Social Psychology Network

Maintained by Scott Plous, Wesleyan University

Ralph L. Rosnow

Ralph L. Rosnow

Methodological, statistical, conceptual, epistemological, and related topics and issues in practices and/or interpretations of quantitative and qualitative research with human participants are longtime interests. Beginning in 1960, when I was a doctoral student in psychology at The American University in Washington, D.C., I had the good luck to work with psychologist Robert E. Lana (a "member" of what social psychologist William J. McGuire called, "the half-century cohort or generation of psychologists driven by its characteristic defining mode of 'wonder'"). Within this frame, I have been interested in (a) the nature of opinions and attitudes, and how they can be influenced merely by temporally contiguous (but logically unrelated) circumstances; (b) levels of interpersonal acumen (the ability accurately to comprehend other people's actions and intentions (drawing on psychologist Howard Gardner's seminal concept of interpersonal intelligence); (c) the nature of rumor and gossip (and other fascinating constructs).

In 1963, Mimi and I married, and we moved to Boston. Mimi had gotten her undergraduate degree at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., majoring in English, had been editor of her college newspaper, and now was eager to edit my writing. During this time, Bob Rosenthal was also beginning his Boston career. His doctoral training was in clinical psychology, and now he had become very interested in social psychology, statistical analysis of data, experimenter expectancy and volunteer subject bias. Turns out that he had written a conceptual paper on the volunteer subject, and I had conducted a little study influenced by Martin Orne's seminal work. I invited Bob to collaborate with me, and we soon became good friends and colleagues, with mutual interests in exploring artifacts in research.

My lifetime relationship with Bob led to a number of books. A few years ago, we decided we would ask several book publishers of our work whether they might be in an agreeable mood to let us have the rights of some of those books so that we could leave a legacy of open access. Scanned copies of two of our books are freely accessible here for downloading. They are (1) the third edition of our 842 page text, Essentials of Behavioral Research: Methods and Data Analysis, and (2) our little book, People Studying People: Artifacts and Ethics in Behavioral Research. Click the Images and Files tab (above) and scroll down to the book you want to download. (Both books are available on Harvard DASH and on Temple University library online.) When you open Images and Files, you will also see the titles of three additional books: (3) Writing Papers in Psychology (ninth edition), coauthored with Mimi Rosnow; (4) Paradigms in Transition: The Methodology of Social Inquiry; and (5) Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay, coauthored with Gary Alan Fine. They are also freely accessible for downloading. (If you are interested in Bob's meta-analysis book, you will find that book openly accessible on Harvard DASH., which also has some of our coauthored papers and papers with Donald Rubin.)

Primary Interests:

  • Applied Social Psychology
  • Attitudes and Beliefs
  • Interpersonal Processes
  • Research Methods, Assessment
  • Social Cognition

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Books:

Journal Articles:

  • 1989. Statistical procedures and the justification of knowledge in psychological science (R. L. Rosnow & R. Rosenthal). American Psychologist, 44, 1276-1284.
  • 1991. Inside rumor: A personal journey (R. L. Rosnow). American Psychologist, 46, 484-496.
  • 1994. Intelligence and the epistemics of interpersonal acumen (conceptual model and data) (R. L. Rosnow, A. A. Skleder, M. E. Jaeger, B. Rind). Intelligence, 19, 93-116.
  • 1995. "Some things you learn aren't so": Cohen's paradox, Asch's paradigm, and the interpretation of interaction. Psychological Science (R. L. Rosnow & R. Rosenthal), 6, 3-9.
  • 1996. Computing contrasts, effect sizes, and counternulls on other people's published data: General procedures for research consumers (R. L. Rosnow & R. Rosenthal). Psychological Methods, 1, 331-340.
  • 1997. Hedgehogs, foxes, and the evolving social contract in psychological science: Ethical challenges and methodological opportunities (R. L. Rosnow). Psychological Methods, 2, 345--356.
  • 2000. Contrasts and correlations in effect-size estimation (R. L. Rosnow, R. Rosenthal, & D. B. Rubin). Psychological Science, 11, 446-453.
  • 2003. Effect sizes for experimenting psychologists (R. L. Rosnow & R. Rosenthal). Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 57, pp. 221-237. Formula noted in Table 1 should read: 1/2*loge[(1+r)/(1-r)].
  • 2009. Effect sizes: Why, when, and how to use them (R. L. Rosnow & R. Rosenthal). Zeitschrift fur Psychologie/Journal of Psychology, 217(1), 6-14.

Other Publications:

Courses Taught:

  • Graduate Course in Data Analysis
  • Graduate Course in Research Methods
  • Graduate Seminar on Social Psychology
  • Undergraduate Course in Research Methods

Ralph L. Rosnow
Pennsylvania
United States of America

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