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. Over the years, as our friendship and shared interests grew, Bob Lana and I would eventually collaborate on books and papers, and it was Bob Lana who would later invite me to join him in creating the Ph.D. program in social psychology at Temple University.

As a student at American University, I had become interested in B. F. Skinner's work, Clark Hull's on habit strength, and others. I needed a topic for my doctoral dissertation. 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, which in turn led to my meeting social psychologist William J. McGuire, another mentor of mine and another friend for life. This early work of mine is summarized in an invited chapter I wrote (A "Spread of Effect" in Attitude Formation) for a 1968 book edited by A. G. Greenwald, T. C. Brock, and T. M Ostrom, titled Psychological Foundations of Attitudes, published in a general series that was edited by social psychologists Leon Festinger and Stanley Schachter.

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 in a new communication research program, chaired by Edward J. Robinson, was the beginning of an adventure. My world was expanding, and I was meeting fascinating people. Mimi and I would have remained in New England forever but for the cold winter weather. Ed Robinson and I edited an annotated book, Experiments in Persuasion (1967), that also was published in the Festinger-Schachter general series.

The early 1960s also was when Bob and MaryLu Rosenthal began their Boston adventure, and it was when our long collaboration and lifetime's friendship began. For over 50 years, Bob Rosenthal and I collaborated on studies, papers, and books. Two of the many books that we coauthored are openly accessible here. I was invited to teach his research methods course at Harvard University when he was gone for two semesters on sabbatical leave, and I made several new acquaintances. Scanned copies of five books are freely available here. To download them, click on the Images and Files tab (above), scroll down to the one you want, and click on it. They all are freely open for downloading. The five books are (1) Paradigms in Transition: The Methodology of Social Inquiry, third edition (Rosnow); (2) People Studying People: Artifacts and Ethics in Behavioral Research (Rosnow & Rosenthal); (3) Essentials of Behavioral Research: Methods and Data Analysis (Rosenthal & Rosnow; (4) Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay (Rosnow & Fine); (5) Writing Papers in Psychology, Proposals, Research Papers, Literature Reviews, Poster Presentations and Concise Reports, ninth edition (Rosnow & Rosnow).

Cheers.