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Revision as of 17:14, 28 March 2024


Russell Hurlburt or Russell T. Hurlburt is the founder of the Descriptive Experience Sampling method. The goal of the method is to reveal the contents of consciousness over short spans of time. Participants receive randomized beeps as they go about their daily lives. They jot down whatever was in their inner experience directly before the beep. At the end of each day of sampling, they are given an interview aimed at untangling their direct experience from their biases and preconceptions.[1] [2]

Career

Hurlburt earned his Bachelors of Science in Engineering in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University in 1966. He received a M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1967 from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D in clinical psychology in 1976 from the University of South Dakota.[3][4]

Hurlburt took up the study of psychology while playing trumpet at military funerals during the Vietnam War.[5][6] He was frustrated by the lack of attention psychology gave to everyday experiences and decided to pursue this.

He started developing DES in the 1970s.[7] In 1973 he invented a beeper capable of delivering random beeps and patented it in 1976. [8][9] Hurlburt refined the method of interviewing about experience that occurred before random beeps. This continued over the next decades, with the help of frequent collaborators such as Christopher Heavey, Sarah Akther, and Alek Krumm. Hurlburt and collaborators wanted a method to examine inner experience while limiting memory errors, biases, heuristics, and self-schema-based preconceptions that can distort first-person reporting.

DES complies with Nisbett and Wilson’s recommendations for how first-person reports could be more accurately obtained.[10] These include 1) interrupting a process at the moment it is occurring, 2) alerting subjects to pay careful attention to their cognitive process, and 3) coaching them in introspective procedures.

Hurlburt's research started with the use of the beeper device in naturalistic settings. Originally he gave participants a questionnaire with a limited range of options. This facilitated quantitative comparison.[11] But reportedly, Hurlburt grew frustrated at the limitations this placed on unveiling experience. He moved towards more in-depth qualitative interviewing.[12] He studied the work of Husserl and Heidegger and drew inspiration from phenomenology.

When first refining the method, Hurlburt at first sampled himself extensively for around a year. He then concluded that it would be better not to use himself as a subject. Phenomena that he observed in himself he might more easily attribute to others. For the next 25 years or so he declined to participate in DES as a subject until the urgings of his students convinced him to try.[13]

While continuously refining the DES method, Hurlburt has written a number of books on the subject. He also wrote a textbook on statistics. Hurlburt is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.[14] Summaries of his research can be found in publications like the New York Times [15] and the New Yorker.[16]

Books

Hurlburt and co-authors have written a number of papers about the DES method and key findings.[17] They've also developped an interactive website for DES training [18] as well as a video series with full transcripts, discussion, and guidelines for data analysis.[19] Much of the work on DES exists in monographs as detailed here.

Sampling normal and schizophrenic inner experience (1990)

This book introduces Descriptive Experience Sampling.[20] Roughly half of the book describes DES with schizophrenic participants. The other half describes DES with non-schizophrenic participants. Many chapters are case studies, describing the experiential landscape of an individual. These types of case studies have become a hallmark of Hurlburt's writing on DES. They permit an examination of individuals before any generalizations are made. After a number of case studies are presented, Hurlburt does draw some conclusions about schizophrenia.

For schizophrenic participants, images were experientially important, as was color in these images. Images and inner hearing could exist more concretely than for non-schizophrenic participants—for example one woman heard voices of beings she called 'the gods'. Images or visual sensory awareness could often be "goofed up"—scratched, warped, or otherwise distorted. Hurlburt speculates that schizophrenia may be more a disorder of distorted perception than of disorganized association.

Another inference based on interview analysis was that decompensating schizophrenics (in the midst of severe episodes) may sometimes have no inner experience at all.

Sampling inner experience in disturbed affect (1993)

Main article: Descriptive Experience Sampling § Use for psychopathology

This book describes DES research concerning a number of psyciatric diagnoses—bulimia nervosa, anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder.[21] These are presented in the form of case studies with subsequent interpretation.

One particularly salient finding relates to bulimia nervosa. These participants had what Hurlburt and section co-author Stephanie Doucette call "fragmented multiplicity of experience. A great deal elements could be present simultaneously.[22] For example:

Ashley had gone into her bedroom to "brood" (lay on her bed and think about what was going on with her). At the moment of the beep she was thinking about the "games" she plays with other people, and was saying to herself in Inner Speech, "What games I play!" These words were said with a bemused feeling and inflection, but it was as if the words were being spoken into a tape machine-she was speaking the words to herself, but not hearing herself speak them.

These inner-spoken words did not occupy the center of Ashley's attention; instead, most of her attention was divided between many individual, simultaneous, Multiple (Experienced) Unsymbolized Thoughts. If these thoughts were translated into words, they might resemble the following (but again it should be noted that these thoughts did not have the linear form of verbal thoughts, thus a verbal rendering is in many ways inadequate): "How lonely I am"; "How much I would like to be held or touched"; "How often I would like to be held or touched"; "I wouldn't let Winston touch me"; "I'm making Winston like my father"; "What I want most from Winston I won't allow"; "I allow sex as long as there's no affection"; "I allow affection as long as there's no sex"; "How outrageous I am at work-bawdy"; "How I imply at work that I'm sexy at home"; "How I project an image of earthy sensuality"; "How I know I'm lying when I do that"; "I know I want to be touched"; and "I know I won't let myself be touched."[23]

Participants without bulimia generally only have one or a few elements at a time. Bulimic participants could often have more than a dozen. And these could intensify before purging. This finding is not described elsewhere in psychological literature.[24] Also, bulimic participants were unaware of this quality of their experience. Hurlburt and Doucette identify the importance of DES for overcoming participant and researcher presuppositions and uncovering aspects of experience that other psychological methods miss.

Comprehending behavioral statistics (1994)

This textbook does not relate to DES but does incorporate pedagogy inspired by the variability of individual experience that DES reveals. The textbook follows a "multiple learning approach" with sections meant to engage those who learn best by reading, listening, visualizing, doing, or computing. It also includes a purportedly novel method of 'eyeball-estimation' which can be used to create more accurate heuristics and sanity checks.

Exploring inner experience: the Descriptive Experience Sampling method (2006)

Main article: Descriptive Experience Sampling § Method

This book mainly focuses on the intricacies of the DES method itself.[25] It contains detailed instructions on the beep collection process and the interview (including an interview transcript). It gives detail on how to code participant samples into various categories of experience. It also discusses the validity of DES.

Describing inner experience? Proponent meets skeptic (2007)

Here, Hurlburt and co-author Eric Schwitzgebel deal with concerns of methodology regarding DES and first-person reporting.[26][27] They debate whether we can trust the validity of DES. Schwitzgebel is skeptical and thinks that all first-person reporting is distorted by biases and memory issues.

Hurlburt conducts DES with a participant Melanie. Schwitzgebel at times questions Melanie as well. The three of them then discuss the method. Some of this discussion includes Melanie. Some of it occurs between Hurlburt and Schitzgebel after the interview.

For example, one methodological debate concerns a sample where Melanie was innerly repeating the phrase "nice long time".[28] According to Melanie, this phrase repeated multiple times but these repetitions occurred instantaneously. Schwitzgebel doubts this report, holding as physical impossible for something to be repeating and be simultaneously. Hurlburt writes that we should suspend our conceptions about physical reality when examining inner experience, which often has its own reality.

Other discussions relate to level of detail in mental imagery, how to trust the participant's note-taking process, how to trust unusual claims, and how to detangle metaphorical descriptions from literal ones.

The book was the subject of a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Responses were largely appreciative although occasionally critical, for example, arguing that first-person methods could more fully examining the role of time in experience [29] or the role of agency.[30]

Investigating pristine inner experience: Moments of truth (2011)

This book functions as an overview of the DES method and key findings.[31] Throughout the text, Hurlburt introduces various constraints for how to do DES properly. Some of the book sections clarify methodology, for example how to judge the accuracy of patient reporting based on their use of subjunctification—words like 'maybe,' 'kindof,' or other markers of removal from direct experience.

Other sections look at case studies, for example of a professional guitarist Ricardo Cobo. Cobo's experience was characterized by, among other aspects, "autonomous multiplicity".[32] He could have a number of different elements in awareness simultaneously. This elements could alter independently of each other, some growing in prominence, others diminishing, or fading out of experience. Hurlburt compares this bulimic participants who also frequently had multiple elements in experience. But Cobo's experience is different because of the independence of his elements. Hurlburt determines that for Cobo, each element had its own perspective. Whereas bulimic participants had one overarching sense of self that simultaneously encompassed multiple elements. Hurlburt speculates that Cobo's multiplicity may have a role in the virtuosity required of his profession—with, for example, right and left hands performing different actions.[33]

Hurlburt also expounds on the epistemology of DES. He writes that it is not 'subjective' in many uses of the term—it is not vague, impressionistic, or unambiguously measured. Hurlburt doesn't call the method objective, but writes that in many uses of the term, DES qualifies—for instance its relation to actual conditions and phenomena.

Hurlburt also agrees with many of B.F. Skinner's arguments against cognitivism. Skinner is often credited with launching a turn away from investigating inner life. But despite Hurlburt's interest in the mind, he actually agree's with Skinner's criticisms. Hurlburt writes "DES does not discuss mentalisms, does not discuss associations, ideas, concepts, identity, will, causation, preference, intention, knowledge, propositions, representation, encoding, storage, retrieval, or cognitive rules."[34] These mentalisms aim to describe inner life but aren't directly observed. They are often the product of generalizations and theory. DES on the other hand aims to directly observe experience. Hurlburt cites Skinner as one of the five people most influential to his thinking.

A passion for specificity: Confronting inner experience in literature and science (2016)

In this book,[35] Hurlburt and co-author Marco Caracciolo further explore the epistemology of DES. Marco Caracciolo is a literary theorist and argues that such research needs different aims than those of DES. For example, Marco Caracciolo is interested in readers' experiences of narratives. Hurlburt argues that there's no such thing as an 'experience of narrative.' There is only individual experience while reading, built up through a succession of nows. Hurlburt conducts DES with Caracciolo and with participants while reading. For one participant, nearly every sampled moment involved experience of a single word with no broader understanding of the text. Caracciolo argues that such data is not useful for literary theory. Hurlburt argues that literary theory (and other fields) rely on false generalizations about the reality of experience.

Hurlburt expounds his view that most descriptions of experience do not describe actual phenomena. They don't describe observable events. This includes mentalisms like hunger. To Hurlburt, we have a false sense that we are referring to a common, unified experience when talking about hunger. But sampling reveals a variety of quite different experience. Hurlburt uses examples such as a sample where what a participants means by 'hunger' is a mental image of himself with an exaggerated pained and hungry expression.

Notes

  1. ^ Hurlburt & Heavey, 2006
  2. ^ Rothman, 2023
  3. ^ Hurlburt, 2022
  4. ^ Weintraub, 2018
  5. ^ Hoffman, 2009
  6. ^ Pollan & Hurlburt, 2024
  7. ^ Hoffman, 2009
  8. ^ Pollan & Hurlburt, 2024
  9. ^ Hurlburt, 1976
  10. ^ Hurlburt & Heavey, 2006
  11. ^ Hurlburt, 1980
  12. ^ Fernyhough, 2016
  13. ^ Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel 2007, p. 268
  14. ^ Hurlburt, 2022
  15. ^ Hoffman, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22prof.html
  16. ^ Rothman, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/16/how-should-we-think-about-our-different-styles-of-thinking
  17. ^ Hurlburt, 2023(b), http://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu//#papers
  18. ^ Hurlburt, 2023(a), http://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/desimp/labs/lab0/lab0.html
  19. ^ Hurlburt, 2022, http://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/lena/do_I_have_internal_monologue_sampling.html
  20. ^ Hurlburt, 1990
  21. ^ Hurlburt, 1993
  22. ^ Weintraub, 208
  23. ^ Hurlburt, 1993, p. 136
  24. ^ Weintraub, 208
  25. ^ Hurlburt & Heavey, 2006
  26. ^ Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel, 2007
  27. ^ Rothman, 2023
  28. ^ Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel, 2007, p. 210
  29. ^ Sutton, 2011
  30. ^ Horgan & Timmons, 2011
  31. ^ Hurlburt, 2011
  32. ^ Hurlburt, 2011, p. 258
  33. ^ Hurlburt, 2011, p. 282
  34. ^ Hurlburt, 2011, p. 199
  35. ^ Caracciolo & Hurlburt, 2016

References


Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Category:University of New Mexico alumni Category:University of South Dakota alumni

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