Scott Alexander

Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine

9 insights saved from this article by @psychology

@psychology· Behavioral Science
Most introductory psychology is useful and trustworthy, even though some theories and findings failed to hold up.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
Kitty Genovese and the Stanford Prison Experiment remain historically important, but their famous descriptions are likely inaccurate.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
Widely hyped, counterintuitive findings collapse under replication more often than incremental extensions of established science.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
The replication crisis primarily hit social psychology, especially social priming, rather than psychology as a whole.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
Sasha Putilin’s failed replication found that synchronizing brain waves to an external stimulus did not improve learning speed.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
Replication problems affect economics, medicine, sociology, political science, and the hard sciences, with different responses across fields.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
Psychology includes psychophysics, psychopharmacology, psychometrics, personality, cognition, clinical work, development, and neuropsychology.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
Criticize social priming specifically. Treating every psychological subfield as equally discredited misses the evidence.
@psychology· Behavioral Science
Psychology has genuine flaws, but most of it consists of good ideas and dependable research.

More from Scott Alexander

See everything from Scott Alexander

Keep what you found in Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine

A free account saves any of these cards to your Collection, and Korva resurfaces them so you actually remember.