ABSTRACT
When I arrived on the scene, psychology as a discipline had just recently become fully separated from philosophy. In an effort to be scientific, its leaders believed that obtaining dependable data was the most urgent task. One ofthe popular books of the day, a methodological text by Larrabee (1945) , was entitled Reliable Knowledge . However, it described psychological research to graduate students in such idealized, stereotypical terms that, if they actually did any research, they would see it bore little resemblance to Larrabee's description of the process . The reader was also enjoined to eschew armchair reasoning and employ suitable experimental research methods. It would take more research experience than I had before I would seriously entertain doubts about the laboratory experiment as the prime method of research. My transition from laboratory to field was a gradual one, accomplished in stages.
