Sophomores,Rats,and Referees: How Social Psychologists View Their World

Abstract

A random sample of 123 social psychologists at all levels of professional distinction completed a mail questionnaire assessing their cognitive and affective judgments of 10 "role concepts" encountered as part of their professional environment. Clinical, educational, experimental, and social psychologists were all rated on the 17 scales, as were the rat, the college sophomore, the research subject, the graduate research assistant, the APA journal referee, and the externalfunding agency. The results showed strong differences between social psychologists' responses to each role concept. Factor and discriminant analyses were applied to the data in order to provide a preliminary cognitive and affective map of the social psychologist's "implicit psychology" concerning his colleagues, objects of study, and interactive mechanisms (e.g., journal referees) encountered in the study of social science. The results were compared and contrasted to a previous study of physical scientists working on the Apollo moon missions.

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