1.2 & 2.1 Social Psychology in Crisis

Question 1

What is science based off?

Answer 1

Methodology which allows it to be dynamic

Question 2

What are the ideals of the dynamic of science?

Answer 2

Confirmation of findings
Self-correcting original findings
Explanations are tentative
Explanations are rigorously evaluated

Question 3

Discuss self-corrected original findings

Answer 3

It is not an unchangeable element, but something where correction is a viable thing in its basis

Question 4

Discuss tentative explanations - what does this mean?

Answer 4

Willing to understand that their explanation may be faulty

Never accepting hypotheses, just rejecting

Question 5

Discuss rigorously evaluated explanations?

Answer 5

How we explain should be sensitive to the measurements

The measure should apply to the construct we are aiming to measure

Question 6

What was Jacob Cohen famous for?

Answer 6

Cohen conducted the first power analysis
Introduced a measure of the size of an effect
Cohen’s d - effect size

Question 7

What are the results of power analysis?

Answer 7

Very low power to detect small effects (18% power)
Modest power to detect medium effects (48% power)
Good power to detect large effects (83%)

Question 8

What do you do when you do a power analysis?

Answer 8

When you do a power analysis, you estimate the effect size and look for 80% power to detect that effect size

If you do not have this much power, you are wasting resources

Question 9

Why did publication bias occur regarding power?

Answer 9

Despite modest power, most articles did report significant results = showed publication bias

Publication bias = Published research only shows significant effects rather than insignificant

Question 10

What is predictive of power in an experiment?

Answer 10

Sample size

Question 11

What did Zajonc investigate?

Answer 11

Zajonc looked at the mere exposure effect:

Ps were asked to evaluate how positive the meaning of the Chinese symbols were
If they had seen the symbol before, Ps thought it had a more positive meaning even though they did not recognise that they had seen it before
However, only had 22 Ps

Question 12

What did Stapel, 2011 investigate?

Answer 12

Investigating whether a feeling affects us if we are unaware of it
Primed Ps emotions of fear/disgust using photos
Measures how many fear/disgust and -ve affect words they complete in their word completion task
Wants to establish if they were aware of that feeling

Question 13

What were the 2 conditions in Stapel’s (2011) study?

Answer 13

120ms presentation, can determine the emotion
40ms - super quick, cannot determine what the photo was - sensation picks up on this but does not translate to cognitive understanding

In the quick condition:
People show more words for the condition they were primed for

In the super-quick condition:
There is no specific word completion
If you were primed with fear, don’t use more fear words
However, if you were primed with either of those, you use more -ve affect words

Question 14

What was the DV of Stapel’s (2011) study?

Answer 14

Following photo presentation, looked at what they would choose afterwards: taste strange food or watch a scary move?

Feeling disgust shouldn’t want to eat food, feeling fear don’t watch the movie
Found this to be true only when they were conscious of the prime

Question 15

What was wrong with Stapel’s (2011) study?

Answer 15

The data was FAKED

Question 16

What was Bem (2011) investigating?

Answer 16

Wanted to find out if the paranormal exists
Studied precognition - our ability to predict the future

Used the idea that exposure to erotic photos is a rewarding experience v a control
P would choose a curtain to reveal a photo
The algorithm of the computer would kick in after the button had been pressed as to where the reward would be found

Question 17

What did Bem’s (2011) results show?

Answer 17

Found that people were better than chance at choosing the curtain that hid the erotic picture compared to non-erotic pictures
No rewarding experience, no sign of precognition

Question 18

What is wrong with Bem’s (2011) study?

Answer 18

The results mess up with everything we know about physics - the basic idea of linearity of time

Question 19

What did “Investigating Variation in Replicability” show?

Answer 19

10 effects replicated consistently

Question 20

What are QRP’s?

Answer 20

Questionable research practices

Question 21

Give an example of a QRP

Answer 21

Playing with Type 1 error after collecting data by:
Choosing DV's 
Changing sample size 
Using covariates 
Reporting selective conditions

Question 22

What is the first thing we can do to evaluate whether something happens by chance or not?

Answer 22

P hacking - based on the expected distribution of p values

Question 23

What does the R index focus on?

Answer 23

Power:

Looking at the actual power index of the expt
If the effect was found to be consistently low, then there is some indication that there are questionable research practices (QRPs) going on
When there is low power, unlike to find consistent findings

Question 24

What is the average power of psych experiments?

Answer 24

33%

Question 25

Why is there an issue with publication bias in terms of how many papers produce significant results?

Answer 25

Only 3/10 papers produce significant results

Question 26

What is HARKing?

Answer 26

Hypothesising after the results have been found

Misinforming the readers

Question 27

What else can suffer if we hyperfocus on replicability?

Answer 27

Discovery, internal validity, external validity, construct validity, consequentiality and cumulativeness

Question 28

What are the 6 principles of open science?

Answer 28

Open data
Open source
Open access
Open methodology 
Open peer review
Open educational resources

Question 29

What are boundary conditions?

Answer 29

Interesting to say when and how the effect comes to be compared to whether the effect actually exists or not

Question 30

How can we fix the issues faced with psychological research?

Answer 30

Focus on boundary conditions
Adversarial collaborations
Systematic issues - hiring, tenure, promotions

Question 31

What are adversarial collaborations?

Answer 31

Referring to bias

A scientific experiment conducted by two groups of experimenters with competing hypotheses

Aim: constructing and implementing an experimental design in a way that satisfies both groups that there are no obvious biases or weaknesses in the experimental design