This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Petersoni, G. L. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Petersoni, G. L. Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Looking at Behavior and Seeing as a Psychologist

Duquesne University

Aqreeing with recent calls for more emphasis on observation and description, it is nevertheless argued that merely tabulating behavior does not address the basic conceptual and methodological problems responsible for the lack of a viable descriptive approach in social psychology. Social psycholonists are far more adept at quantifying or countinq behavior than in explicating what is of social or psychological interest in the phenomena studied. Thus, it is argued that the more basic issue is not the counting of behavior but the articulation of a psychological perspective. Graduate education, by stressing the direct observation and study of phenomena as they are lived, could promote greater appreciation of the difference between counting behaviors and seeini as a psychologist. The mental blindness of nearly every academic social psychologist for any observable fact of human nature is so unfailing and complete as almost to compel admiration. (Edwin Bissell Holt, 1935, p.172)

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?