Doctoral Dissertation Research: Scientific Practice, Social Identity, and the Production of Social Knowledge: An Ethnographic Investigation of Experimental Social Psychology

博士论文研究：科学实践、社会认同和社会知识的生产：实验社会心理学的民族志调查

• 批准号: 2052989
• 负责人: Michelle Fine
• 金额: $ 2.91万
• 依托单位: CUNY Graduate School University Center
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-02-15 至 2023-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2052989&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Scientific; Practice

Many researchers consider social identities such as race and gender to be socially constructed categories. This allows researchers to understand these identities in light of their history, complexity, and relationships to each other. However, the practical application and use of social identities as socially constructed “objects of study” is uncommon in some fields of social science research. This project examines the research practices of experimental social psychologists. These researchers typically study the impact of the social environment on human behavior in a controlled laboratory setting. Despite some criticism, many social psychologists treat social identity categories as fixed, discrete objects to study them experimentally. These same types of studies are also criticized for other reasons, including lack of replicability and ease of fabrication. This project will investigate how social psychologists characterize and use social identity categories in their work, which may provide useful insights to address these critiques. Further, this research is important because the results of social psychology studies exert influence over decision-making in education, social and public policy, and the law. The primary objectives are to: 1) investigate the theories informing how social identity groups are understood and utilized in experiments, 2) analyze the methods research teams in social psychology use to select their focus of study; 3) offer first-hand accounts of how researchers’ identities affect their research products; and 4) analyze the impact and reach of social psychological experimental data. To meet these objectives, I will conduct ethnographic observations, interviews, and content analyses. Observations will allow documentation and analysis of social psychology researchers’ processes and practices in the laboratory. It will also illuminate how disciplinary culture and training affect the use of social identity. Interviews will lead to deeper understanding of the connection between researchers and their objects of study, and of how researchers view theories of social identity. Tracking and analysis of highly cited studies and the public presence of research findings (e.g., a lab’s social media postings) will form proxies of the societal impact of the research being studied. Ultimately, this project aims to improve the science of social identity and illuminate the ways information about certain social groups, which gets produced through scientific practice, shapes how those groups are characterized in public domains.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

许多研究人员认为，种族和性别等社会身份是社会构建的类别。这使研究人员能够根据它们的历史，复杂性和相互关系来理解这些身份。然而，社会身份作为社会建构的“研究对象”的实际应用和使用在社会科学研究的某些领域并不常见。本项目考察实验社会心理学家的研究实践。这些研究人员通常在受控的实验室环境中研究社会环境对人类行为的影响。尽管有一些批评，许多社会心理学家把社会身份类别作为固定的，离散的对象进行实验研究。这些相同类型的研究也因其他原因而受到批评，包括缺乏可复制性和易于制作。这个项目将调查社会心理学家如何在他们的工作中描述和使用社会身份类别，这可能会提供有用的见解来解决这些批评。此外，这项研究很重要，因为社会心理学研究的结果对教育，社会和公共政策以及法律的决策产生影响。主要目标是：1）调查社会身份群体在实验中如何被理解和利用的理论，2）分析社会心理学研究团队用于选择研究重点的方法; 3）提供研究人员身份如何影响其研究产品的第一手资料; 4）分析社会心理学实验数据的影响和范围。为了实现这些目标，我将进行人种学观察，访谈和内容分析。观察将允许记录和分析社会心理学研究人员在实验室的过程和实践。它还将阐明纪律文化和培训如何影响社会身份的使用。访谈将导致更深入地了解研究人员和他们的研究对象之间的联系，以及研究人员如何看待社会认同理论。跟踪和分析高被引研究以及研究成果的公开展示（例如，实验室的社交媒体帖子）将形成正在研究的研究的社会影响的代理。最终，该项目旨在提高社会认同的科学，并阐明通过科学实践产生的有关某些社会群体的信息如何塑造这些群体在公共领域的特征。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。