Debunking and Discovery in Social Psychology
Most reported social-psych findings fail replication. Debunking false claims is not second-class science; it clears a path when originals bury nulls.
Read Article →Category
social psychology
18 posts
Is social psychology self-correcting?
Social psychology has not self-corrected political bias. No hiring or journal fixes exist; “science is self-correcting” assumes machinery never built.
Read Article →Are minorities throttling their efforts?
Do diversity primes lead minorities to ease off before tests and promotions? Chronic strategic effort cuts could widen skill gaps; it needs experiments.
Read Article →The Leon Project
The Leon Project would warehouse social-science data and tagged hypotheses for live meta-analysis. Pooled samples could test effects in minority groups.
Read Article →What I’ve learned researching the emotion of envy
Recalled envy episodes beat canned lab inductions. Sister-to-sister rivalry is a raw elicitor. Measure the emotion by function, not just the everyday word.
Read Article →Minors, Lewandowsky, and Ceremonial Ethics
PLOS ONE forced a correction, but Lewandowsky kept 14-17-year-olds without prior IRB consent. UWA’s retroactive ethics blessing is ceremonial, not ethical.
Read Article →Ideologically-fueled research
Some psychologists pathologize non-leftists to resolve dissonance. System-justification and green “denial” items smuggle values into purported facts.
Read Article →Spending money on experiences instead of objects makes you happier
Experiences beat objects for 57% of people--and things won for 34%. Happiness headlines hide large minorities; the spend-on-trips advice is not universal.
Read Article →p-values banned
Basic and Applied Social Psychology banned p-values and confidence intervals. Descriptive stats outrank inferential ones; a small p is not an effect.
Read Article →37.5%
Inbar and Lammers: 37.5% of social psychologists would discriminate against conservative job candidates. On committees that rate is likely career-ending.
Read Article →Hot off the presses
Two JPSP papers: Finkel et al. weigh false-positive reform against misses; Waytz et al. find that mental simulation raises reported meaning in life.
Read Article →SPSP; data
SPSP’s integrity symposium is a draw. Student samples weaken claims; invalid methods make data cheap. Field and workplace samples would travel farther.
Read Article →Sweet things
Latent class models beat linear correlations by keeping respondent profiles intact. Also needed: self-esteem scales that do not smuggle in narcissism.
Read Article →On fraud
Scientific fraud is deception, not only fake cells in a freezer. False titles the authors’ own spreadsheet refutes meet standard falsification tests.
Read Article →Structure of Malpractice 1: The Frog Jump
The frog jump: correlate a lopsided agree/disagree scale, then report the empty opposite pole. Linear r on dichotomous items can invert the truth.
Read Article →New Yorker article
Konnikova’s New Yorker piece frames the BBS paper as anti-Republican bias. The deeper problem is one academic subculture’s assumptions in methods.
Read Article →Your mileage may vary
Smiling raised happiness for some people and lowered it for others. Main effects mislead; a significant r can ride on a small slice of a sample.
Read Article →Reality is what it is
Unflattering findings about conservatives are not automatically invalid. Reality is whatever it is; Eidelman et al. looks methodologically clean.
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