Russell Hurlburt

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Russell T. Hurlburt (born c. 1945) is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the founder of the Descriptive Experience Sampling method, which aims to reveal the contents of consciousness over short spans of time. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Russell T. Hurlburt, the son of Richard G. Hurlburt and Ruth (neé Sherrard) Hurlburt, married Roberta Rochkar in 1967. [2] [3] He earned his Bachelors of Science in engineering in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University. He received a M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1967 from the University of New Mexico. [4] [5]

Hurlburt took up the study of psychology while playing trumpet at military funerals during the Vietnam War. [6] He was frustrated by the lack of attention psychology gave to everyday experiences and decided to pursue this. He earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, with an unpublished dissertation titled Self-observation and self-control, at the University of South Dakota. [4] [7]

Career

Hurlburt started developing Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) in the 1970s. [6] In 1973 he invented a beeper capable of delivering random beeps and patented it. [8] 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. Hurlburt reportedly grew frustrated at the limitations this placed on unveiling experience. He moved towards more in-depth qualitative interviewing. [9]

DES recommendations for how first-person reports could be more accurately obtained 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. [10]

When 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 approximately the next 25 years, he declined to participate in DES as a subject until the urgings of his students convinced him to try. [11]

Hurlburt is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. [6]

Selected publications

Books

Articles

Patent

Related Research Articles

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Descriptive Experience Sampling or DES is a method that aims to uncover the contents of a person's consciousness over the course of short intervals. To do this, practitioners use devices that deliver random beeps. Participants hear these beeps as they go about their daily life. After each beep, they jot down what was in their inner experience in the short moment directly before the beep. This could be a thought, feeling, ‘voice in their head’, or whatever else is present. After a certain number of beeps are collected, participants are given an interview following strict guidelines. DES holds that participants must be trained over the course of multiple days in order to faithfully observe what's in their experience. Findings often differ greatly from participant expectations and sometimes even from scientific consensus.

References

  1. Rothman, Joshua (2023-01-09). "How Should We Think About Our Different Styles of Thinking?". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X . Retrieved 2024-06-20.
  2. "Roberta Rochkar Married to Russell Thomas Hurlburt". The Plain Dealer. 1967-07-02. p. 84. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  3. "Ruth Sherrard Hurlburt". The Plain Dealer. 1988-10-02. p. 39. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  4. 1 2 Jaekl, Phil (13 September 2018). "The Inner Voice". AEON.
  5. "Comprehending Behavioral Statistics | Higher Education | Author Bio". he.kendallhunt.com. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  6. 1 2 3 Hoffman, Jascha (2009-12-22). "Taking Mental Snapshots to Plumb Our Inner Selves". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-06-13.
  7. Hurlburt, Russell T. (1980-06-01). "Validation and correlation of thought sampling with retrospective measures". Cognitive Therapy and Research. 4 (2): 235–238. doi:10.1007/BF01173654. ISSN   1573-2819.
  8. Petersen, Karen (2024-07-19). "Do you have an inner monologue? Here's what it reveals about you". National Geographic . Retrieved 2024-07-19.
  9. Fernyhough, Charles (2016). The voices within: The history and science of how we talk to ourselves (1st ed.). Great Britain: Basic Books. ISBN   978-0465096800.
  10. Wilson, Timothy de Camp; Nisbett, Richard E. (1978). "The Accuracy of Verbal Reports About the Effects of Stimuli on Evaluations and Behavior". Social Psychology. 41 (2): 118–131. doi:10.2307/3033572. ISSN   0147-829X. JSTOR   3033572.
  11. Hurlburt, Russell; Schwitzgebel, Eric (August 9, 2011). Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic. MIT Press (published August 19, 2011). p. 268. ISBN   9780262516495 . Retrieved 2024-06-20.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  12. Horgan, Terry; Timmons, Mark. "Introspection and the phenomenology of free will: Problems and prospects". Journal of Consciousness Studies . 18 (1): 180–205.

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