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Psychological science has taken some body blows of late, with famous findings challenged by seeming failures to replicate.
The problem isn’t just that prolific researchers Brian Wansink and Derek Stapel faked data, or that David Rosenhan (of “On Being Sane in Insane Places” fame) and personality researcher Hans Eysenck have been accused of doing likewise. Every discipline has a few self-promoting deceivers, and more who bend the truth to their side.
And it’s not just critics arguing (here and here) that a few celebrated findings, such as the tribalism of the Stanford Prison and Robbers Cave experiments, were one-off, stage-managed happenings. Or that some findings of enormous popular interest—brain training for older folks, implicit bias training programs, or teaching to learning styles—all produce little enduring benefit.
The problem is that other findings have also not been consistently reproducible. The effects of teachers’ expectations, power posing, willpower depletion, facial feedback, and wintertime depression (seasonal affective disorder) have often failed to replicate or now seem more modest than widely claimed.
Moreover, the magnitude and reliability of stereotype threat, growth mindset benefits, and the marshmallow test (showing the life success of 4-year-olds who can delay gratification) are, say skeptics, more mixed and variable than often presumed.
Hoo boy. What’s left? Does psychology’s knowledge storehouse have empty shelves? Are students and the public justifiably dismayed? As one former psychology student tweeted: “I took a [high school] psychology class whose entire content was all of these famous experiments that have turned out to be total horse**bleep**. I studied this! They made me take an exam! For what?” To which others responded:
But consider:
So, yes: Let’s teach the importance of replication for winnowing truth. Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff. Let’s encourage critical thinking that’s seasoned with healthy skepticism but not science-scorning cynicism. And let us also be reassured that our evidence-derived principles of human behavior are overwhelmingly worth teaching as we help our students appreciate their wonder-full world.
(For David Myers’ other essays on psychological science and everyday life, visit TalkPsych.com; follow him on Twitter: @DavidGMyers.)
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