Methodological, statistical, conceptual, and related topics and issues in research with human participants are longtime interests. When I was a doctoral student, I studied and worked with social psychologist Robert E. Lana, who was doing empirical research using a design by experimental psychologist Richard Solomon to explore pretest sensitization in before-after experiments. I was fascinated both by the design and by Solomon's data analysis. Lana was specifically interested in sensitization when the pretest involved opinions or attitudes, and that deepened my interest in social psychology.

As our friendship and shared interests grew, we collaborated on books and several papers. I had become interested in B. F. Skinner's work, Clark Hull's on habit strength, and others. For my doctoral research, I designed an opinion change study based on experimental psychologist E. L. Thorndike's idea in the 1930s that bolstering effects of a reward (or "satisfying state of affairs") could spread forward and backward in time. It led to a program of research of my own, which in turn led to my meeting social psychologist William J. McGuire, another mentor and friend for life.

In 1963, Mimi and I were married. For our honeymoon, we drove to Norwood, Massachusetts, to begin my Boston career. Mimi had gone to Wheaton College in Norton for her degree in English. She had been editor of the college's newspaper, and now she was eager to edit my work. We would also coauthor a popular writing manual. For me, living in New England and teaching research methods and statistics and advising master's degree students was the beginning of an adventure. The early 1960s was when Bob and MaryLu Rosenthal began their Boston adventure, and it was when our long collaboration and lifetime's friendship began.

Scanned copies of Mimi's book on writing and two of the many books on which Bob and I collaborated are openly accessible here. Also openly available here are two additional books: Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay (coauthored with Gary Alan Fine; and my Paradigms in Transition. To download any of those five scanned books, simply click on the Images and Files tab (above), scroll down to any books of interest, and click on them.

Cheers.