The Person in Laboratory Context

There is a third site of tension between the banal and the exotic, one that emerges in the context of empirical research in psychology. Traditional scientists claim warrant for their words largely on the basis of methodological procedures. In particular, it is the controlled experiment that enables the "behavior of organisms" (from single cells to entire societies) to be traced to their causal sources in an objectively rigorous way. As commonly proposed, by observing behavior in systematically varying conditions, the scientist can trace the causal connections between antecedents and consequents in a precise and replicable way. In whatever way human character is constructed within scientific psychology, its contours should be congenial (for the sake of logical consistency) with this central, justificatory text.

Indeed, one can trace the various ways in which this forestructure of methodological intelligibility interacts with the psychologist's portrayals of human nature.6 Thus, for example, the conception of the experiment is one in which "subjects" are exposed to "stimuli," which stimuli operate as "causal conditions." Actions of the subject in experimental conditions are viewed as "responses" caused by the stimuli. For many, the resulting characterization of the human proves morally problematic because this view of methodology virtually obliterates the discourse of voluntarism. Because "stimulus conditions cause responses," the scientist cannot conclude that subjects voluntarily choose their subsequent actions. A voluntary impulse would essentially operate as an uncaused cause and thus fall outside the ontological underpinnings of the method. It is in this respect that Hampton-Turner (1970) has written:

It is not that . . . investigators themselves have a savage eye, but rather that their predicting and controlling tools demand the predictable and controllable man in order to consummate the Good Experiment. And what a misery the man turns out to be. The highly respected Dr. Jekyll discovers Mr. Hyde, the beast in man uncovered by inhuman instruments.(p.4)

In the same vein, Gigerenzer and Murray have demonstrated in their Cognition as Intuitive Statistics how prevailing concepts of statistical logic, inherent features of experimental procedure, ultimately serve as the basis for theories of human cognition. As they propose, the scientists' statistical tools, which "are considered to be indispensable and prestigious, lend themselves to transformation into metaphors of mind".6 Methodology inscribes itself on human character.

In my view, however, methodology does far more than carry implications for psychology's conception of the person. In significant degree, forms of methdological writing also serve to answer the following question: If the science is to make an original contribution, which entails the novel construction of the person, how is it to be credible in terms of the common idioms through which the world is understood? I have offered a partial answer to this question above, but by focusing on methodological procedures, I will attempt to expand the horizons. Methodological procedures do provide the psychologist warrant for voice. However, they do not do so in terms of foundational rationality, rendering the scientific account superior in mimetic capacities. Rather, they do so in terms of rhetorical power. It is the rhetoric of experimental procedure that ultimately serves to vivify or render realistic the otherwise arcane argot of the theorist. Through methodological procedures, the language of the absurd is transformed into plausible understandings of human nature.

To illustrate the process by which this ontological transformation is accomplished, it is useful to consider a single text from the scientific annals. The text in this case is a standard research report (Bandura et al.,1988) appearing in one of the most prestigious journals in psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The research was conducted at one of the nation's most outstanding psychological laboratories (Stanford University), and its funding provided by the National Institute for Mental Health and the National Science Foundation. At the outset, the title of the research report, "Perceived Self-Efficacy in Coping with Cognitive Stressors and Opioid Activation," informs the reader that its contents will reveal the secrets of an otherwise mysterious or unknown world. The terms rely very little on the commonsense vernacular, and their very impenetrability suggests that only the serious scientist will be able to appreciate their significance.

From the present perspective, it is the authors' major task to lend to the alien theoretical discourse a sense of palpable reality, that is, to secure the reader's assent that "yes, this language does describe events in the actual and commonly knowable world." The accomplishment is no small challenge in the present case, for in their abstract or decontextualized form, such theoretical terms as "perceived self-efficacy" and "cognitive stressors" are hopelessly ambiguous. "Perceived" by whom — a person, friends and acquaintances, the psychologist? And is "perception" to be understood in the sense of direct sensation, deductive categorization, interpretation, intuition, or something else? And is saying it is "perceived" to suggest that it is not truly known, as in "the perceived world" as opposed to "the actual world"? And what of the term "self-efficacy"? Is this the bodily self, the spiritual self, the unconscious self, the voluntary self, or something else? And is efficacy to be read as "achievement," "impact," "power," "result-producing," or in some other way? Similarly, the term "cognitive" suggests thinking, perceiving, remembering, intending, planning, and a variety of other possibilities: are they all intended; how are we to select among them? And are these cognitions conscious or unconscious, motivated or unmotivated, desirable or undesirable? Again the language proves opaque. Similarly, the term "stressor" succumbs to a variety of interpretations (physically straining, bending, shaping, rendering more flexible, and so on). And, of course, each of these translations bears the traces of other signifiers in an ever-expanding array of undecidable signification.

The introductory section of the research report provides the initial assurance that there is indeed an objective datum (a signified) to which the theoretical terms refer. Two rhetorical processes function in this capacity, the first social corroboration and the second conceptual deferral. The corroborative function is carried out largely through citations of other scientific reports that claim familiarity with the states in question. The most directly relevant studies are those carried out in the same laboratory, suggesting that this location is privileged in its access to the phenomenon in question. Yet to cite only the work of the single laboratory is to cast doubt on the existence of the phenomenon. A multiplicity of additional citations thus serves to assuage residual doubt. As the reader is told, for example, "Findings of different lines of research underscore the influential role of perceived control in stress reactions (Averil, 1973; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984; Miller, 1980)." And so secure is the existence of the phenomenon, according to the report, that research has also succeeded in qualifying or extending knowledge of its precise operations. As one learns, for example, "in some studies of controllability, merely the exercise of personal control over the occurrence of aversive events without curtailing their intensity reduces stress reactions (Gunnar-vonGnechten, 1978)." Yet, in the end, these many supporting documents prove inadequate, for in the authors' terms, "The foregoing studies have relied on plausible presumptive mediation inferred from the manipulations rather than on direct assessment ...." Or in terms of the scientist-hero metaphor, the other scientists did not really observe the mysterious phenomenon; they were merely speculating from their results.

In addition to garnering social corroboration through citations (a technique that has similarly served the cited authors), additional credibility is lent to the exotic language through conceptual deferral. By this I mean a process by which the ambiguous term is furnished a sense of meaning through paraphrase or deferring to other concepts. At times the deferral moves toward the common language. The reader learns, for example, that "Perceived self-efficacy is concerned with "beliefs in one's capabilities to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and courses of action needed to meet given situational demands." The fact that a definition is given in more or less comprehensible terms has the rhetorical effect of securing the existence of the phenomenon. If we are uncertain that X exists, it is fortifying to learn that, in fact, X = a presumably existing Y. However, the precise identity of Y — other than its equivalence of the mysterious X is left unspecified - as if transparent. In the above, for example, what is it to "mobilize motivation"? Is this to consume more calories, give oneself pep talks, thrust oneself into adrenalin-producing situations, or something else? In other locations in the introductory section, the conceptual deferral of the sacred terminology is largely removed from the domain of daily language. For example, few outside the sacrosanct community of knowers would comprehend the definition of cognitive stress: "Psychological stress is the result of a relational condition in which perceived environmental demands strain or exceed perceived coping capabilities in domains of personal import." The words are teeming with profundity—"stress," "demands," "strain," "exceed," "coping" — but do little to disambiguate the putative phenomenon.

Far more significant in the achievement of ontological transformation is the second section of the report, "Method." Here scientists report on the procedures used to carry out their investigations. These reports are written in plaintalk or literal language of the kind that would enable other scientists to replicate (and thus evaluate objectively) the featured research. Most important for present purposes, investigators report in everyday language the means by which the theoretically specified phenomenon is assessed or established. These definitional linkages (the "operational definitions") thus furnish a direct equation in which X (in the exotic language) = Y (in the everyday vernacular). In this way the reader is informed that the otherwise mystifying theoretical language is actually reducible to commonly known, wholly palpable matters of fact. It is thus in the present manuscript that we learn that the conditions necessary for producing "perceived self-efficacy" result from placing college students in a "mathematical problem-solving task" for 18 minutes. "High perceived self-efficacy" occurs when the students can work at their own speed at a set of arithmetic problems; "low perceived self-efficacy" takes place when the problems are presented to students more rapidly than normally required for completion. The state is measured by a questionnaire in which the students are asked to rate their certainty in completing the problems. Similarly, "cognitive stress" is assessed by a questionnaire in which students are asked how much "stress" and how much "mental strain from time pressure" they experienced. Thus the alien discourse becomes intimate — now a constituent of the comfortably ordinary surrounds.

Yet ontological transformation is not yet complete, for if the theoretical language remained tied to mundane operations, it could easily be rendered superfluous. Why, one might ask, is the theoretical language essential if all is intelligible in the common language? The third section of the manuscript, carrying the results of the investigation, serves as a hedge against such queries. In this section the operational or everyday language of the preceding section is progressively abandoned or suppressed. Increasingly the researchers slip back into the uncommon or exotic vernacular. We learn, for example, that "Perceived self-inefficacious subjects showed a heightened heart rate, whereas the perceived self-efficacious ones displayed a marked decline in heart rate." In the plaintalk idiom it might be said that the hearts of those faced with solving problems at a rapid rate pounded faster than those working at their own speed. However, this form of account never appears. It is, after all, the reality of the exotic language that must be established. This is accomplished, in important degree, by borrowing from the preceding equation of the exotic with the taken for granted. Once the equation is achieved, the latter must be silently shed.

The present research study is exceptional in its objectification of the mental terminology, for it goes on to demonstrate a causal link between the mental and the material world. Because the material world is commonly accepted as objective within modernist culture and the ontological status of psychological terminologies is suspect, then to demonstrate that psychological states act on physical states is to solidify the existence of psychological states. The possibly subjective (and thereby discreditable) becomes objective. This "causal connection" is established in the present instance by demonstrating that depending on their perceptions of self-efficacy (a psychological state), subjects are more or less susceptible to a chemical, naloxone, that blocks opiate or pain-reducing receptors (a physical state). This account treats perceived self-efficacy as an independent reality, not at this point reducible to work on mathematical tasks.

In the final section of the paper, the "Discussion," the ontological transformation is made complete. For here the commonplace intelligibilities are altogether suppressed. The reader has previously learned that the alien language refers to palpable events, reducible to the commonly known. Now that the linkage is established, it is possible to speak almost wholly within the novel ontology. The reader is confidently told, for example, that "The results of the present experiment provide evidence that perceived self-efficacy in coping with cognitive stressors activates endogenous opioid systems." The reality of the new ontology is further extended by relating it to other exotic but scientifically acceptable accounts. And finally, to inject the newly created reality with everyday significance, its implications for personal health are outlined: "A growing body of evidence reveals that the stress of coping inefficacy . . . impairs cellular components of the immune system." The newly molded person, replete with perceptions of self-efficacy, is now readied by.the laboratory literature to venture forth and cope with cognitive stressors of the world.