Conducting Social Psychological Research in Educational Settings

Some people become social psychologists because they want to change the world, and others enter the field because they are captivated by theoretical issues and basic research. The social activist depends on basic research, and the basic researcher often tries to extend theory and research into the real world. The trade-offs between basic and applied research are particularly salient in the area of education, because most of us are educators who are trying to change the world through our teaching. It makes sense that those of us doing research in the areas of social cognition, social influence, motivation, and group behavior (to name just a few topics with obvious educational implications) would see and appreciate the applications of our basic research to education. It also makes sense that some of us would want to understand the educational process more deeply. Sometimes we end up collecting data in educational settings out of convenience, because students in our classes can be a captive population (at least when we can gain access to those populations). The most obvious example is the reliance on students in introductory psychology classes who earn extra credit in their classes in exchange for participation in research. In other cases, researchers begin by studying basic phenomena in the laboratory but then extend their research to include studies conducted in classes and become more focused on educational issues over time. For example, Rosenthal studied self-fulfilling prophecy effects in a number of different settings, beginning with basic experimental studies, then extended his work to include social interaction studies, rat labs, the workplace, and the classroom. It was his experimental demonstration C H A P T E R