A researcher's early publications tend to categorize her or him under some topical rubric, in my case “attitude change.” With continued publication one becomes recognized as a maven in the area and is asked to write reviews of its topics (such as those in this chapter), to apply basic research to the solution of practical problems (as illustrated in chapter 5), and to evaluate the relevant research of others, including manuscripts submitted to journals and research proposals submitted to granting agencies. I paid my dues in doing such reviewing even though it preempted a vast amount of time that could have been used for carrying out and reporting my own experiments. My reviews of manuscripts and proposals have yielded thousands of detailed letters to researchers about their work, perhaps improving that or subsequent work, or perhaps ending up discarded like the thousand lost golf balls or, Bartelby-like, the dead letters sent to dearest him who lives, alas, away.

ON PAYING ONE'S DUES AS REVIEWER

This review work generated a vast amount of prose that does not appear in print and yet deserves mention here because it constitutes my main pedagogic contribution. There were periods in my life when my manuscript and proposal reviewing reached awesome levels, especially during the decade from 1965 to 1975, during part of which I was editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (which received 650 manuscripts per year, 350 of which I reviewed personally with long, detailed letters to the authors) and at the same time I was also consulting editor to five other journals.