A Guide to Writing Scientific Papers for Students and Researchers s

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THE PSYCHOLOGISTS COMPANIONA Guide to Writing Scientific Papers for Students and Researchers

Fifth Edition

The Psychologists Companion is intended for students aswell as young profes-sionals and writers at all stages of their careers seeking inspiration and guide-lines for better scientific writing. This book is also a resource for researchersin related fields. It has been comprehensively updated, revised, and extendedfor its fifth edition and includes the latest style guidelines of the PublicationManual of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition, 2009) as wellas chapters encompassing the entire research process from doing literatureresearch and planning an experiment to writing the paper. It features newchapters on literature research; ethics; and generating, evaluating, and sell-ing ideas. The Psychologists Companion also provides information on writingbook proposals, grant proposals, and lectures.

Robert J. Sternberg is Provost and Senior Vice President as well as Professorof Psychology at Oklahoma State University. He is also Honorary Professorof Psychology at the University of Heidelberg. Sternberg was formerly thePresident of the American Psychological Association and the Eastern Psy-chological Association and is President of the International Association forCognitive Education and Psychology as well as President-Elect of the Fed-eration of Associations of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The central focusof his research is on intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. He has also stud-ied love and close relationships as well as hate. He is the author of about1,200 journal articles, book chapters, and books; has received more than$20 million in government and other grants and contracts for his research,conducted on five different continents; and has won more than two dozenawards for his research. Sternberg has been listed in the APA Monitor onPsychology as one of the top 100 psychologists of the twentieth century andis listed by the ISI as one of its most highly cited authors in psychology andpsychiatry.

Karin Sternberg has a PhD in psychology from the University of Heidelberg,Germany, and anMBAwith a specialization in banking from the University ofCooperative Education in Karlsruhe, Germany. She has studied at Yale Uni-versity and did her postdoctoral work in social psychology at the Universityof Connecticut with John F. Dovidio. Sternberg worked as a research asso-ciate at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government and Schoolof Public Health. In 2008 she founded Sternberg Consulting with her hus-band, Robert J. Sternberg. The company focuses on practical applicationsof Robert Sternbergs theories of intelligence, wisdom, creativity, and leader-ship, among others, and has consulted for various industries, businesses, andnot-for-profit organizations and developed products based on these theories.

The PsychologistsCompanion

A Guide to Writing Scientific Papers forStudents and Researchers

Fifth Edition

Robert J. SternbergOklahoma State University

Karin SternbergSternberg Consulting, LLC

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,Sao Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA

www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521144827

Robert J. Sternberg and Karin Sternberg 2010

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without the writtenpermission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2010

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

Sternberg, Robert J.The psychologists companion : a guide to writing scientificpapers for students and researchers / Robert J. Sternberg,Karin Sternberg. 5th ed.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-521-19571-3 ISBN 978-0-521-14482-7 (pbk.)1. Report writing. 2. Psychological literature I. Sternberg, Karin,1976 II. Title.BF76.8.S73 2010808.06615dc22 2010019978

ISBN 978-0-521-19571-3 HardbackISBN 978-0-521-14482-7 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence oraccuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sitesreferred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any contenton such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments page vii

Preface ix

Introduction 1

1 Eight Common Misconceptions About Psychology Papers 6

2 How to Generate, Evaluate, and Sell Your Ideas for Researchand Papers 20

3 Literature Research 41

4 Writing a Literature Review 61

5 Planning and Writing the Experimental Research Paper 80

6 A Word About Content, Language, and Style 118

7 Commonly Misused Words 141

8 American Psychological Association Guidelines for PsychologyPapers 163

9 Guidelines for Data Presentation 193

10 What Makes a Good Paper Great? Standards for EvaluatingPsychology Papers 217

11 Ethics in Research and Writing 236

12 Submitting a Paper to a Journal 248

13 How to Make Your Paper Even Better: Proofreading, Revising,and Editing 281

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vi Contents

14 Writing a Grant or Contract Proposal 288

15 How to Find a Book Publisher 302

16 Writing a Lecture 315

17 Article Writing 101 321

References 331

Appendix: Sample Psychology Paper 337

Index 351

Acknowledgments

Chapter 8 contains a summary of the guidelines in the PublicationManual of the American Psychological Association (Sixth Edition). Wegratefully acknowledge the APA Publication Manuals contribution tothis chapter.

vii

Preface

The Psychologists Companion has been comprehensively updated,revised, and extended for this fifth edition. It is intended for studentsas well as young professionals and writers at all stages of their careersseeking inspiration and definitive guidelines for better scientific writ-ing. The book is a tremendous resource not only for psychologistsbut for researchers in other fields as well:

The fifth edition includes the latest style guidelines of thePublication Manual of the American Psychological Association,Sixth Edition.

A new chapter has been added on literature research.

A new chapter has been added on generating, evaluating, andselling ideas.

A new chapter has been added on ethics in research and writing.

Many new examples have been added to increase clarity.

Existing examples have been updated where appropriate.

Checklists have been added to many of the chapters.

Advance organizers have been added to provide an overview ofthe guidelines in a given chapter.

The revised Psychologists Companion is now aimed not only atstudents but also at junior faculty and even seasoned profession-als seeking guidance.

All chapters contain enumerated headers for easier use of thebook.

The list of psychology journals has been totally updated and nowincludes for each journal its impact factor, immediacy index, andnumber of articles published per year.

The book is printed in a more reader-friendly format.

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x Preface

Further covered, with vital updates, are topics such as miscon-ceptions about psychology papers; rules for writing literature reviewsand experimental papers; how best to make use of the Internet inresearch; content, language, and style guidelines; commonly mis-used words; guidelines for data presentation; standards for evaluat-ing papers; guidelines for submitting papers to journals and winningacceptance; how to write grant and contract proposals; how to findbook publishers; and how to write lectures and articles. The bookcontains a sample psychology paper and is written in a lively andwitty style that will make it easy reading for even the busiest studentor professional.

Robert J. SternbergKarin SternbergJune 2010

Introduction

Most students and even faculty in psychology receive little or no for-mal training in how towrite psychology papers. Nor do they necessar-ily learn how to write grant and contract proposals, book proposals,or talks and lectures. Many people believe that writers receive suf-ficient training in writing through informal channels and thus willacquire the necessary skills on their own. Do students learn the writ-ing techniques for psychology on their own? Our experience readingpsychology papers suggests that often they do not. Moreover, thisexperience is shared by other psychology professors and by profes-sors in other disciplines, as well.

The purpose of this book is to provide the basic informationthat students and professionals alike need to write and write well inpsychology. This information is contained in 17 chapters. Althoughthe intent is that you read the chapters in the order in which they arepresented, they are for the most part self-contained and hence can beread in almost any sequence.

Chapter 1 presents and discusses eight common misconcep-tions that students hold about psychology papers. We have foundthat many of these misconceptions are reinforced rather than extin-guished by conventional academic training. Most students come tobelieve, for example, that journal articles are and should be auto-biographical that the logical development of ideas in a psychologypaper reflects their historical development in the psychologists head.Accepting this notion as a presupposition, students often believe thatauthors of journal articles can plan their research and predict theirfindings well in advance, often down to the last detail. Readers willknow better after finishing Chapter 1.

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2 The Psychologists Companion

One can write good papers only when one has good ideas thatconstitute the basis for the papers. Chapter 2 suggests alternativeways to generate ideas for papers. Because not all ideas are goodideas, the latter part of the chapter provides guidelines to decidewhich ideas are good ones that should be pursued. Finally, the chap-ter also gives tips on how to sell ones ideas to others.

Chapter 3 describes ways to conduct literature research in thebest manner possible. We describe diverse reference materials, intro-duce literature research methods and useful databases, and explainhow to use the Internet for scientific research and to evaluate theinformation found online.

Chapters 4 and 5 present the sequence of steps that psychologistsfollow in writing papers. Chapter 4 deals with literature reviews,and Chapter 5 with experimental research papers. The sequence ofsteps begins with the decision regarding a topic and ends with thepublication of a finished paper.Manywriters have only a fuzzy idea ofthe sequence of steps and of how to present this sequence to readersof psychology papers.

Consider two examples. First, would the procedure by which par-ticipants are assigned to treatment groups be described more appro-priately in the Procedure section or in the Design section of apsychology paper? Second, do journal editors encourage or discour-age extensive use of tables and figures in articles to clarify the pre-sentation of experimental data? The answer to the first question isDesign; the answer to the second question is discourage.

Chapter 6 presents guidelines for writing psychology papers.They are divided into three different subsections, dealing with con-tent, language, and style. The guidelines are ones that many studentsand even professionals fail to follow. One of the reasons they fail tofollow these rules is that they forget what the rules are. The chancesare good that you remember learning something about avoiding dan-gling constructions but that either you dont look for dangling con-structions in your writing or you dont even remember exactly whata dangling construction is. Chapter 6 will remind you about danglingconstructions and other pitfalls in writing papers.

Chapter 7 contains a list of commonly misused words and de-scribes the proper use of each of these words. The meanings of thesewords, like the rules of writing, are quickly learned but quickly for-gotten early in ones career as a student. For example, probably fewerthan 10% of the papers [that/which] are published in psychological

3 Introduction

journals consistently use the relative pronouns that and which cor-rectly. [While/Although] these papers are certainly publishable, theirreadability would be enhanced by the proper use of English. Whichword belongs in each place where two choices are givenwithin paren-theses? In the first sentence, the proper word is that; in the secondsentence, the proper word is Although.

Chapter 8 summarizes the American Psychological Associations(2009) guidelines for writing psychology papers. Regardless of howwell youwrite, youmust learn a number of different rules that are spe-cific to the writing of psychology papers. Different disciplines followdifferent guidelines for writing, and one is expected to learn to writeaccording to the guidelines of the appropriate discipline. Commonmistakes occur when writers follow Modern Language Association(MLA) guidelines, which are the ones most students learn in highschool. Although these guidelines are appropriate for much writingin the humanities, they typically are not appropriate for writing inpsychology. Test yourself. Does one abbreviate centimeters as cm oras cm.? Does one abbreviate feet as ft or as ft.? Does one test 10 sub-jects or ten subjects? Does one test 8 subjects or eight subjects? Therules of the American Psychological Association lead to answers ofcm, ft, 10, and eight. The rules of the Modern Language Asso-ciation lead to answers of cm., ft., ten, and eight. Learningto write a psychology paper involves learning certain rules that areunique to writing psychology papers.

Chapter 9 provides guidelines for data presentation. It gives rulesfor presenting data in the form of tables or graphs, as well as guid-ance on the advantages and drawbacks of different types of presen-tations. Following these guidelines will aid both your understandingof your data and your ability to communicate them effectively toothers.

Chapter 10 deals with the criteria psychologists use to evaluatea particular papers contribution to knowledge. What characteristicsdistinguish truly exceptional psychology papers from good ones andgood ones from poor ones? Why do some papers continue to havean impact on the field long after other papers have been forgotten?Chapter 10 addresses these questions.

Ethics are of great importance when conducting research andwriting scientific papers. Chapter 11 discusses several issues and pit-falls that psychologists may face during their careers and gives adviceon to how to avoid them.


Chapter 12 contains practical suggestions for submitting a psy-chology paper to a professional journal. What considerations enterinto the choice of a journal? What happens to a paper once it is sub-mitted? What are the possible courses of action a journal editor cantake? You will find out when you read Chapter 12.

You are not done with your paper just because you have finishedyour first draft. If you intend to write a good paper, what follows areproofreading and revisions. After submission to a journal and evenafter acceptance of your article, you may have to revise and edit yourwork. Chapter 13 gives you some tips how to make this process assuccessful as possible.

Chapters 1416 are oriented more toward professional and soon-to-be-professional users of this book than toward student users.Chapter 14 contains techniques people can use to increase thechances of their getting funding through a grant or contract. Ulti-mately, the most important determinant of funding is the set of ideasin the proposal. But many proposals are rejected on grounds thathave little or nothing to do with ideas. Competition for grants andcontracts is extremely stiff. Therefore, every edge can help. This chap-ter helps grant writers maximize their chances of winning funding,giving them the edge that may make a difference to the outcome.

Chapter 15 describes the steps a person takes in seeking a bookpublisher. How do you write a book proposal, and what do you dowith the proposal once you are done? Despite the importance toscholars of writing books as well as articles, people tend to knoweven less about how to find a publisher for a book than they doabout how to get an article published. This chapter describes frombeginning to end the process of finding a book publisher.

Chapter 16 discusses the writing of effective lectures. Many psy-chologists end up, sooner or later, teaching. For some, it may be inthe form of courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Forothers, it may be in the form of public lectures. And for still others, itmay be in the form of occasional seminars. All of us who have gonethrough school know how important good lectures are to learning.This chapter will help the reader write and deliver such lectures.

Chapter 17 is a primer on effective writing of articles for psy-chological journals. It contains tips both on what you should do andwhat you should not do.

The Appendix contains a sample paper typed according to APAguidelines. The paper is presented as it was typed rather than as it

5 Introduction

would appear in a journal. The paper illustrates many of the princi-ples described in Chapter 8.

As you progress through this book, you will discover that writingfor an audience of psychologists requires a unique set of skills. Formost students and professionals alike, merely reading and writingpsychology papers is an insufficient way to acquire these skills. Thisbook is intended for and dedicated to all of you who want to improveyour writing.

1 Eight Common Misconceptions AboutPsychology Papers

Students and inexperienced writers often have misconceptions aboutthe writing process and characteristics of good papers that effec-tively prevent them from writing as good a paper as they possiblycould. Here are eight common misconceptions you should be awareof before you even begin writing:

1. Writing the psychology paper is the most routine, least creativeaspect of the scientific enterprise, requiring much time but littleimagination.

2. The important thing is what you say, not how you say it.3. Longer papers are better papers, and more papers are better yet.4. The main purpose of a psychology paper is the presentation of

facts, whether newly established (as in reports of experiments)or well established (as in literature reviews).

5. The distinction between scientific writing, on the one hand, andadvertising or propaganda, on the other hand, is that the pur-pose of scientific writing is to inform, whereas the purpose ofadvertising or propaganda is to persuade.

6. A good way to gain acceptance of your theory is by refutingsomeone elses theory.

7. Negative results that fail to support the researchers hypothesisare every bit as valuable as positive results that do support theresearchers hypothesis.

8. The logical development of ideas in a psychology paper reflectsthe historical development of ideas in the psychologists head.

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7 Eight Common Misconceptions About Psychology Papers

Misconception 1. Writing the psychology paper is the most routine,least creative aspect of the scientific enterprise, requiring much time butlittle imagination.

Many students lose interest in their research projects as soon as thetime comes to write about them. Their interest is in planning for andmaking new discoveries, not in communicating their discoveries toothers. A widely believed fallacy underlies their attitudes. The fallacyis that the discovery process ends when the communication processbegins. Although the major purpose of writing a paper is to commu-nicate your thoughts to others, another important purpose is to helpyou form and organize your thoughts.

Reporting your findings in writing requires you to commit your-self to those findings and to your interpretation of them, and it opensyou to criticism (as well as praise) from others. It is perhaps for thisreason as much as any other that many students are reluctant toreport their research. But the finality of a written report also servesas a powerful incentive to do your best thinking and to continuethinking as you write your paper. It requires you to tie up loose endsthat you might otherwise have left untied. As a result, reporting yourfindings presents just as much of a challenge as planning the researchand analyses that led to those findings.

We have often thought we knew what we wanted to say, onlyto find that when the time came to say it, we were unable to. Thereason for this, we believe, is that in thinking about a topic, we oftenallow ourselves conceptual gaps that we hardly know exist. When weattempt to communicate our thoughts, however, these gaps becomeobvious. Organizing and then writing down our thoughts enables usto discover what gaps have yet to be filled.

Misconception 2. The important thing is what you say, not how yousay it.

As a college student, the lead author was mystified to find that stu-dents who wrote well consistently received better grades on theircompositions than did students who wrote poorly. Even in his owncompositions, he found that the grades he received seemed less toreflect what he had to say than how he said it. At the time, he wasunable to decide whether this pattern in grading resulted from theprofessors warped value systems or from their inability to penetrate

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the facade of written prose. Whereas their criteria for grading papersmight be appropriate for an English course, these criteria seemedinappropriate for courses in subjects like psychology.

As a college professor, the lead author has at last discovered thesecret of the mysterious grading practices. The discovery came aboutin two stages, each one part of the initiation rites that new collegeteachers must go through. The first stage occurred when he foundhimself with a large number of students papers to read and verylittle time in which to read them. He was then sincerely grateful tostudents who wrote well because he could read their papers quicklyand understand what they were saying. He did not have the time topuzzle through every cryptic remark in the poorly written papers,however, and he resented the authors presenting their ideas in a waythat did not enable him to understand or evaluate them properly. Healso found himself with no desire to reward the authors for this stateof affairs. If their ideas were good, they should have taken the timeto explain them clearly.

The second stage of discovery occurred when he found himselfwith just a few seminar papers to read and plenty of time in which toread them. Now, he thought, he could be fair both to students whowrite well and to those who do not. He was quickly disabused of thisnotion. He discovered that whereas it is usually easy to distinguishwell-presented good ideas from well-presented bad ideas, it is oftenimpossible to distinguish poorly presented good ideas from poorlypresented bad ideas. The problem is that the professors comprehen-sion of what the student says occurs solely through the students wayof saying it. Professors cant read minds better than anyone else. Ifan idea is presented in a sloppy, disorganized fashion, how is one toknow whether this fashion of presentation reflects the quality of theidea or merely the quality of its presentation?

The question is not easily answered. In one case, the lead authorhad talked to a student beforehand about what that student wasgoing to say, and he expected an outstanding paper on the basisof these conversations. During those conversations, certain detailshad not been clarified, but the professor expected these details to beclarified in the paper. Instead, the same ideas that had been inade-quately explained in the conversations were inadequately explainedin the paper, as well. Either the student was unable to clarify theseideas for himself, or he was unable to clarify them for others.


The outcome for the reader is the same: confusion and disappoint-ment.

A comparable situation exists for researchers. One quicklynotices that the best and most well-known psychologists are alsoamong the best writers. Although there are exceptions, they are infre-quent: Poorer writers have fewer readers. One reason for this fact isthat poorly written articles are usually rejected by journal editors.Although journal editors are willing to make minor editorial changesin the articles they receive, they are usually unwilling to publish orrewrite poorly written articles. Even if a poorly written article isaccepted and published, however, psychologists who receive a jour-nal with 520 articles in it do not want to spend their limited timereading such an article. It is therefore important that you learn nowhow to present your ideas in a readable fashion.

Misconception 3. Longer papers are better papers, and more papersare better yet.

Until his first year of teaching, the lead author believed that longerpapers were better papers. Teachers had for years told him and hisclassmates that they didnt evaluate papers on the basis of length,but he viewed their remarks as a benign ruse designed to discour-age length for its own sake. He changed his viewpoint when hestarted reading students papers. Evaluating papers on both qualityand quantity of ideas, he found little relation between either of thesetwo criteria and the length of students papers. Sometimes studentswrote longer papers because they had more to say; other times theywrote longer papers because it took them several pages to say whatcould have been said in several sentences. There is nothing wrongwith length per se, so long as length is not used as a substitute fortight organization and clear writing.

Rather than writing longer papers, some people have taken theother route of writing more papers. Why say in one paper what canbe said in two for twice the credit? This kind of mentality meetsthe needs of people who count publications but not of those whoread publications. An integrated series of related experiments willhave more impact if published as a single, tightly knit package thanif published as a string of hastily written articles, none of them ofmuch interest in itself.


Misconception 4. The main purpose of a psychology paper is the pre-sentation of facts, whether newly established (as in reports of experi-ments) or well established (as in literature reviews).

A commonmisconception among the general public is that the goal ofscience is the accumulation of facts. Thismisconception is fostered bypopular scientific writing that emphasizes scientific findings, whichmay be easy to describe, at the expense of explanations of thosefindings, which may be both diverse and difficult to describe. Diverseexplanations, however, are the hallmark of science.

Students in introductory psychology courses are prone to thismisconception, and it carries over into their writing. We could citenumerous examples of this carryover, but one in particular comesto mind. We received some years ago a beautifully written paperreviewing the literature on the testing of infant intelligence. Thiswas one case, however, in which flowing prose was insufficient toobtain a high grade. The paper was flawed in two respects. First, theauthor made no effort to interrelate the various attempts to measureinfant intelligence. Each attempt was described as though it hadbeen made in isolation, even though the various attempts to measureinfant intelligence have drawn on each other. Second, the evaluativepart of the paper consisted of a single sentence in which the authorstated that it is still too early to draw final conclusions regarding therelative success of the various infant intelligence tests. This sentenceis literally true: It was too early to draw final conclusions. But it willbe too early to draw final conclusions as long as new data aboutthe tests continue to be collected. Because data will continue to becollected for the foreseeable future, and because the tests date backto the early part of the 20th century, it now seems appropriate todraw at least tentative conclusions. In writing a psychology paper,you must commit yourself to a point of view, even if you may changeyour mind later on. If the evidence on an issue is scanty, by all meanssay so. But draw at least tentative conclusions so that the readerknows how you evaluate what evidence is available.

Your paper should be guided by your ideas and your point ofview. Facts are presented in service of ideas: to help elucidate, sup-port, or rewrite these ideas. They provide a test against which thevalidity of ideas can be measured. You should therefore select thefacts that help clarify or test your point of view and omit facts thatare irrelevant. In being selective, however, you must not select only

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those facts that support your position. Scientists demand that scien-tific reporting be scrupulously honest. Without such honesty, scien-tific communicationwould collapse. Cite the relevant facts, therefore,regardless of whose point of view they support.

Misconception 5. The distinction between scientific writing, on the onehand, and advertising or propaganda, on the other hand, is that the pur-pose of scientific writing is to inform, whereas the purpose of advertisingor propaganda is to persuade.

Successful advertising or propaganda need only persuade. Success-ful scientific writing must both inform and persuade. Writers oftenbelieve that a successful piece of scientific writing need only informthe reader of the scientists data and their interpretation of the data.The reader is then left to decide whether the theory provides a plau-sible account of those (and possibly other) data. This conception ofscientific writing is incorrect.

When scientists write a paper, they have a product to sell. Theproduct is their set of ideas about why certain phenomena exist.Occasionally, it is the only product on the market, and they needonly convince the consumer to buy any product at all. Whether ornot scientists are successful will depend in part on how persuasivethey are and in part on how much the product is needed. No adver-tising campaign is likely to sell flowers that are guaranteed not togerminate or an explanation of why people dont normally stand ontheir heads rather than their feet. In most cases, however, there isan already established demand for the product. Because competingsalespersons are trying to corner themarket, scientistsmust persuadethe consumer not just to buy any product but to buy their product.

One of the most common mistakes writers make is to sell thewrong product: They misjudge the contribution of their work. Werecently received a paper that was full of good, original ideas. Thepresentation of these ideas, and of other peoples as well, was unusu-ally lucid. The only major problem with the paper was that thediscussion of the original ideas was condensed into one paragraphburied inconspicuously in the middle of the paper, whereas the dis-cussion of the other peoples ideas spanned about 10 pages, startingon page 1. The contribution of this paper should have been in itsnew perspective on an old problem. But the author had deempha-sized this potentially significant contribution in favor of a relatively

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unimportant one: providing a well-written but unexciting review ofother peoples perspectives. The hurried reader will usually take theauthors emphasis at face value. In this case, the reader might con-clude that the paper did not have much of an original contributionto make.

At the opposite extreme, it is possible to dwell so heavily on thecontribution of your paper that the contribution is actually muted.The lead author learned this lesson the hard way. A colleague and hewrote a paper intended to compare differentmeasures of a psycholog-ical construct called subjective organization and to demonstrate thatone of these measures is superior to all the rest (Sternberg & Tulving,1977). They compared the measures on a number of different crite-ria. One measure proved to be superior to the rest on every one ofthese criteria. Despite his colleagues warnings, he explicitly calledattention to this fact several times in the paper. Leaving nothing tochance, he pointed out the inescapable conclusion that one measureis better than all the rest and therefore should be the measure ofchoice.

They submitted the paper for publication, and several monthslater received two scathing reviews. They were attacked for makingwhat both reviewers believed to be exorbitant claims. According tothe reviewers, they had by no means developed an open-and-shutcase in favor of the measure they claimed was best. The lead authorthought that the arguments made by the reviewers were weak andin some cases plainly incorrect. He was so annoyed with the wholeaffair that he let the paper sit on his shelf for about a year. Rereadingthe paper and the reviews a year later, he still believed the review-ers were on the wrong track. His colleague and he decided to tonedown their claims for the preferred measure, however, while retain-ing the same basic line of argument. They resubmitted the paper,and this time received a very favorable review. They achieved muchmore effective results by understating their case than they had byoverstating it, an outcome the colleague had anticipated from thestart. Our subsequent experiences have confirmed repeatedly that, inpsychology papers, a soft-selling technique is more successful thana hard-selling technique. By using the latter, you invite a reactionagainst you as salesperson that is likely to hurt the sale of your prod-uct. We can recall numerous occasions on which we refused to buy aproduct because we detested a pushy salesperson. In writing the firstdraft of the paper on measures of subjective organization, the lead

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author unwittingly occupied the role of the pushy salesperson, andhe received what should have been a predictable response.

Misconception 6. A good way to gain acceptance of your theory is byrefuting someone elses theory.

A surprisingly common ploy in scientific papers, even some publishedin prestigious journals, is to resort to explanation by default. Whereasstudents may not know better, professionals should. Investigatorsdescribe two (ormore) theories of the well-knownXYZ phenomenon.They then present devastating evidence against all theories exceptone. They conclude on the basis of this evidence that this one theoryis correct.

This indirect method of proof is compelling only when the two(or more) alternatives are (a) mutually exclusive and (b) exhaustive.Mutually exclusive alternatives are ones in which one outcome pre-cludes the other(s). If a coin lands heads, for example, it cannot at thesame time land tails. Exhaustive alternatives are ones that include allpossible outcomes. A flip of a coin can result in heads or tails, butnothing else.

The ploy described above has been used in some (but by nomeansall) research studying sources of differences between groups in intel-ligence test scores. A study would be presented in which obtaineddifferences in test scores could not be attributable to environmentalfactors. The author would conclude on that basis that the differ-ences must be due to hereditary factors. These alternatives, however,are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive. First, it is possible indeed, probable that both heredity and environment influenceintelligence test scores. Second, a further source of influence on intel-ligence test scores is the interaction between heredity and environ-ment the effect produced by their nonadditive influence. As anexample, certain genes for intelligence may manifest themselves onlyunder favorable environmental conditions.

One other disadvantage of the indirect method of proof bearsmention. Criticism of other peoples theories often gains one moreopponents than it does converts to ones own theory. Thiswas anotherlesson the lead author learned the hard way. He once wrote a paperthat had twomajor goals: (a) to show that his theory of a phenomenonwas correct and (b) to show that someone elses theory of the phe-nomenon was incorrect. He presented what he believed was strong


evidence in favor of his theory and in opposition to the other personstheory. He submitted the paper to a journal, and it was rejected. Themain reviewer of the paper, predictably enough, was the other the-orist. It is a common practice to send papers attacking theory X totheorist X, with editors then using their judgment as to whether thereview is a fair one. The reviewer criticized not the positive aspectof the paper, but its negative aspect. He argued that the theoriesactually dealt with somewhat different aspects of the phenomenonunder investigation, so that there was no need to attack the reviewerstheory in the process of supporting the lead authors own.

In retrospect, the reviewer probably had some valid points, butwe believe he overreacted. In papers weve reviewed that attack ourwork, weve probably overreacted as well. Scientists have a reputa-tion among the general public for being objective seekers and impar-tial evaluators of the truth. We think this reputation is generallydeserved, but only when it comes to each others work.When it comesto their ownwork, scientists lose their objectivity.When scientists areattacked, they behave inmuch the samemanner as anyone else underattack. When someone lunges at you with a fist flying toward yourface, you dont stop to reflect on the various considerations that mayhave led your opponent to attack you. You counterattack. Becausescientists are personally so involved in their work, they often treat anattack on their work as a personal attack, even if there is no rationalbasis for treating it as such. The result can be a personal confronta-tion in which scientific issues are placed on the back burner.

In conclusion, it is wise to stress the positive contribution of yourpaper. This does not mean that you should forgo criticizing othertheories. Such criticismmay be essential to your point. If it is, keep inmind our earlier admonition that understatement is a more effectivemeans of persuasion than is overstatement. Avoid statements thatcan be interpreted as contentious but lacking in substance. And ifyou publish your paper, dont expect investigators you criticize tocongratulate you on your cogent refutation of their work.

Misconception 7. Negative results that fail to support the researchershypothesis are every bit as valuable as positive results that do supportthe researchers hypothesis.

Because science is a fair game, the scientist wins some and losessome. Novices often believe that the only honest course of actionis for scientists to report their losses as well as their wins. To do

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otherwise would seem to present a false picture of both the scientistand the state of nature.

After reading a diverse sampling of journal articles, the readeris bound to arrive at one of two conclusions either scientists haveuncannily sound intuitions about the way experiments will turn out,or they maintain closets full of unsuccessful and unreported experi-ments. Although scientists usually have at least fairly sound intuitionsabout how experiments will turn out, the state of the journals is morea reflection of well-stocked closets than of unerring intuitions.

Scientists failures to report failures are attributable not to theirdishonesty but to the frequent uninterpretability of negative results.Suppose, for example, that investigators predict that giving childrenrewards after learning will increase their learning. The investiga-tors conduct an experiment with two groups. In one group, childrenreceive rewards after learning; in the other group, they do not receiverewards. The investigators find no difference in learning betweengroups. What can they conclude? Unfortunately, not much. Whereasa significant difference between groups could have provided goodevidence that rewards can facilitate learning, absence of a significantdifference could be explained in a number of ways, most of themuninteresting. Consider three such uninteresting explanations:

1. Weak rewards: The reward used in the study did not prove apowerful enough incentive. If the reward, for example, was apeanut, then childrens cravings for a single peanut might nothave been strong enough to increase their efforts to learn.

2. Sample size too small: The sample of children might not havebeen large enough. It is a well-known rule of statistics that, if anytreatment effect exists at all, then it can be discovered if onessample is large enough. A small effect may be detectable onlywith a relatively large sample. If there were only three childrenin each group, then the investigators might have failed to detectthe effect of the reward.

3. Inadequate measures: The measure of learning might have beeninadequate. Suppose, for example, that the task was to learn theset of multiplication facts for one-digit numbers and that themeasure of learning was a single multiplication fact. This mea-sure probably would have been inadequate to detect learning ineither group and hence a difference in learning between groups.

Under two sets of circumstances, negative results can be of inter-est: when an investigator fails to replicate someone elses results,

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and when the results change due to some other factors. Let us firstconsider the failure to replicate results. Suppose someone reportsthat subjects who stand on their heads for 30 seconds prior to tak-ing a test of visual-motor coordination perform better on the testthan do control subjects who do not stand on their heads. Anotherinvestigator, suspicious of this result, tries to replicate it with twogroups of subjects and fails. Realizing that the failure to replicatethe result may be due to sampling fluctuations, the investigator teststwo more groups of subjects and again finds no significant differencebetween groups. At this point, the investigator feels ready to reportthe result. Whereas one failure to replicate a result is not informative,repeated failures to replicate can be informative. The number of fail-ures needed depends in large part on the strength of prior evidencein support of the result in question. Two failures are probably morethan adequate for the headstand hypothesis, whereas a great manyfailures would be needed to overthrow a better-established result,such as that under normal circumstances learning increases withpractice.

Negative results are also of interest if a significant result van-ishes when a methodological weakness is corrected. Suppose thatthe experimenter who wrote the headstand paper knew which sub-jects had stood on their heads and which had not. This aspect ofthe methodology suggests a possible bias in the experimenters scor-ing of the coordination test (especially if the experimenter is publicrelations director of the American Association for the Advancementof Acrobatics). A worthwhile methodological refinement would beto conduct the experiment under circumstances in which the experi-menter does not knowwhich subjects stood on their heads and whichdid not. A negative result would be of interest in this case, because itwould suggest that the significant difference between groups in thefirst experiment was due to experimenter bias.

Misconception 8. The logical development of ideas in a psychologypaper reflects the historical development of ideas in the psychologistshead.

If one were to take journal articles at face value, one would concludethat scientific results come in neat, attractively wrapped packages.Writers often believe that one needs only to go through a uniformseries of well-defined steps to ensure delivery of such packages. These

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steps are outlined in the Myth column of Table 1.1. However, wedoubt that even as many as 1% of the papers published in scientificjournals developed in a way even remotely resembling the outlinegiven in the Myth column. In fact, they develop according to thesequence described in the Reality column of Table 1.1. Yet thelarge majority of published papers are written as though they haddeveloped in the former way, or in some way closely resembling it.Let us compare the series of steps.

Why does the picture of research presented by journal articlescorrespond so poorly to the actual state of affairs? There are at leastthree reasons:

1. Space limitations: Journals operate under severe space limita-tions. A large percentage of articles submitted to journals mustbe rejected for lack of space. In some journals, more than 90% ofsubmitted articles are rejected. Those articles that are acceptedmust be as concise as possible. An autobiographical form ofpresentation, describing all ones false starts and initial misjudg-ments, consumes a great deal of space. That space is more prof-itably devoted to other articles.

2. Efficacy of presentation: An autobiographical account of anexperiment tends to be of more interest to oneself than to onescolleagues. An associate recounted to us the way in which helearned this lesson. He submitted a 20-page theoretical article toone of the most prestigious psychological journals. He spent thefirst 19 pages of the article describing how he had come to hisconclusions after a lengthy series of false starts; he presented hisfinal conclusions on the 20th page. The article was rejected, notbecause the final conclusions were wrong, but because the editorbelieved that there was only one publishable page in the article the last one. The editor was interested in the psychologists con-clusions but not in the lengthy soul searching the psychologisthad done to arrive at them.

3. Focus on the phenomenon: The object of description in a scien-tific report is a phenomenon and its explanation, not the reporterof the phenomenon and explanation. The focus of the reportmustreflect this fact. A graduate student and the lead author oncecompleted an experiment investigating the development of rea-soning skills in children at the second-, fourth-, and sixth-gradelevels. Children were presented with reasoning problems, which

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Table 1.1. The steps of writing a paper: myth versus reality

Myth Reality

1. Scientists start with ideas about aphenomenon, which they explain in theintroduction to the paper. These ideasare formulated before the scientist hascollected any data; the data serve toconfirm (or in rare cases disconfirm)their validity.

1. Before carrying out an experiment, one usuallyhas only a vague and tentative idea of what theoutcome will be, if only because there are somany possible outcomes. Ones ideas developalong with the experiment.

2. Scientists test these ideas by carefullychoosing variables that can bemanipulated in a controlledexperiment. The scientistsunderstanding of the phenomenonunder observation and of scientificmethod enables them to choose thecorrect variables and experimentalmanipulation on their very firstattempt, which they describe in theMethod section of the paper.

2. One sometimes performs the right experimentalmanipulation on the wrong variables or thewrong experimental manipulation on the rightvariables. To avoid wasting resources, scientistsfrequently conduct small-scale pilot experimentsthat test the feasibility of the experiment.Adjustments may then be made for the full-scaleexperiment, or the experiment may be scrappedaltogether.

3. Scientists perform the experiment,presenting in the Results section oftheir paper the outcomes of dataanalyses scrupulously planned inadvance.

3. Major data analyses are usually planned inadvance, planning that is necessary to ensurethat the design of the experiment permits one toanalyze the data in the most advantageous way.Minor data analyses are frequently decided onafter data collection. Often the results of aplanned data analysis will suggest a subsequentunplanned one. A given set of data can beanalyzed in an infinite number of ways, some ofthem more revealing than others. The scientistmust select a small number of ways that arelikely to yield maximum payoff.

4. Scientists finally reflect on the broaderimplications of the results, presentingtheir reflections in the Discussionsection of the paper.

4. Ideas for the Discussion section of a paperusually start forming at the same time theexperiment does, not only after its completion.The reason for this is that unless the experimenthas some potentially broad and interestingimplications, or unless it can lead to somesensible next step in research, it is probably notworth doing.


they were then asked to solve. Because the experiment involveda considerable investment in time and money, they decided topretest their reasoning problems on some colleagues children.The original plan had been to use number of problems correctlysolved as the dependent measure. They discovered, however, thateven the youngest children made almost no errors on the prob-lems once they fully understood the task. They therefore changedtheir dependentmeasurewhen they did the full-scale experiment,using response time to solve problems correctly instead of num-bers of problems correctly solved. Had someone else planned thisexperiment, that personmight have realized immediately that theproblems were too easy to use number correct as the dependentmeasure or might have stumbled longer than the authors diduntil they discovered that the problems were too easy. A descrip-tion of this trial-and-error process is slightly informative aboutthe development of the investigators intuitions, but it is unin-formative about the object of the investigation, in this case, thedevelopment of reasoning in children. The scientifically infor-mative statement is that the problems were of a level of difficultythat made response time an appropriate dependent measure.

There is often a fine line between the omission of autobiograph-ical information and the omission of critical details. If a hypothesisis post hoc, then one is obliged to indicate this fact.

In sum, the steps one follows in planning and carrying outresearch do not neatly correspond to the successive sections of thepsychology paper. In the next two chapters, we will consider thesteps in carrying out literature and experimental research and howto describe them in the psychology paper.

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2 How to Generate, Evaluate, and Sell YourIdeas for Research and Papers

There is no one foolproof way of getting ideas for papers. You haveto find the ways that work for you. In the first part of this chapter,we present you with different ways in which you can develop ideasfor your research projects. Of course, it is not enough to have ideas.To be a successful researcher, you also need the ability to evaluateyour ideas and find out whether they are good ones. You do not wantto waste your time on bad ideas. The second part of this chapterdeals with the evaluation of your ideas. And once you have come tothe conclusion that yours is a wonderful idea, it will be importantfor you to sell your idea. How do you convince others that yourplanned study is one that is worthwhile to conduct, and how doyou convince an editor of a journal and reviewers that your paperis worth publishing? Especially creative ideas are often hard to sell.Therefore, the third part of this chapter shows you some ways to sellyour ideas.

2.1 GENERATING IDEAS

2.1.1 Generating Ideas by Consulting with Others

In many colleges and universities, the faculty is among the mostunderutilized of resources. In the senior authors first semester ofteaching at Yale, he set aside three hours each week for office hours.He encouraged sometimes he practically begged students to comesee him during those hours for advice on papers, projects, and thelike. He left his door wide open to encourage students to enter. Forthe most part, though, he sat staring at the walls or at the peoplescurrying by (but not in) the door. He also encouraged students to

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21 How to Generate, Evaluate, and Sell Your Ideas for Research and Papers

make individual appointments if they were unable to see him duringhis prearranged hours, but for the most part, students also failed totake him up on this offer. Later, business picked up, although muchmore so among graduate than among undergraduate students.

Once, the psychology department faculty at Yale spent the betterpart of an hour trying to figure out why students are so timid inapproaching faculty. Sometimes students try once, are unsuccessfulin reaching the faculty member, and give up. Sometimes they donttry at all. Faculty members (as well as postdoctoral students andgraduate students) can be a most helpful first avenue of approach inwriting a paper for students as well as for postdocs and junior faculty.You should be assertive in seeking their advice.

2.1.2 Generating Ideas by Reading

2.1.2.1 What to Read

Ideas often come out of ones reading. Some kinds of reading aremore likely to lead to good ideas than are others:

1. Pursue a small number of topics in depth: Most undergradu-ate psychology courses, and many graduate ones, are not wellsuited to the stimulation of creative ideas for experiments. Thisunsuitability is because they cover a large amount of materialsuperficially rather than a small amount in depth. To come upwith a good idea for an experiment, it helps to have a deep under-standing of the issues involved in some relatively small area ofpsychological research. Find some topic that interests you. Pur-sue the references that the papers you are interested in cite, andpursue the references most frequently cited in those references.By digging into the literature on a topic, you will acquire a deeperunderstanding of the issues that are the focus of psychologicalresearch.

2. Acquaint yourself with research at the frontiers of knowledge:As an undergraduate, the senior author once followed the adviceof the preceding paragraph, only to find himself acquiring a deepunderstanding of an issue that had ceased to interest psycholo-gists twenty years before. In pursuing a topic, consider whetherit is of current interest. Because of the long time lag between the

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writing and the publication of a book, most textbooks are some-what out of date by the time they are published. Within five toten years, they usually become hopelessly out of date. As a result,students relying on such textbooks may find themselves gener-ating ideas that someone else thought of several years before.To become acquainted with literature on the frontiers of knowl-edge, scan recent journal articles and make use of the referencesdescribed in Chapter 3 of this book.

3. Start with general readings and proceed to more specific ones:Because of space limitations, authors of journal articles are oftenunable to present in detail the previous research that motivatedtheir particular experiments. If you are unacquainted with thatprevious research, you may find yourself unable to understandthe rationale of the experiments. It is therefore wise to start yourreading with a review of the relevant literature, if you can findone, or with a theoretical article that compares the major the-oretical positions. Reports of individual experiments will makemore sense to you if you are first acquainted with the researchcontext in which they were done.

2.1.2.2 How to Read

Howyou read is as important aswhat you read. Suppose, for example,that you read an article testing the theory that repeated exposure topersuasive communications results in attitude change toward theviewpoint advocated by those communications, regardless of onesinitial attitudes. You might pursue further research taking you inany one of four directions:

1. Extend the theory: After reading the article, you may be per-suaded that the theory is sound and could be extended. Youmightwant to show that repeated exposure to communications advo-cating a viewpoint, but in a nonpersuasive manner, also resultsin attitude change toward the position taken by the communi-cations.

2. Generate an analogous theory: If you find the theory and datacompelling, you may want to think up an analogous theory. Per-haps repeated exposure to a particular kind of music increasesliking for that music. Or perhaps repeated exposure to any kindof communication increases positive affect toward that kind ofcommunication.

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3. Limit the theory: Perhaps you believe that the conclusion derivedfrom the data is too broad. If the subjects in the experiment wereall children, for example, youmay wish to show that the theory isapplicable only to children. Or if the communications used in theexperiment were all health-related ones, you may want to showthat the theory is applicable only to arguments related to bodilycare.

4. Challenge the evidence testing the theory: In reading the article,you may spot a methodological, statistical, or logical flaw in theauthors argument. In this case, you may want to test the theoryin a way that corrects the flaw. For example, suppose that theauthor of the paper tested the hypothesis merely by showing thatafter two hours of listening to a set of three persuasive commu-nications, most subjects agreed with the viewpoint advocated bythose communications. If the author has not shown, however,that at least some of the subjects disagreed with the viewpointsof the communications prior to the test, then the conclusion doesnot follow from the data.

2.1.3 Other Ways to Generate Ideas

The following list provides 10ways to generate ideas thatwork at leastfor some people. We will illustrate each of the ideas with examplesfrom our own research. We use our own research because we knowhow we got our ideas, but we have no sure way of knowing how otherresearchers got their ideas! For an additional view on getting ideas,upon which this chapter partially draws, see McGuire (1997):

1. Observe behavior in other people that arouses your curiosity.

2. Observe behavior in yourself that arouses your curiosity.

3. Question researchers interpretations of their work.

4. Look for anomalies in patterns of behavior, whether your own or others.

5. Look for patterns of behavior that are themselves puzzling.

6. Think the opposite of what others think.

7. Synthesize disparate existing ideas.

8. Ask yourself what the next question is.

9. Revisit discarded ideas.

10. Look for ideas in everyday models and metaphors.


1. Observe behavior in other people that arouses your curiosity.

Why, sometimes, when you try to help people, do they get angry atyou instead of feeling grateful? Why is it that some people, whenthey shake hands, feel like they are trying to crush your hand, andothers give you what feels like a dead-fish grip? Why do some peo-ple almost literally drink themselves to death? Why do some peoplealmost always seem to get lost and others almost always to find theirway? Why do people like to go on frightening amusement-park rides,and why do they like scary movies? One way to get ideas is to observethe behavior of others and to try to understand why they do whatthey do.

Some years ago, the senior author of this book did a series ofpapers on conflict resolution (Sternberg & Dobson, 1987; Sternberg& Soriano, 1984). The goal of the studies was to understand con-sistent individual differences in ways people approach conflicts. Theresearch grew out of the authors observation of some past chairs ofhis psychology department. In particular, one was excellent at defus-ing conflicts and seemed to be able to take a conflict and reach somekind of compromise that, more or less, satisfied the participants inthe conflict. The other chair seemed to be almost the opposite: Hehad a real talent for making existing conflicts even worse than theywere. It seemed unlikely he was trying to fan the flames, but he nev-ertheless succeeded in doing so. But what was most notable was theconsistency in each of the chairs styles. They seemed always, in theone case, to mitigate conflict, and in the other case, to exacerbateit. The ensuing research ended up finding seven consistent styles ofconflict resolution: physical action, economic action, wait and see,accept the situation, step down, third party, and undermine esteem.One of the chairs used a step-down strategy of trying to ease theconflict; the other was personally insecure, it seemed, and ended upundermining the self-esteem of both parties, which made them feelworse and made their conflict worse.

The junior author was blissfully working in Key Largo, Florida,when the September 11, 2001, attacks took place. She observed dras-tic behavior changes in people afterward: They were much morecohesive, made appointments to go to church together even thoughbefore the incident nobody had ever even mentioned the church, andstuck to themselves and isolated themselves from other groups theydid not see as relevant to them. Some of them became suspicious of


certain types of out-groups. The amazement about the effects of theterrorist attacks eventually led to the junior authors dissertation onhate and to her interest in prejudice and terrorism.

The research would not have been done had the author not beencurious about the behavior of the people around her. So when youobserve other peoples behavior, look at it as a set of puzzles thatpsychologists can understand. You can get some of your best ideasright from those observations.

2. Observe behavior in yourself that arouses your curiosity.

Why do you always fall in love with Mr. or Ms. Wrong? Why do youblush when people praise you? Why do you feel afraid when youwatch a scary movie, even though you know it is all fiction? Whydo you fail to remember information that you just learned a fewseconds ago? Why do you sometimes start studying for tests at thelast minute, knowing that you are hurting yourself in doing so? Youcan get many of your research ideas by observing your own behaviorand then doing research to try to understand it.

When the senior author was young, he did poorly on IQ tests. Hisproblems in IQ testing seriously affected his life. His teachers thoughthe was stupid; he thought he was stupid; he did stupid work; and theteachers were happy that their predictions about his stupidity werecorrect; he in turn was happy that they were happy. And so continueda vicious circle that did not end until he had a teacher in fourth gradewho saw more in him than his being a poor test taker. As a result ofthis experience, the author acquired a lifelong interest in intelligence.To this day, he is still trying to understand why he did poorly on theIQ tests!

The author ended up forming a theory of intelligence accordingto which there are three aspects to intelligence: creative, analytical,and practical (Sternberg, 1997a, 2005). A person needs creative intel-ligence to formulate new ideas, analytical intelligence to ascertainwhether they are good ideas, and practical intelligence to implementthe ideas and convince others of their value. In his case, he probablysuffered from test anxiety, but the author also lacked the practicalskills to control the anxiety. Fortunately, intelligence is malleable,and he acquired more practical skills later on.

The research ended up being typical of much psychologicalresearch in one key way. It set out to answer one question and ended


addressing a different question instead. The author still does notknow for sure why he did poorly on the tests when he was younger.But in the process of trying to find out, he learned a lot of other thingsabout human intelligence.

The junior author once had a friend who was intellectually abso-lutely brilliant. He worked at a bank, where he advised people ontheir investment options for their money. The friend seemed to knowall there was to know about the stock market, was able to come upwith the fanciest calculations to indicate the best investments, andeven developed ideas for new investment instruments. And still, hehad a lot of trouble at his job and was finally fired for underperfor-mance. When talking to the friend and trying to find out what hadgone wrong, the junior author discovered that he had always hadtrouble connecting to his clients and was no more popular with hisemployers than with the clients. Ultimately, he had failed to make hisquota because customers came to him only once but rarely returnedor invested money with him. This experience led the junior authorto think about the importance of social and emotional intelligence inpeoples lives, and she developed a test of emotional intelligence forher diploma thesis at her university.

When you do research, be open to the possibility that your re-searchmay end up addressing questions in addition to or even insteadof those you initially posed. Often, the greatest findings in psychologyare wholly serendipitous.

3. Question researchers interpretations of their work.

Do people really do better on successive exposures to informationbecause repeated exposures strengthen memory traces? When peo-ple act in ways that are contrary to their beliefs, do they really expe-rience some kind of cognitive dissonance? Do children have autismbecause of parents who have acted in ambiguous ways that alter-nately encourage the children to come closer and then to distancethemselves? Much of the best research in psychology has come outof ambiguities in the interpretation of past research findings. Veryfew findings lend themselves to unambiguous interpretation, even ifthey initially seem to be unambiguous.

The senior authors first research project in graduate school aroseout of his questioning an empirical finding in the research literature(Sternberg & Bower, 1974). Unfortunately, the finding was by his


ownundergraduate adviser (Tulving, 1966)! (He does not recommendpicking holes in your own advisers work!) In this case, suppose yougive people a list of words to learn, A. Then, after they have learned theA list fairly well, you give them one of two other lists to learn, eitherAB or BC. Half the words on AB are the complete set of words fromlist A, whereas BC has no words at all from A. Curiously, after thefirst few learning trials, students actually do better in learning theall-new list (BC) than the part-new list (AB) that partially overlapswith the original list (A). This is odd, because one would expect it tobe easier to learn a list that is already half-learned than one that hasnot been learned at all. Tulving proposed that the difficulty of thoselearning the AB list was a matter of the way participants organizedthe words in memory. We proposed instead that the difficulty was indiscriminating which words were carried over from the A list to theAB list. Well, you might say, all the words were carried over. Right!But participants had not been informed of that. When they were, thenegative transfer between A and AB disappeared. So the problem didindeed appear to be one of list discrimination.

When reading a paper or listening to a talk, you should thinkcarefully about whether the researchers interpretation of the datamatches your own interpretation. If not, could you design a studyto test whether your interpretation or the other researchers is cor-rect? Many of the best studies in psychology have come from peoplequestioning others interpretations of their data.

4. Look for anomalies in patterns of behavior, whether yourown or others.

Why do people who lose weight for long periods of time perhapseven many months all of a sudden break their pattern and startto gain weight again? Why do people who seem in their day-to-daylife to be quiet and quite unobtrusive sometimes explode and go onrampages? Why do people who have been top students throughouttheir school careers sometimes go to college and suddenly becomemediocre students? You can get ideas for research by looking forpatterns in human behavior that are suddenly broken. What causedthe break and why?

The senior author of this book became interested in this prob-lem of broken patterns as it pertains to intimate relationships. Whyis it that some relationships that seem to be going very well and

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peacefully unexpectedly at least to outsiders end in a breakup,possibly an acrimonious one, whereas other relationships that seemrife with conflict endure? How can a relationship that seems so har-monious break this pattern and end up in bitterness and acrimony?The author developed a theory of relationships that he came to referto as the theory of love as a story (Sternberg, 1998b; Sternberg, Hoj-jat, & Barnes, 2001). According to the theory, almost from the timepeople are born, they confront many different stories of love. Theyobserve the love stories of their parents, friends of their parents, cou-ples in movies, and couples on television. They read about couples inbooks. Over time, as the result of an interaction between their experi-ences and their personality, they start to develop stories of what theybelieve love should be. These stories then guide their thinking aboutthe kinds of relationships they should or should not be in. Examplesof stories are the fairy-tale story, in which one partner seeks a princeand the other a princess; the business story, in which partners eachseek a business partner; the war story, in which partners appear to beat war with each other; and the travel story, in which partners seek atraveling companion through life or a part of it.

The research was helpful in suggesting how couples that seemto be doing well can split and couples that seem to be doing poorlycan stay together. If two partners both have a war story, for example,then frequent fights may be an integral part of their relationship andeven part of what they mean by love. But if one partner has a warstory and the other does not, the relationship may not go so well atall. A relationship may seem to be going well but actually be failing.For example, suppose that two partners are happy with each other,in general. They like the way each other looks; they have similarinterests; they have similar ethical and religious values; they sharepolitical and other beliefs. But one has a fairy-tale story of love andthe other a business story. In other words, one is looking for a princeand the other for a business partner. The relationship may initiallyseem successful because the couple has so much in common, but itmay eventually fail because, at a deeper level, each member of thecouple is looking for a different thing. So a relationship that canappear to be going well can fail because of conflicting stories, or onethat appears to be going poorly can succeed because of comparablestories (such as the war story).

So look for broken patterns in behavior. Often they provide thebest ideas you can get for new and exciting research!


5. Look for patterns of behavior that are themselves puzzling.

Why are people repeatedly so optimistic when a new political partycomes into power, only soon to be disappointed after the party has achance to perform?Why do some people repeatedly look for romanticpartners who bring out the worst in them? Why do people oftenremember clearly people they met and things they did when theywere young, but then forget people theymet and things they did just afew years (or even months) ago? Why do some people almost alwaysseem to learn from their mistakes, whereas others seem immuneto learning from experience and destined to repeat their mistakes?Sometimes, it is not the break in a pattern but the pattern itself thatcan be puzzling and worthy of investigation. So look for patternsof behavior that are puzzling. Often people will not investigate suchpatterns because they get so used to them.

The senior author became interested in anomalous patterns ofleadership during a time when corporate scandals seemed to blos-som, one right after the other. Scandals at Enron, WorldCom, GlobalCrossing, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, and other firms all became knownat roughly the same time. History repeated itself in 2008 when severalmajor financial institutions, such as LehmanBrothers,Merrill Lynch,and Washington Mutual, all failed around the same time. There wasa clear pattern leading to these failures, but what was it, and why hadit been hidden until it was too late?

The conclusion the senior author came to is that it is possibleto be smart and foolish at the same time (Sternberg, 2002a, 2004).In particular, smart, well-educated people may be not only suscepti-ble to cognitive fallacies but even especially susceptible because theythink they are not susceptible. In other words, the weird pattern isthat smart people may act more stupidly than stupid people becausethey think they are not susceptible to acting stupidly. The authoridentified six cognitive fallacies that seemed to characterize peoplewho had spectacular failures (Sternberg, 2005a). The cognitive fal-lacies include the following: (a) Unrealistic optimism, in which theybelieve they are so smart that whatever they do will work out just fine,regardless of whether it really makes sense; (b) egocentrism, in whichthey start to view decisions only in terms of how the decisions benefitthem; (c) omniscience, in which they think they are all-knowing butdont know what they dont know; (d) omnipotence, in which theythink they can do whatever they want; (e) invulnerability, in which


they think they are so smart they can get away with anything theydo; and (f) ethical disengagement, in which they believe that ethicalbehavior is important for others but not for themselves.

6. Think the opposite of what others think.

Is the world flat? Will heavier objects fall more quickly than lighterones? Is it possible that much of what people think is unconsciousrather than conscious? Many of the greatest scientists of all timehave made their reputations by defying conventions by question-ing assumptions that others routinely make or by asking questionsthat others do not ask. The senior authors undergraduate adviser,Endel Tulving, was a master of this technique (e.g., Tulving, 1966).He repeatedly has published groundbreaking articles that shock read-ers because they turn on their head assumptions people have heldthroughout their careers. Daniel Kahneman and his collaborator,the late Amos Tversky, researchers on human decision making, alsoproved themselves to be masters of turning conventional wisdomon its head in their research on decision-making heuristics (e.g.,Kahneman & Tversky, 1971, 1979).

Todd Lubart and the senior author proposed a theory of creativ-ity, the investment theory, according to which highly creative peopleare those who routinely turn things around who see things in waysothers do not see them (e.g., Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Such peo-ple, according to the theory, buy low and sell high in the world ofideas. They defy the crowd, often thinking the opposite of what mostothers think. Our tests of the theory suggested that, indeed, morecreative people are more likely to think in ways that defy convention(Lubart & Sternberg, 1995).

We came up with this idea not because it defied conventionsabout creativity but in part because it defied conventions about howto test students in college and other admissions situations. Conven-tional tests of admissions such as the SAT and the ACT test memoryand analytical skills, but they do not test creative thinking skills.Our hope was that by testing creative-thinking skills, colleges mightsee students in a whole new light. More than a decade later, ourresearch found that, indeed, including creative tests in an admissionsbattery could improve the prediction of freshman grade-point aver-age and decrease average ethnic-group differences (Sternberg &Rainbow Project Collaborators, 2006). The inclusion of creative tests,


contrary to conventional beliefs, did improve prediction of collegeperformance.

7. Synthesize disparate existing ideas.

Is it possible that love and hate are not opposites or really even whollyopposed to each other but more complexly related? Is it possiblethat people are not merely intrinsically or extrinsically motivated butsome combination of those? Is it possible that people do not use eitherdirect perception or intelligent perception but some combination ofthose? Are people neither serial nor parallel processors of informa-tion but simultaneously serial and parallel processors? Sometimesideas or concepts are proposed that initially seem incongruent witheach other. People assume that the constructs are related to eachother in an either-or way. But it may turn out instead that the con-cepts can be synthesized in a way that is not mutually exclusive.

The two authors of this book have jointly done work on hate thatsuggests that hate and love are not opposites nor even wholly incom-patible with each other; rather, they are more complexly related(Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). According to thisduplex theory, hate and love have in common that they comprise thethree components of intimacy, passion, and commitment.Whereas inlove, people feel intimacy toward each other, in hate, they feel nega-tion of intimacy. So intimacy is an opposite. But passion is different.Passion is an intense motivational drive, and the same passion canbe labeled in different ways depending on ones beliefs about onesrelationship. So the same intense passion can be labeled as love orhate depending on how one perceives the relationship. It is for thisreason that someone who intensely loves someone else and discoversa betrayal may instantaneously go from loving to hating the person.The passion still exists but is not converted and relabeled. Both loveand hate also involve commitments but of different kinds. Commit-ment in love is to tighten bonds, and in hate it is to harm and possiblydestroy the hated person or group. So the duplex theory views loveand hate as complexly related and synthesizes in a somewhat novelway what had seemed to some to be two opposing constructs.

8. Ask yourself what the next question is.

So if love and hate are complexly related, where do liking and dislik-ing fit in? If there are consistent styles of conflict resolution across


people, from where did the styles come if from experiences, thenfromwhat kinds of experiences? If people have stories of love, do theyalso have stories of hate? A useful way to think of ideas for research isto ask yourself what the next question is likely to be, given the answerto the last question you asked: What is the next thing to know?

This is actually what the senior author did when he proposedhis balance theory of wisdom (Sternberg, 1998a, 2001), according towhich wisdom is the use of ones abilities and knowledge to achievea common good by balancing ones own, others, and higher orderinterests over the long and short terms through the infusion of pos-itive ethical values. He had previously proposed a theory of intelli-gence (discussed previously) that had three parts: creative, analytical,and practical. But he would go out and give talks and particular ques-tions would come up: What about Hitler or Stalin or similar mon-sters? Were they not creatively, analytically, and practically intelli-gent? Would they score at the top on what the author was callingsuccessful intelligence? So the next question seemed to be, Is theresomethingwrongwith or at leastmissing in a theory thatwould seem-ingly put wretched dictators at the top of the heap? This anomaly ledthe investigator to study wisdom and eventually to propose a theoryof leadership, WICS (wisdom, intelligence, creativity, synthesized),which incorporates wisdom (Sternberg, 2007, 2008).

Note that, in this example, the idea came not from the author butfrom members of audiences to which the author spoke. It behoovesyou to share your ideas with others in a variety of forums and activelyto solicit their feedback, because your idea about what the next ques-tion you should ask is may well come from others rather than fromyourself!

There is one other important thing to remember. It is very rarethat researchers in psychology reach a final answer to any question.It is rare that the next question is the last one. Only once in eitherof the careers of the authors has either of us come close to resolvinga question in the literature. This opportunity arose for the seniorauthor in the Sternberg and Bower (1974) paper on negative transfercited earlier. The author was still in graduate school and was veryproud that he and his adviser had, seemingly, actually resolved anissue: After that paper, few papers were published anymore on thetopic, then called negative transfer in part-whole and whole-part freerecall. But the author then made a dismaying discovery: When youactually answer a question, you lose the option to do further researchon that question, because it is answered. You have to find yourself


a new topic to investigate! Fortunately, then, perhaps, neither of usever again reached anything even approaching a final resolution to apsychological problem!

9. Revisit discarded ideas.

Was Sigmund Freud really as off-base as many current clinical the-orists think he was? How about Jean Piaget? Behaviorism is not infashion in many circles, but is it possible that there were ideas therethat would still be valuable today? As mentioned previously, very fewissues in psychology reach a final resolution. More often, people justget tired of the issues or move on to the next ones. They may rejectold paradigms because they find, inevitably, that the paradigms wereflawed. But typically, they introduce new paradigms that themselveshave flaws, just different ones from the old paradigms. So sometimesit is worthwhile to revisit old ideas and ask whether, when they werediscarded, researchers metaphorically threw out the baby with thebathwater.

When the senior author was just starting out, he proposed amodel of how people solve problems called linear syllogisms, suchas John is taller than Bill. Bill is taller than Mike. Who is shortest?(Sternberg, 1980). The model combined linguistic and spatial rea-soning processes. The author proposed this model to replace existingmodels, whichwere either linguistic (e.g., Clark, 1969) or spatial (e.g.,Huttenlocher, 1968). His point was that the older models were out ofdate and that his model, which synthesized the older models (see thepreceding Point 7), was superior to the older ones. But he was wrong.A subsequent study showed that there are individual differences instrategy: Some people use a verbal strategy, some use a spatial strat-egy, and some use a mixed strategy (Sternberg & Weil, 1980). Sowhen one models the averaged data, the mixed strategy proved to bethe best because it best captured what people do on average but notwhat each individual was doing. In other words, the author was tooquick to throw out the past models. In fact, they had validity, and herealized that those models served as valuable sources of insight forfollow-up research.

10. Look for ideas in everyday models and metaphors.

Which is it: Absence makes the heart grow fonder or out of sight, outofmind? Do people really function like hydraulic systems, as was sug-gested in Freudian psychoanalysis? Or do they think like computers,


as was suggested by early information-processing psychologists likeHerbert Simon? Everyday models and metaphors rarely provide pre-cise characterizations of how people think or feel. But they may pro-vide a starting point for understanding human behavior.

The senior author was once riding on a plane to a meeting inVirginia when, seemingly out of the blue, an idea came into his head:Maybe the way people govern or manage themselves is analogous tothe way in which governments govern (Sternberg, 1988a, 1997). Theidea was that some people are more legislative: They like to legislate to come up with ideas. Other people are more executive. They like toexecute to be told what to do and then to do it. Still other peopleare more judicial they like to judge things and people. Some peopleare more liberal they like to do things in new ways. Others are moreconservative they prefer tried and tested ways of doing something.In the end, the theory contained 13 different styles based on thenotion of mental self-government. Tests of the theory revealed thatthe styles provided useful characterizations of how people like toutilize their abilities (Sternberg, 1997a). But the original idea camefrom taking a model from everyday life government and applyingit to styles of thinking.

In the first part of this chapter, we have proposed different waysin which you can get ideas for theories and research studies. We wishto emphasize that no one technique will work for everyone and thatdifferent people will find different techniques to be useful. Moreover,these are far from the only techniques. The McGuire (1997) paper,mentioned earlier, provides additional techniques. Moreover, bookson creativity and innovation will contain other techniques as well.As you go through your career, you will learn what works for you.The important thing is to find ways of generating ideas and then touse them not only to produce ideas but also to enjoy yourself whiledoing so.

So far, we have concentrated on how you get new ideas. But thecreative process actually includes two more steps: deciding whethera new idea is a good idea and then persuading others of the value ofthe idea. We discuss these two issues next.

2.2 EVALUATING YOUR IDEAS

Coming up with an idea is hard. Knowing whether it is a good idea isharder. Worse, there is no failsafe way of knowing whether an idea isgood. Here are 12 techniques you can try. Not every idea necessarily

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has to pass all of the following criteria. But if it doesnt pass most ofthem, you may wish to reconsider:

1. Is the idea internally consistent?

2. Is the idea empirically testable?

3. Do you have the means to test the idea?

4. Does the idea go beyond what is known?

5. Does the idea fit with what is known?

6. Are you enthusiastic about the idea?

7. Would you be able to persuade other people of the value of the idea?

8. Have you answered what you anticipate to be possible objections to youridea?

9. Is the idea the right size?

10. Are others besides yourself likely to find the idea interesting?

11. What do others whose opinions you value actually say about your idea?

12. Could you explain your id

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A Guide to Writing Scientific Papers for Students and Researchers s