What do we know for sure about human psychology? (with Simine Vazire)
Sep 11, 2024
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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.
Developing a culture of scrutiny and transparency within psychological research is crucial to combatting oversimplification and ensuring authentic progress.
The podcast underscores the necessity for improved research practices, such as pre-registration, to enhance transparency and replicability in psychology.
The discussion on personality psychology reveals significant contributions through frameworks like the Big Five model, emphasizing cautious scientific claims.
Deep dives
The Importance of Scrutiny in Psychology
The conversation highlights the critical need for developing a culture of scrutiny and transparency in psychological research. With the growing complexity of psychological topics such as mental health and happiness, the temptation to hastily present findings can hinder deep understanding. The urgency of public demand for conclusive answers often leads researchers to oversimplify results, prioritizing catchy narratives over rigorous scrutiny and careful analysis. This impedes meaningful progress in the field that relies upon careful validation of findings and methods.
Progress in Psychological Research
The podcast discusses areas where concrete advancements have been made, particularly in psychophysics, a subfield that has shown steady progress through methodical experimentation. Cognitive and clinical psychology also reveal success stories, with findings around the therapeutic alliance indicating that the quality of the therapist-client relationship plays a significant role in successful outcomes. In contrast, the softer aspects of psychology, which often deal with relational or social dynamics, remain more ambiguous and less likely to yield clear results. This disparity showcases the complexity of psychological phenomena that resist simplistic conclusions.
Challenges of Causal Research
The discussion touches on the inherent difficulties in determining causality in psychological research, especially within softer domains like social or clinical psychology. Causal relationships can be elusive, leading to varying interpretations of therapy effectiveness and the factors that contribute to mental health. The nuance surrounding therapeutic approaches and the danger of overgeneralizing leads to skepticism about existing research efficacy when specific methodologies are not observable or replicable. This echoes a broader concern in psychology regarding the validity of claims and the necessity for rigorous methodologies.
The Need for Better Research Practices
One key theme in the conversation is the necessity for better research practices, including pre-registration of study designs to improve research transparency and reliability. The importance of adopting robust standards for methodology and analysis was emphasized, particularly in response to the replication crisis faced by psychological research. Facilitating a shift from prioritizing flashy or easily publishable results to focusing on accurate and replicable findings is essential. Consequently, there is growing recognition that current pressures can lead to questionable research practices that compromise the integrity of the field.
Personality Psychology's Unique Position
The podcast delves into personality psychology, highlighting its unique position in the broader fields of psychology. While it often lacks the high-stakes attention of clinical and social psychology, personality research has made significant contributions, particularly through frameworks like the Big Five model. This model promotes standardized measures that facilitate communication across studies, although debate exists about its comprehensiveness. Personality psychology's cautious approach to scientific claims and focus on descriptive rather than causal analyses offers a different perspective that could benefit other psychology domains.
Ethics in Research and Reporting
Ethical considerations in research and reporting were central to the podcast discussion, particularly around the concept of importance hacking, where findings are inflated beyond their actual significance. This tendency raises serious concerns regarding the integrity of published research and highlights the pressing need for reviewers to be vigilant about accurate framing. Transparency within research practices can combat misleading presentations of findings and promote more reliable science. Establishing stricter ethical expectations around how research is conducted and reported is crucial for maintaining public trust in psychological science.
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.
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".
