Some of you might be asking why I’m bothering to do this. In the parlance of our time, some of you might be wondering if I am speaking in a braggadocious manner, showing off. If I am coming off this way, dear readers, please allow me this. In the past few months, I’ve revealed some skeletons in my closet, wallowed in self-pity, had fuck associated with my name, and divulged how I lost faith. So, please allow me this brief moment of pride.
More than having faith in individual findings, tools, or persons, practicing scientists need to have faith in the paradigm—the entire constellation of beliefs, values, and established ways of doing things. Without such faith, the entire enterprise falls apart. Without faith in past work, science can’t really make progress, needing to start anew with each new practicing scientist.
Science is brutal. It doesn’t care about you or me or anybody. Science is a killer, laying waste to our pet theories and dispatching our grandest ideas. Sometimes I hate science—that fucker doesn’t respect all my hard work!
During my dark moments, I feel like social psychology needs a redo, a fresh start. Where to begin, though? What am I mostly certain about and where can my skepticism end? I feel like there are legitimate things we have learned, but how do we separate wheat from chaff?
I would love to have a measure of replicability without bothering to replicate papers. I would also love a ranking of journals based on replicability; or a ranking of department’s rate of replicability for that matter. I just don't think such a measure exists just yet.
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Featured
Social psychologist Michael Inzlicht launched his academic career on the study of “ego depletion.” His research suggested it was real. Then came doubts.
Back in 1995, Claude Steele published a study that showed that negative stereotypes could have a detrimental effect on students' academic performance. But the big surprise was that he could make that effect disappear with just a few simple changes in language. In this podcast, Radiolab revisits the topic of stereotype threat in light of the roil of replications and self-examination in the field of social psychology. Radioab speaks to Michael Inzlicht about his own experiences with the topic, including why he now has doubts about the robustness of the phenomenon.
Collaborators
- Joshua Aronson, New York University
- Avi Ben-Zeev, San Francisco State University
- Elliot Berkman, University of Oregon
- Kirk Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University
- Daryl Cameron, Penn State University
- Belle Derks, Utrecht University
- Jennifer Gutsell, Brandeis University
- Greg Hajcak, Florida State University
- Eddie Harmon-Jones, University of New South Wales
- Jacob Hirsh, University of Toronto
- Cendri Hutcherson, University of Toronto
- Sonia Kang, University of Toronto
- Michael Larson, Brigham Young University
- Lisa Legault, Clarkson University
- Ian McGregor, University of Waterloo
- Marina Milyavskaya, Carleton University
- Sukhvinder Obhi, McMaster University
- Liz Page-Gould, University of Toronto
- Travis Proulx, Cardiff University
- Blair Saunders, University of Dundee
- Brandon Schmeichel, Texas A&M University
- Zindel Segal, University of Toronto
- Alexa Tullett, University of Alabama
University of Toronto
Organizations
- Association for Psychological Science
- Canadian Psychological Association
- Canada Foundation for Innovation
- International Social Cognition Network
- International Society for Research on Emotion
- National Academy of Education
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Social and Affective Neuroscience Society
- Social Psychology Network
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
- Society for Personality and Social Psychology
- Society for Psychophysiological Research
- Spencer Foundation
In Outside Magazine, an article describes a new paper by Michael Inzlicht, Amitai Shenhav, and Christopher Olivola on what they call the effort paradox. The effort paradox might help us understand why people do things like climb mountains, solve crossword puzzles, or shop at IKEA.
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