Experimental Psychology and Human Agency

Springer Verlag (2019)
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Abstract

This book offers an analysis of experimental psychology that is embedded in a general understanding of human behavior. It provides methodological self-awareness for researchers who study and use the experimental method in psychology. The book critically reviews key research areas, examining their scope, limits, ambiguities, and implicit theoretical commitments. Topics featured in this text include: Methods of critique in experimental research Goal hierarchies and organization of a task Rule-following and rule-breaking behavior Sense of agency Free-choice tasks Mind wandering Experimental Psychology and Human Agency will be of interest to researchers and undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, theoretical psychology, and critical psychology, as well as various philosophical disciplines.

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ISBN(s)

9783030204211   9783030204228   3030204243   3030204235   3030204219

DOI

10.1007/978-3-030-20422-8
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Chapters

A Reflective Science

This final chapter reviews the methods of critique in to experimental research. The critique emphasizes the presence of active subjects and the hierarchy of goals that motivate their actions. The reliance on naïve and uninterested participants, who are treated as means to scientific ends, resembles ... see more

Varieties of Disengagement

Researchers use the term “mind wandering” when referring to covert disengagement from task performance. Characterizing MW in terms of an antagonistic relation to task sustains the impression that MW consists of a single set of processes, associated with a common set of principles, causes, and conseq... see more

Sense of Agency

The chapter begins with an overview of some of the principles and assumptions involved in causal understanding, in general, and sense of agency, in particular. Methods for assessing sense of agency are then reviewed, with particular reference to how they can influence the target of investigation. Se... see more

Free Choice

This chapter addresses experimental research on “free-choice” responses. A free-choice response, in this approach, is operationally defined as the arbitrary selection of one response from multiple alternatives, contrasted with a “forced-choice” response, which is defined as the selection of one corr... see more

What Is a Task?

There have been recent attempts by experimental psychologists to explicate the nature of an experimental task. This chapter reviews three such attempts, according to which a task is a goal-directed schema, a rule-based organization of stimulus–response events that shield the actors’ attention agains... see more

Rules of a Task

Rules serve multiple functions. They help us understand actions by relying on known categories of rule-governed action; they help us coordinate our actions with others who share the same rules. The concept of honest participant is introduced as something we implicitly hold in many of our interaction... see more

Hierarchies of Purpose

Actions and goals can be described in terms of relatively superordinate or relatively subordinate concepts . Although we often see subordinate action concepts as the expression of relatively more superordinate concepts , the relation between the two is, in principle, contingent. Furthermore, among t... see more

Experience and Reality

Three dimensions of experience are outlined. Experiences can vary in self-reference, valuation, and presence. Variation along these dimensions results partly from external factors and partly from our own thoughts and descriptions. Implications are drawn with respect to the subjective and objective d... see more

Shifting Focus

Experimental psychology tends to lose contact with the broader context of human concerns. This loss of contact is not accidental. It is an outcome of a rhetoric that preserves the status of the discipline as a natural science concerned with laws and universal regularities. What can connect the work ... see more

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