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 further deepened my interest in social psychology. Bob Lana and I became friends, and we talked about epistemological facets of psychological research. As my interests grew in how social scientists make sense of experiential events, our friendship grew and we began collaborating on ideas. I had become interested in B. F. Skinner's work, Clark Hull's work on habit strength, and on and on, and I think I was always fascinated by numbers. When I was a kid, growing up in Baltimore, I accidentally fell into a pickle barrel in a deli on Lombard Street when I was mesmerized by the lightning speed of the man behind the counter summing numbers in his head.

For my own doctoral research, I designed and conducted an opinion change study based on experimental psychologist E. L. Thorndike's idea in the 1930s that the bolstering effect 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 friend for life. In 1963, Mimi and I were married. For our honeymoon, we drove to Norwood, Massachusetts, to begin my Boston career at Boston University as an assistant professor in a new master's degree program in the School of Public Relations and Communication. Mimi had graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, when Wheaton was still all women. She majored in English, was editor of the college paper and now was eager to edit my work. For me, living in New England and teaching research methods and statistics and advising master's degree students was the beginning of an adventure. It was also when Bob Rosenthal and I began our long collaboration and a lifetime's friendship. For over 50 years, we shared ideas and collaborated on books, articles, and some empirical research. Scanned copies of two of our co-authored books are openly accessible here for free downloading. They also are accessible online at Harvard DASH, as is Bob's meta-analysis book.

To access and download those scanned copies of our two co-authored books and three additional books not at DASH, simply click on the
Images and Files tab (above), and scroll down to any books of interest, and click on it.