Constructing Scientific Psychology is the first full-scale interpretation of the life and work of the major American neuropsychologist Karl Lashley that sets Lashley's creation of a laboratory-centered, decisively materialistic science of brain and behavior in its scientific and social contexts. The book places Lashley's neuropsychology at the heart of two controversies that polarized the sciences of mind and brain in the U.S. in the first half of the twentieth century.

Constructing Scientific Psychology is the first full-scale interpretation of the life and work of the major American neuropsychologist Karl Lashley. It sets Lashley's research at the heart of two controversies that polarized the American life and human sciences in the first half of the twentieth century. These concerned the relationship between "mind" and "brain" and the relative roles of "nature" and "nurture" in shaping behavior and intelligence. The book explodes the myth of Lashley's neuropsychology as a fact-driven, "pure" science by arguing that a belief in the power of heredity and a nativist and deeply conservative racial ideology informed every aspect of his theory and practice.

Science as Psychology reveals the complexity and richness of rationality by demonstrating how social relationships, emotion, culture, and identity are implicated in the problem-solving practices of laboratory scientists. In this study, the authors gather and analyze interview and observational data from innovation-focused laboratories in the engineering sciences to show how the complex practices of laboratory research scientists provide rich psychological insights, and how a better understanding of science practice facilitates understanding of human beings more generally. The study focuses not on dismantling the rational core of scientific practice, but on illustrating how social, personal, and cognitive processes are intricately woven together in scientific thinking. The book is thus a contribution to science studies, the psychology of science, and general psychology.

Constructing the Subject traces the history of psychological research methodology from the nineteenth century to the emergence of currently favored styles of research in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Kurt Danziger considers methodology to be a kind of social practice rather than simply a matter of technique. Therefore his historical analysis is primarily concerned with such topics as the development of the social structure of the research relationship between experimenters and their subjects, as well as the role of the methodology in the relationship of investigators to each other in a wider social context. The book begins with a historical discussion of introspection as a research practice and proceeds to an analysis of diverging styles of psychological investigation. There is an extensive exploration of the role of quantification and statistics in the historical development of psychological research. The influence of the social context on research practice is illustrated by a comparison of American and German developments, especially in the field of personality research. In this analysis, psychology is treated less as a body of facts or theories than a particular set of social activities intended to produce something that counts as psychological knowledge under certain historical conditions. This perspective means that the historical analysis has important consequences for a critical understanding of psychological methodology in general.

That sciences are guided by explicit and implicit ties to their surrounding social world is not new. Jaan Valsiner fills in the wide background of scholarship on the history of science, the recent focus on social studies of sciences, and the cultural and cognitive analyses of knowledge making. The theoretical scheme that he uses to explain the phenomena of social guidance of science comes from his thinking about processes of development in general--his theory of bounded indeterminacy--and on the relations of human beings with their culturally organized environments. Valsiner examines reasons for the slow and nonlinear progress of ideas in psychology as a science at the border of natural and social sciences. Why is that intellectual progress occurs in different countries at different times? Most responses are self-serving blinders for presenting science as a given rather than understanding it as a deeply human experience. For Valsiner, scientific knowledge is cultural at its core. Major changes have occurred in contemporary sciences--collective authorship, fragmentation of knowledge into small, quickly published (and equally quickly retractable) journal articles, and the counting of numbers of such articles by institutions as if that is a measure of "scientific productivity." Scientists are inherently ambivalent about the benefit of these changes for the actual development of knowledge. There is a gradual "takeover" of the domain of scientific knowledge creation by other social institutions with vested interests in defending and promoting knowledge that serves their social interests. Sciences are entering into a new form of social servitude.

This collection of essays by William J. McGuire covers many of the topics that make up social psychology. Studies of the phenomenal self report how people think about themselves, which characteristics are salient in their sense of self and why. Another series of studies show how people's thought systems are organized to balance logical consistency, realistic coping, and hedonic gratification. Studies of persuasive communication show what kinds of people are most persuadable, how people can be persuaded by Socratic questioning, and how they can be immunized against persuasion. Other chapters report findings on language and thought, history and psychology, and creative techniques.

This concise reference serves as a companion to traditional research texts by focusing on such essentials as model construction, robust methodologies and defending a compelling hypothesis. Designed to wean Master's and doctorate-level students as well as new researchers from their comfort zones, the book challenges readers to engage in multi-method approaches to answering multidisciplinary questions. The result is a step-by-step framework for producing well-organized, credible papers based on rigorous, error-free data. The text begins with a brief grounding in the intellectual attitude and logical stance that underlie good research and how they relate to steps such as refining a topic, creating workable models and building the right amount of complexity. Accessible examples from psychology and business help readers grasp the fine points of observations, interviewing, simulations, interpreting and finalizing data and presenting results. Fleshed out with figures, tables, key terms, tips, and questions, this book acts as both a friendly lecturer and a multilevel reality check.