Socio-Societal aspects of experimental situations:
A comparison of the Danziger and Kusch models

Paul F. Ballanytne

Learned Societies Congress (CPA Division 25), Brock University, St. Chatherines, Ontario, May 23-June 7, 1996.

Abstract

The Danzigerian aspects of this talk had already appeared in Kurt's Constructing the Subject (1990) which outlined three old-world investigatory traditions in psychology up to the 1920s: clinical, individual differences, and Wundtian (see figures 1-3). Danziger's distinction was made on the basis of their motivation for carrying out psychological research and the resulting definition of the proper subject matter for psychology. Danziger & Ballantyne (1997) -in press at the time of the talk- expanded this analysis to the American context (up to 1945) elaborating changes in the material, social, and symbolic technologies used in psychological experiments. After describing the above elaboration, a complementary analysis by philosopher of science Martin Kusch (1995) -which focused on the power relationships within turn-of-the-20th century German (Kantian, Wundtian, and Wurzburg) settings- was introduced and then expanded upon to describe the American (Applied, Behaviorist, and Artificial Intelligence) settings of psychological research after 1945 (see Table 1).

Danziger's model:

Figure 1: Charcot lecturing on Blanche Wittmann. (National Library of Medicine). The Clinical tradition, is represented by Jean Charcot's presentation of Blanche Wittman (queen of the Hysterics) and his investigation into hypnosis during the 1870's and 80's.

Figure 2: Galton's Anthropometric laboratory. The Galtonian (Individual Difference) tradition is represented by the Anthropometric laboratory set up for the London Health Exhibition of 1884.

Figure 3: Wundt in his laboratory (Ca. 1910). From left to right: M. Dittrich, W. Wirth, W. Wundt, O. Klemm, and F. Sander (Bringmann & Tweney, 1980).The Wundtian tradition is represented by Wundt and his assistants at the Leipzig laboratory in 1910.

Kusch's model (expanded):

Table 1 Social Relationship Between Subject and Experimenter

Table 1 (after Kusch, 1995) focuses on the power relationships which are present in various forms of psychological research. A superior or inferior location in the diagram, of the subject 'S' or experimenter 'E,' indicates a higher or lower social status within the experimental situation. Brackets '( )' indicate a severely depleted importance or merely formal presence of a participant within the experimental situation. This analysis complements Danziger's analysis which focuses on the knowledge goals of the psychological research.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) accepted the Kantian and Comtean criticisms of simplistic introspective analysis of mental events. These criticisms argued that the isolated individual mind could not observe itself without changing its own content and, therefore, pure introspective analysis could never be scientific (see Table 1). Wundt argued, however, that there are special circumstances under which such general criticisms do not hold. These special circumstances could be realized in the psychological laboratory.

As far as the subject matter of his Physiological Psychology (1873) is concerned (i.e., the normal individual human mind), Wundt was quite conservative. The resulting program for experimental psychology was explicitly circumscribed. Descriptive reports of individual experience as analyzed into their components (i.e., sensations, feelings, ideas, and complex ideas) comprised the sensationist aspect of the Wundtian program. Carefully structured empirical observation using the subtractive method of Donders could also outline the duration of central psychological processes (much as Helmholtz had done for the speed of peripheral nerve impulses).

In the celebratory photograph which comprises fig. 3, Wundt is shown demonstrating the decision reaction time setup. Notice that in this case Wundt is the data source for his own experiment and his assistant simply takes down the results for later analysis. Hence, the participant that we would now call the "subject" enjoys a relatively higher social status as compared to the participant that we would now call the "experimenter" (see Table 1). The sending of signals and recording of data, for instance, might be mechanized and are by no means the focus of the Wundtian experimental situation. Rather, the focus was on the experiential awareness of the trained subject. Hence in Table 1 the experimenter 'E' appears in brackets, as a mere formality.

Although the modern forms of lie detector apparatus, and biofeedback technologies, are both outgrowths of the Americanized version of the Wundtian sensationist tradition, the assumed social relations between the psychologist and layperson are quite different. For the lie-detector, the 'psychological expert' and 'naive subject' (or suspect) relationship was assumed. This corresponds to the standard Applied Psychology relationship as listed in Table 1. In this case, the expertise of psychotechnology is supposed to triumph over any possible deceit. In the biofeedback application, however, the subject (now the self-learner) is given a progressively greater role in reaching their own goals (tranquilness, control of blood pressure, etc.). The experimenter is the facilitator but not the source of this self learning. In that sense, the biofeedback research situation is a return to the more egalitarian research relationships that were characteristic of the Wurzburg school (see Table 1). As in the Wurzburg tradition, the biofeedback experimenter treated the subject as a co-discoverer, or co-producer of the phenomena under study.

This return to a more egalitarian model of research was in complete agreement with what George Miller (1972) called "giving psychology away to the unwashed." Miller was resisting the then hegemonic behaviorist notion of research as a method of establishing complete control over the environment and behavior.

In the behaviorist research situation the presence of the subject was a mere formality (see Table 1). That is, it mattered not what organism was placed into the learning situation because the goal of research was to obtain universal and often mathematical laws which applied to all organisms. This was the primary commonality between Watson's famous 'give me a hundred healthy infants' speech, Hull's successive mathematical motivation formulas, and Skinner's claims for the identity of cross-species learning curves.

The 'Artificial Intelligence' movement pushed this conception of the all-powerful psychotechnical experimenter one step further by doing away with the organism altogether. The aim of such research was to produce machines that could: (1) perform tasks previously considered to require human intelligence; and (2) pass for people within limited settings.

The experimental 'subject' in such research was merely a mechanical devise or, sometimes, a theoretical (nonexistent) "universal machine" which functioned according to a predesigned set of rules. Under such a research program, the 'cutting edge' of psychotechnology was passed back into the hands of experts (including mathematicians, electrical engineers, computer scientists).

References:

Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Danziger, K. & Ballantyne, P. (1997). Psychological Experiments. In W. Bringmann et al. (Eds.). Pictorial History of Psychology, (pp. 225-232).

Kusch (1995). Recluse, interlocutor, interrogator; Natural and social order in turn-of-the-century psychological research schools. ISIS. Vol. 86, pp. 419-433.