CHAPTER 24
Psychological Experimentation Addressing
Practical Concerns
RAYMOND S. NICKERSON AND RICHARD W. PEW
649BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCH 649
The Distinction 649
History of Distinction in Psychology 650
Current Interest in Applications 650
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF APPLIED EXPERIMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY 652
Early Experimental and Applied Journals 652
Experimental Psychology in World War II 653
Postwar Developments 654
STATUS OF THE FIELD TODAY 655
Practical but Not Atheoretical 655
An Interdisciplinary Field 655
Laboratory and Field Experimentation 656
Closely Related Disciplines 656
Employment 656
EXAMPLES OF RECENT APPLIED EXPERIMENTAL
WORK 657
Memory Enhancement 657
Eyewitness and Earwitness Testimony 657
Human-Computer Interaction 658
Part-Task Training 659
Aviation Psychology 659
Highway Safety 660
Medicine and Health 661
Sensory, Motor, and Cognitive Aids for Disabled
People 661
The Psychology of Aging 662
FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR APPLIED EXPERIMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY 663
Psychological 663
Social 663
Technological 664
Communicating and Effecting the Practical Implications
of Experimentation 666
SOURCES OF ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 666
CONCLUDING COMMENTS 667
REFERENCES 668Unlike other chapters in this book, this one does not focus
on a psychological process or a specific area of psychologi-
cal research; it deals instead with research that is defined by
its methodology and its applicability to practical ends rather
than by its subject matter. One might reasonably question
whether such a chapter belongs in a handbook of experi-
mental psychology. As the fundamental method by which
theoretical hypotheses are tested, experimentation is essen-
tial to psychology, no less than to other areas of science.
The goal of all scientific activity is the discovery of regular-
ities of nature and their representation in theories from
which predictions can be made. Theories that have proved
to be robust—to have stood up under rigorous testing by
experimentation—have often, perhaps usually, proved also
to be useful to practical ends, sometimes in unanticipated
and surprising ways. So, one might argue, any well-designed
experimentation aimed at testing a theory has the potential
of being useful in a practical sense, even if none of the
eventual applications of the theory is of interest to, or even
known by, the experimenter.
We think that this argument, with some qualifications, has
considerable force, and we do not wish to contest it here. We
note, however, that experimenters differ in the degree to
which applied interests motivate their work and that experi-
ments differ with respect to the immediacy of the applicabil-
ity of their results to practical ends. In this chapter we focus
on experimentation that has been motivated explicitly by
practical concerns or that has yielded results whose practical
implications are relatively direct.BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCHThe DistinctionThe distinction between basic and applied research is a
familiar one, not only within psychology but in science