creators_name: Chow, Siu L. type: other datestamp: 2003-02-21 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:13 metadata_visibility: show title: Experimentation in Psychology--Rationale, Concepts and Issues ispublished: inpress subjects: cog-psy subjects: phil-sci full_text_status: public keywords: Conditional syllogism, control, criterion of falsification, experiment, falsification, generality, Hypothesis, induction, Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, social psychology of the psychological experiment, theoretical prescription, validity, variable, verification abstract: An experiment is made up of two or more data-collection conditons that are identical in all aspects, but one. It owes its design to an inductive principle and its hypothesis to deductive logic. It is the most suited for corroborating explanatory theries , ascertaining functional relationship, or assessing the substantive effectiveness of a manipulation. Also discussed are (a) the three meanings of 'control,' (b) the issue of ecological validity, (c) the distinction between theory-corroboration and agricultural-model experiments, and (d) the distinction among the hypotheses at four levels of abstraction that are implicit in an experiment. date: 2002 date_type: published refereed: TRUE referencetext: Cohen, M. R., & Nagel, E. (1934). An introduction to logic and scientific method. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. negative function, namely, as means to exclude alternative Hull, C. L. (1943). Principles of behavior: An introduction to behavior theory. New York: Appleton-Century. method is Mill, J. S, (1973). A system of logic: Rationcinative and inductive. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Skinner, B. F. (1936). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis: New York: Appleton-Century. citation: Chow, Siu L. (2002) Experimentation in Psychology--Rationale, Concepts and Issues. (In Press) document_url: http://cogprints.org/2781/1/EOLSSexp.pdf