The Unbuilt Bench

Experimental Psychology on the Verge of Science

David Andrew Peterson

$57.95

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Columbia University Press
22 April 2025

Experimental psychology

Psychological experts are omnipresent across public and private spheres. Nonetheless, psychology has always been dogged by questions about its authority and validity. Psychological research has yielded relatively few unambiguous successes, and the widely publicized ""replication crisis"" has called much of the published literature into question. How closely akin to other experimental sciences is psychology, and should its findings be assessed by the same standards? What makes psychology distinct, and how do such differences affect understandings of the boundaries of science?

In The Unbuilt Bench, David Peterson argues that the scientific study of the mind and human behavior is a different sort of epistemic activity than the work of the natural sciences. Through fieldwork in ten experimental psychology laboratories and, as a comparison, a molecular biology lab, he explores the concrete practices of experimentation. Ongoing improvement of research practice and technology at the frontiers of data collection, a process Peterson calls ""bench-building,"" is essential to most sciences, since it opens new possibilities for experimentation. Psychology labs, however, largely lack an emphasis on bench-building. Instead, the discipline and its subfields gravitate toward different dimensions of scientific progress that focus on theory building and cultivation of outside audiences. An empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated exploration of experimental psychology and scientific practice, The Unbuilt Bench also offers new insight into the ethical questions that psychology's aims raise.

By: David Andrew Peterson
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9780231217323
ISBN 10: 0231217323
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 22 April 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Peterson is an assistant professor of sociology at Purdue University.

Reviews for The Unbuilt Bench: Experimental Psychology on the Verge of Science

In this highly original comparative study, Peterson digs deeply to discover and explain the restrictions and the benefits that psychology gets from its natural science aspirations. He offers a much-needed corrective to notions of progress and underdevelopment in science. -- Karin Knorr Cetina, author of <i>Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge</i> An arresting ethnography of several laboratories, The Unbuilt Bench reveals the struggles of knowledge production and identifies an underappreciated feature that psychological science might embrace to accelerate progress. “Bench building,” Peterson shows, is fundamental for increasing the capacity to accumulate insight. -- Brian Nosek, cofounder of the Center for Open Science