What do we know for sure about human psychology? (with Simine Vazire)

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Sep 11, 2024

Simine Vazire, a renowned professor and editor-in-chief of Psychological Science, dives into the evolution and challenges in psychology. She discusses the Big Five personality traits, emphasizing issues with self-reporting and the need for diverse data. The conversation highlights the replication crisis, questioning the integrity of research and the importance of transparent methodologies. Vazire also advocates for a cultural shift towards more rigorous practices in academia, addressing the ethical dilemmas in research publishing.

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INSIGHT

Psychology Progress

Psychology has made slow progress on "softer" topics like clinical, developmental, and social psychology.
However, there are success stories, such as the importance of the therapeutic relationship in therapy.

INSIGHT

Big Five Model

The Big Five personality model is widely accepted as a useful descriptive framework.
Debates continue about the number of factors, the use of traits, and other units of analysis.

ANECDOTE

Big Five Across Cultures

The Big Five personality traits show consistency across cultures, although variations exist.
Openness, for instance, sometimes gets renamed as "culture" due to cultural specificity.

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Read the full transcript here.

How much progress has psychology made on the things that matter most to us? What are some psychological findings we feel pretty confident are true? How much consensus is there about the Big 5 personality traits? What are the points of disagreement about the Big 5? Are traits the best way of thinking about personality? How consistent are the Big 5 traits across cultures? How accurately do people self-report their own personality? When are psychophysical measures more or less useful than self-report measures? How much credence should we lend to the concept of cognitive dissonance? What's the next phase of improvement in the social sciences? Has replicability improved among the social sciences in, say, the last decade? What percent of papers in top journals contain fraud? What percent of papers in top journals are likely unreplicable? Is it possible to set the bar for publishing too high? How can universities maintain a high level of quality in their professors and researchers without pressuring them so hard to publish constantly? What is the simpliest valid analysis for a given study?

Simine Vazire's research examines whether and how science self-corrects, focusing on psychology. She studies the research methods and practices used in psychology, as well as structural systems in science, such as peer review. She also examines whether we know ourselves, and where our blind spots are in our self-knowledge. She teaches research methods. She is editor-in-chief of Psychological Science (as of 1 Jan, 2024) and co-founder (with Brian Nosek) of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science. Learn more about her and her work at simine.com.

Further reading

"How Replicable Are Links Between Personality Traits and Consequential Life Outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project", by Christopher J. Soto
"Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies", by Joel, Eastwick, Allison, and Wolf
- Note from Spencer: I misremembered this study as trying to predict breakups when actually the variable they found they couldn't predict is change in relationship-quality over time. The authors said that "relationship-quality change (i.e., increases or decreases in relationship quality over the course of a study) was largely unpredictable from any combination of self-report variables".

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Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists

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