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| The institutionalization process of experimental method in psychology and its impacts |
| XIN Ziqiang |
| Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872 |
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Abstract Experimental method is one of the leading research methods in psychology and even the entire behavioral science. There is a high consensus in the academic community on the essential characteristics of experimental method, and there is a tendency to believe that the experimental method has always been the way it is today. In fact, the experimental method has a history of formation and institutionalization. The half century since W. Wundt systematically introduced the experimental method into psychology in 1879 has been the classical experimental method period, in which the basic characteristics of experimental method have already been formed, mainly using case experiments and adopting both functional and factorial experiments. From 1930s to about 1950s, the main characteristics of modern experimental method, such as operational definition, randomized control, inferential statistics, and standardized terminology systems, were gradually established and ultimately institutionalized as norms for experimental research and standards for scientific publication. The institutionalization of experimental method has effectively promoted scientific development, but has also brought negative consequences, such as the convergence and singularity of research methods, the dissolution of different schools of thoughts and their debates, the “de theorization” of research, and the weakening of the connection between the psychological discipline and the real world. In the future, a more inclusive methodological attitude should be established, recognizing the diversity of experimental methods themselves, valuing case and small sample experiments and phenomenological experiments, and respecting research based on non experimental methods.
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