Social priming studies come from 0.05% to 0.2% of psychologists
Social psychology fills one chapter out of 16 in OpenStax Psychology, 2nd edition.
Astral Codex Ten · Psychology Research Is Mostly FineSocial priming studies come from 0.05% to 0.2% of psychologists.
That work, which writer Scott Alexander describes as "the study of how seemingly trivial interventions can have outsized effects on behavior," sits inside social psychology, which makes up 10% to 20% of the field. Most of the replication trouble was concentrated there, in work on power poses, nudges, stereotype threat, the Stanford Prison experiment, and portion size studies, though Alexander notes that bad work exists elsewhere too.
In OpenStax Psychology, 2nd edition, social psychology is chapter 12 of 16. The other 15 chapters cover the rest of the field, which Alexander calls "comparatively innocuous."
Questions people ask
What does a social priming study actually look like?
Social priming studies tested whether small, often unconscious cues could sharply change behavior, like whether holding a warm drink makes people judge strangers as friendlier, or seeing words about old age makes people walk more slowly. Many of the most famous examples did not hold up when other labs tried to repeat them.
What was the replication crisis?
Starting around 2011, researchers found that many famous findings in psychology, and in other fields, could not be repeated. Large efforts that redid dozens of studies found that only about one-third to one-half replicated, with social psychology doing especially poorly.
Does that mean the other 99% of psychology is solid?
No field is immune to bad studies, and psychology has plenty outside social psychology. But much of the rest involves more incremental work on sensation, memory, child development, mental illness, and treatment, which tends to replicate better than splashy, counterintuitive claims.