimental group:
Compliance
 Large then smaller
40
 Control group:
20
 Smaller request only

0
Control
Experimental
4) Serendipity
 Many discoveries are the result of luck and
good fortune!


Discovery of penicillin
Discovery of the ever-useful Velcro 
Discovering the Hand Cell
 Charles Gross
 Single cell recording techniques
 Trying to map the receptive field of a cell in the IT
 They presented the usual visual stimuli
 spots of light, bars and other stimuli
 The neurons responded weakly to these stimuli
 After studying a particular cell for an extended time decided
to move on to another cell.
Discovering the Hand Cell
 One whimsical experimenter bade the cell a symbolic
farewell by waving good-bye.



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The cell immediately began to respond rapidly to the moving
hand.
Serendipity had struck again!
Researchers began cutting out hand-shaped stimuli and
waving them in front of the monkey's eyes.
The stimulus that produced the most vigorous response from
the cell:
 An upright hand shaped like a monkey's paw.
Deductive Techniques
 1) Reasoning by analogy
 2) Applying a functional or adaptive analysis
 3) Hypothetico-deductive method
 4) Account for conflicting results
 5) Accounting for exceptions
Reasoning by Analogy
 Analyzing similarities between different phenomena to
shed light on the less well understood of the two
 Cognitive psychology
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Computer analogy
Work on memory, attention and problem solving
Attempts to study mental representations and processes
Computer:
 information input through keyboard, camera,
microphone…
Brain:
 information input through six senses = channels
vision - touch - hearing - taste - smell temperature
The Brain as a Computer
2) Applying a Functional/Adaptive
Analysis
 A good way to generate hypotheses is by
analyzing things that organisms need to do to
master an environment or achieve a desired
end state
 Let’s look at a couple of examples from
evolutionary psychology
Grounds for Divorce
 Men are concerned with finding a woman who will
bear their children; they have concerns about
paternity
 Women are concerned with finding a man who will
provide for them and their children
 Therefore
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Men will seek a divorce if their wife commits adultery.
Women will seek to end their marriage if their
husband's cruelty signals that he is not acting as a
good provider for his wife and children.
Grounds for Divorce
Divorce Petitioners
 Because women are not fertile as long as men are:
 Young women who realize that they have made a
mistake need to get out of the relationship as quickly
as possible so that they can have children while they
are still young enough with another partner.
 In contrast because men can continue to father
children until they are at least 65, older men can
divorce and raise a family with a new younger partner.
Divorce Petitioners
3) Hypothetico-Deductive Method
 Beginning with a working set of assumptions
and deriving one or more logical conclusions
from them
Terror Management Theory
 Like other animals, humans have a drive to
self-preservation
 Unlike other animals, humans know they are
going to die.
 The combination of (1) and (2) could lead to
“paralyzing terror.”
 To manage this terror, we try to make the
world predictable and controllable AND we try
to be “good.”
TMT
 We create a cultural anxiety buffer:
 We try to be valued members of a valid cultural
worldview.
 Cultural worldview:
 A set of beliefs that all members of a particular culture
share.
 Cultures can promise immortality
 One (but not the only) major consequence of being
reminded of death:

A need to cling firmly to one’s belief system,
expressed as ingroup favoritism
Testing the Hypothesis
 To test the hypothesis that
 DV:
mortality salience leads to
ingroup favoritism:
 Researchers recruited
Christian participants
 IVs:
How much do you like
the target?
 Results:
 Christian targets were
liked more than the
Jewish targets when
participants thought
about their own death.

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1: Think about your
own death vs. think
about watching TV
2: Christian target
versus Jewish target

4) Account for Conflicting Results
 Attempting to come up with theoretical
reasons why different studies on the same
topic have yielded different findings
 Early research by social psychologists
suggested that using the Internet makes you
lonely, but more recent evidence has
contradicted that view.
 Current researchers are examining some of
the conflicting research findings on the
connection between Internet use, loneliness,
and social interaction.
5) Account for Exceptions
 Attempting to generate exceptions or limiting
conditions to well-established psychological
principles or empirical findings
Pratfall Effect
 Research shows ppl tend to
 Four tapes:
like those high in ability….
but we might like those who
commit a blunder more
 College quiz bowl (Aronson
et al.,1966)
 Participants heard audiotape
of student said to be a
candidate for the "College
Quiz Bowl." An interview
asked difficult questions.
Candidate "nearly
perfect," no blunder
 Candidate "nearly
perfect," blunder (coffee
spill)
 Candidate "average," no
blunder
 Candidate "average,"
blunder
 DV: Rate "liking: of the
candidate

Pratfall Effect
35
30
25
20
Superior person
Inferior person
Liking 15
10
5
0
-5
Blunder
No Blunder