Prestige technology in the evolution and social organization of early psychological science

Abstract

Instruments have become a central feature of psychological science. Their introduction into a research paradigm is typically framed in terms of their practical utility in offering calibration and precision in the presentation, representation, and recording of phenomena. However, a review of early experimental psychology reveals that instruments have an additional role in terms of the accumulation of domain-specific status, or prestige. The emergence and use of prestige technologies reflects a general feature of social organization wherein group members must compete for the attention of a community. An examination of the introduction of the chronoscope demonstrates that while there was an awareness of its functional limitations, these limits were often not prominent features of later paradigmatic discourse. In contrast to early adopters, later researchers appear to have demonstrated a reduced concern for these limitations suggesting that these instruments were being used as much for their prestige function as their practical utility.

Why Is There So Much More Research on Vision Than on Any Other Sensory Modality?

“…Even if there is a way around this in some cases, however, the tools developed to study other senses such as touch (see e.g., Grunwald et al, 2002; Mueller et al, 2014), are not widely spread and were constructed by the authors in a laborious process in order to test their hypotheses (see Grunwald, 2017). Rather than demonstrating that present-day technology used to investigate haptics is equal to the technology to investigate vision, these efforts to create adequate instruments in the absence of an established technology remind of the situation at the end of the 19th century, when the first experimental psychological laboratories were founded (see e.g., Caudle, 1983; Schoenherr, 2017). At that time, creating tools for research on vision was a laborious process.…”

Heterarchical social organizations and relational models: Understanding gender biases in psychological science

“…General and specific social cues are associated with social identity and status (e.g., Berger, Cohen, & Zelditch, 1972; S. T. Fiske, 2010; Wagner & Berger, 1993) and are used as a heuristic to show bias toward the specific individuals and methods within a scientific community that should be attended (Schoenherr, 2017; Thorngate, Liu, & Chowdhury, 2011). These heuristics help create and reinforce status structures that facilitate interpersonal accord within groups (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), and can give rise to metarelational exchange norms that govern interaction between groups (A.…”

“…Additionally, men are more likely to seek out hierarchy-enhancing occupations than women (e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) which might lead them toward high-status areas of research and practice. In scientific communities, these preferences might translate into the status assigned to different concepts, methods, and data used by certain groups of researchers (Krull & Silvera, 2013; Schoenherr, 2017) creating distinctions like “hard” and “soft” science (Keller, 1985). Consequently, while there might be a formal set of criteria that treats all members of a group equally (e.g., quality of research design and writing, and theoretical importance), informally the preference for certain areas of research and practice might disadvantage certain community members.…”

The Currency of the Attentional Economy: The Uses and Abuses of Attention in Our World

“… We live in an attention economy [1]- [3]. People vie for the attention of allies, customers, followers, and mates [4] with advertisements, memes, and websites acting as proxies [5]. This truth defines the digital age.…”