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research in psychology is to read any of the many excellent blogs devoted to summarizing and commenting on new findings. Among them are the following: • Child-Psych, http://www.child-psych.org • PsyBlog, http://www.spring.org.uk • Research Digest, http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com • Social Psychology Eye, http://socialpsychologyeye.wordpress.com • We’re Only Human, http://www.psychologicalscience.org/ onlyhuman You can also browse to http://www.researchblogging.org, select psychology as your topic, and read entries from a wide variety of blogs. 1.2.3 The Broader Purposes of Scientific Research in Psychology Available under Creative Commons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). People have always been curious about the natural world, including themselves and their behavior. (In fact, this is probably why you are studying psychology in the first place.) Science grew out of this natural curiosity and has become the best way to achieve detailed and accurate knowledge. Keep in mind that most of the phenomena and theories that fill psychology textbooks are the products of scientific research. In a typical introductory psychology textbook, for example, one can learn about specific cortical areas for language and perception, principles of classical and operant conditioning, biases in reasoning and judgment, and people’s surprising tendency to obey authority. And scientific research continues because what we know right now only scratches the surface of what we can know. Scientific research is often classified as being either basic or applied. Basic research in psychology is conducted primarily for the sake of achieving a more detailed and accurate understanding of human behavior, without necessarily trying to address any particular practical problem. The research of Mehl and his colleagues falls into this category. Appliedre search is conducted primarily to address some practical Chapter 1 9 problem. Research on the effects of cell phone use on driving, for example, was prompted by safety concerns and has led to the enactment of laws to limit this practice. Although the distinction between basic and applied research is convenient, it is not always clear-cut. For example, basic research on sex differences in talkativeness could eventually have an effect on how marriage therapy is practiced, and applied research on the effect of cell phone use on driving could produce new insights into basic processes of perception, attention, and action. KEY TAKEAWAYS • Research in psychology can be described by a simple cyclical model. A research question based on the research literature leads to an empirical study, the results of which are published and become part of the research literature. • Scientific research in psychology is conducted mainly by people with doctoral degrees in psychology and related fields, most of whom are college and university faculty members.