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the programs that have already been developed, such as SALT or biofeedback.
After all, if a program works, in a pragmatic sense it does not matter what
the causal agent is, be it expectations or the treatment as originally
conceptualized. The decision of whether to pursue these programs depends in
part on the cost of the program compared to the cost of us ing a program
specifically designed to enhance expectations. It also depends on how well the
expectancy effects generalize from the laboratory to applied contexts, a
question that needs to be addressed empirically.
Conclusion
The quest for the enhancement of human performance has captured the
imaginations of men and women for centuries. Much progress has been made as
our approaches have become more scientific and theoretically based. But as the
reviews in this paper have shown, much work remains to be done. In many of the
areas covered here, we cannot at this point conclude with confidence that the
treatment works, and we have pointed out in each section ways in which
research designs could be improved for future studies. At the same time,
however, enough data exist in terms of anecdotal evidence and the studies
conducted so far to indicate that most of these domains are well worth further
exploration. Continued research on these techniques would also help to specify
those variables that are critical in enhancing performance, variables that
could be then be incorporated in other more cost-effective training packages.
A final thought concerns the attitude of researchers and critics in these
areas. When dealing with controversial areas such as the five covered in this
paper, it is best to adopt a skeptical but open attitude. People's reactions
to these areas vary across a long continuum, and we feel that reactions at
both tails of this distribution are not helpful. Advances in our understanding
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of these areas are not likely to be made by proponents of an area who are so
convinced of the utility of a technique that they do not entertain the
possibility of negative results, or by critics who are so convinced that a
phenomenon does not exist that they do not accept positive results. We support
the spirit of the meta-analytic approach, an approach that says "show me the
data" and does not make premature judgments either about "what is surely true"
or about "what cannot possibly be e t'
Representative terms from entire chapter:
empirically advances
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