Viewing entries tagged
replication crisis
Ego-depletion theory quickly became one of the hottest concepts in psychology. “The idea really took social psychology by storm. It’s not an exaggeration to say that for a while it was at the center of the field,” says Michael Inzlicht, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Inzlicht himself was swept up in the ego-depletion furor and published work that supported its existence and significance.
“But then some cracks started to appear,” he says.
In 2011, an American psychologist named Daryl Bem proved the impossible. He showed that precognition — the ability to sense the future — is real. His study was explosive, and shook the very foundations of psychology. University of Toronto psychologist Michael Inzlicht was shocked to find that research papers in his own area of research no longer held water. They could not be replicated under the filter of more rigorous methodology.
In the last decade, behavioral scientists concluded that their field had taken a wrong turn. Efforts to root out false findings and bad practices spurred a crisis now poised to transform the landscape of psychology. Psychology Today profiles four scientists who are leading the charge.
"[Pre-registration] is really gratifying. It's frustrating, too, because you realize how hard science is," Michael Inzlicht says. "There are a lot of null results out there. I've got a lot of bad ideas, it turns out. But because I want the results I publish to lean toward the truth, I'm happy with that."
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.
A 28-year-old woman with a busy social life spends hours on end talking to her A.I. boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex.
Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said people were more willing to share private information with a bot than with a human being. Generative A.I. chatbots, in turn, respond more empathetically than humans do. In a recent study, he found that ChatGPT’s responses were more compassionate than those from crisis line responders, who are experts in empathy. He said that a relationship with an A.I. companion could be beneficial, but that the long-term effects needed to be studied.
“If we become habituated to endless empathy and we downgrade our real friendships, and that’s contributing to loneliness — the very thing we’re trying to solve — that’s a real potential problem,” he said.
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Understanding the effort paradox can help you reshape your relationship to exertion so that you commit to those hard but truly meaningful activities
“On the one hand, effort is costly,” says Michael Inzlicht, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, Canada. “On the other hand, it looks like we tend to value those things that we exerted effort for.” In a seminal 2018 paper, he and his colleagues dubbed this apparent conflict the “effort paradox”. Since then, psychologists have been figuring out the origins of the effort paradox and why some of us struggle with tasks that others might find easy. What they are finding is offering fresh insights not only into how you can get off the couch and into your running shoes, but also how you can learn more effectively, better empathise with others and even cultivate a more meaningful life. “[It seems] that if we can become…
University of Toronto professor Michael Inzlicht wanted to find out who's better at empathic responses: people, or ChatGPT. He explains to CBC Metro Morning how AI won the empathy contest.
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