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

许多研究者认为，种族和性别等社会身份是社会建构的范畴。这使研究人员能够根据这些身份的历史、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。这个项目考察了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，但许多社会心理学家将社会认同类别视为固定的、离散的对象，对它们进行实验研究。这些相同类型的研究还因为其他原因而受到批评，包括缺乏可复制性和易于捏造。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认同类别，这可能为解决这些批评提供有用的见解。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了影响。主要目的是：1)调查在实验中如何理解和利用社会认同群体的理论；2)分析社会心理学研究团队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影响范围。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中的过程和实践。它还将阐明纪律文化和培训如何影响社会认同的使用。访谈将有助于更深入地理解研究人员与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。对高被引用研究的跟踪和分析以及研究结果的公开存在(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，这个项目旨在改善社会认同的科学，并阐明通过科学实践产生的关于特定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智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.