Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
In this chapter you will learn how psychologists develop and test their research ideas; how they
measure the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals; and how they analyze and interpret
the data they collect. To really understand psychology, you must also understand how and why
the research you are reading about was conducted and what the collected data mean. Learning
about the principles and practices of psychological research will allow you to critically read,
interpret, and evaluate research.
In addition to helping you learn the material in this course, the ability to interpret and conduct
research is also useful in many of the careers that you might choose. For instance, advertising
and marketing researchers study how to make advertising more effective, health and medical
researchers study the impact of behaviors such as drug use and smoking on illness, and computer
scientists study how people interact with computers. Furthermore, even if you are not planning a
career as a researcher, jobs in almost any area of social, medical, or mental health science require
that a worker be informed about psychological research.
[1] Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Fiske, S. T., Bersoff, D. N., Borgida, E., Deaux, K., & Heilman, M. E. (1991).
Social science research on trial: Use of sex stereotyping research in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. American Psychologist, 46(10),
1049–1060.
[2] Saxe, L., Dougherty, D., & Cross, T. (1985). The validity of polygraph testing: Scientific analysis and public
controversy. American Psychologist, 40, 355–366.
[3] Fajen, B. R., & Warren, W. H. (2003). Behavioral dynamics of steering, obstacle avoidance, and route selection. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29(2), 343–362.
[4] Alexander, P. A., & Winne, P. H. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of educational psychology(2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates; Woolfolk-Hoy, A. E. (2005).Educational psychology (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
[5] DePaulo, B. M., Lindsay, J. J., Malone, B. E., Muhlenbruck, L., Charlton, K., & Cooper, H. (2003). Cues to
deception. Psychological Bulletin, 129(1), 74–118.
[6] Borum, R. (2004). Psychology of terrorism. Tampa: University of South Florida.
[7] Lewin, K. (1999). The complete social scientist: A Kurt Lewin reader (M. Gold, Ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.