On the value of exploratory methods in social judgment research

Justin F. Landy and Kaylee E. Hamblen

Chapter 4 in Research Handbook on Social Judgment, 2026, pp 62-73 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Psychological research, including in the area of social judgment, is dominated by hypothesis-driven, confirmatory methods. We argue that there is considerable value in alternative, exploratory methods that do not involve committing a priori to a hypothesis. In this chapter, we first define exploratory methods and briefly explicate three principal advantages they have: richness, flexibility, and rapidity. Then, we discuss four goals a researcher might have for which they can be especially useful: fine-tuning measures, procedures, and stimuli; conducting descriptive research; generating new hypotheses; and testing multiple hypotheses in parallel. We illustrate how exploratory methods can be used to accomplish each of these goals with examples from the general area of social judgment research. We then close by considering two possible objections to such methods. Overall, we think that exploratory methods are underappreciated and underutilized, and should be integrated into more research.

Keywords: Exploratory Methods; Social Judgment; Pilot Tests; Descriptive Research; Hypothesis Generation; Multiple Hypotheses (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035332533
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035332540.00011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23316_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().