Not Sure about How to Proceed on Your Next Project? You're in Good Company

In a research class I teach, students decided that they wanted to go through all the steps of designing and carrying out their own original research projects. The first step, of course, is to choose a topic. This is hardly a cakewalk. I didn’t help matters by giving three examples off the top of my head, which gave the impression that I had invented them on the spot. The truth was that I had already been quietly wondering about these topics in my life. They were companions of mine: little unsolved puzzles that I kept in my pocket and removed only when sitting dazedly on the lawn tractor or toilet.

Image taken from News.Chicago.edu 

One student said that she was interested in gang behavior. She glanced nervously at me to make sure I didn’t disapprove, then added, “And parenting styles.”

            I nodded. It seemed like a perfectly fine topic to explore.

            “Like…” she continued, and stared out the window. “Like maybe permissive parents, you know…”

            “Uh huh,” I said.

            “Like… their kids are more likely to, you know, wind up… in bad social situations.”

            I waited.

            “Well…” she said, suddenly unsure of herself. “I know that a kid can become… um… delinquent... even when their parents were good or whatever. So, I don’t know.”            

This student went back and forth a few times testing out different variables in her head. It was like she was splashing around in the shallow end of a pool. Not really in any danger of drowning, but a little bit unsure and a little bit frustrated. Which is, in my opinion, a great place to be as a researcher (or writer/scholar more generally).

 

This student’s uncertainty reminded me first of myself. I have grown to love the period that follows the collapse of a worldview, belief, or value system. The latter help structure how we plan our lives, make decisions, and solve problems. But when these systems fall apart on us, we have no way of telling which way is forward or which way is up. It’s a frightful place to be—that is, until you realize that anything can happen. The world is brimming with possibility and potential. Something neat and original is always nearby.

 

When learning to be a researcher, a student must dispense of the previous type of knowledge claim to which they have grown accustomed—that is, “I know what I know because my professor told me.” Researchers, to be researchers, must realize that their professors (and other scientists and scholars) could be mistaken. The students must accept that they are alone responsible for the knowledge that they accept. This can be a lonely and unforgiving place to find yourself, but it is a fertile ground for novel and creative insights. 

 

It's my opinion that this period of uncertainty is given too little focus in organized learning. Higher education tends to value certainty and confidence—namely, correct answers to questions or apt demonstration of skills. We ignore that much of the process of, say, conducting an experiment, designing a study, or solving a unique problem is messy. It involves splashing around in the shallow end of a pool. Of the research I have published, I would estimate that I average somewhere between six and 12 months in this seemingly fruitless period of circuitous wonder. Using the above student’s topic as an example, I might start off thinking that I’m interested in parenting styles and gang activity. In six weeks of wondering about it (while mowing the lawn and tending to other aforesaid life business), I realize that I’m interested in parent availability and support. Then specifically autonomy support. Then how different types of children make use of autonomy support as given by parents. Then I drop it all and focus only on school counselors. In the end, I don’t know where I will land, but it’s never where I thought I would be.

 

Martin Seligman, who is the founder of contemporary Positive Psychology, is a good case study for this process. Seligman is more structured than I am, but his process for landing on Positive Psychology took a long time and a lot of quiet puzzling. As he describes it in Learned Optimism, his research as a graduate student at Pennsylvania led to his discovery of “learned helplessness” in dogs. At the time, psychological research relied on punishment and reinforcement to shape animal behavior. Too much punishment, Seligman observed, eventually led to dogs giving up. Electrocute a Spaniel enough times and they will eventually become a puddle of apathy on the laboratory floor. The results were impressive and robust. Reliably, six out of seven dogs would eventually give up when subjected to repeated shocks.

 

Seligman published his findings and presented them internationally. They are significant even today, since they effectively closed the door on behaviorism as the best theory for understanding psychology. But during a talk he gave in Europe, someone in the audience asked a crucial question that revealed that Seligman had missed the crucial detail of his study: “What about seventh dog? If you can explain why the seventh dog never gave up, then you will have your finding.” And he did. By answering this question about the seventh dog, Seligman opened the door to positive psychology.

 

I tell this story because it demonstrates how even the most brilliant and successful scholars and researchers don’t simply roll out of bed one day and decide to conduct a study. They live with certain (and likely personal) problems for months and years while insights are worked out more or less in the background. It really is too bad that we only give students 15 weeks to develop in any college course and give faculty only 5 years to develop their scholarship. We are so focused on output metrics that we lose sight of the process.