It is too early to know whether the recent period of methodological introspection in psychological science, and the sciences in general, will lead to positive changes in practices. As with any revolution, there is the potential of moving backward. One problem that has been consistently acknowledged is the problem of incentives: what gets one attention […]
Academics by and large — at least, in my experience — strongly endorse norms of gender equality. The Psychonomic Society in particular has adopted a statement endorsing diversity and inclusion, which includes the explicit goal of “[w]ork[ing] towards strong representation in all aspects of the Society…that are not only gender balanced, but includes underrepresented groups.” […]
“Working memory” is a broad term that describes what we do with information that is consciously accessible. For instance, when students take notes in class, they are hearing the lecturer’s sentences, placing them in the context of what they know about the topic, and synthesizing both to form the note they ultimately write on the […]
The own-race bias in face processing is a well-known effect that refers to the fact that people generally find it easier to identify faces of people of their own race. Although the general effect has been known for decades, the source of the bias is not well understood. There are a number of broad explanations […]
“Progress is not possible without deviation.” — Frank Zappa The ways by which psychological science deals with methodological problems are many. There are bottom-up approaches such as peer-reviewed papers and workshops given by methodologists who advocate particular types of changes. There are also top-down approaches, such as funding agencies requiring data sharing or journals requiring […]
Since Herb Clark published his famous “Language as a fixed effect fallacy” in 1973, there has been a slow realization that standard techniques, such as ANOVA, are the wrong tools for the jobs that most psychologists tackle. The basic problem is that most psychological questions involve generalization beyond a sample of people and beyond a […]
“Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst.” —William Penn There are many dimensions of human behavior. Consider a typical recognition memory task in which a participant is given a list of words to remember. A little while later, suppose this participant is shown the word “bear” and asked whether it […]
A philosopher and a theologian are discussing their respective fields over coffee. The theologian dismisses philosophy: “You know what a philosopher is like?” he demands. “A philosopher is a man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.” The philosopher nods. “Maybe so,” he concedes, “but it takes a theologian to […]
One of the essential goals of psychology is generalization: describing ways in which people are similar. Of course, human behaviour varies across situations, times, and individuals, and hence often defies generalization. Ignoring this variability and assuming that people are the same can lead to improper generalizations about human behaviour. In a new paper in the Psychonomic Bulletin […]
As the Psychonomic Society gathers in Granada to for the 2016 International meeting, we were thinking of the people that can’t make it. Fortunately, with modern social media apps like Periscope, we can bring Psychonomics to you. If you are attending the meeting and you have a mobile phone, you can Periscope (or otherwise live stream) […]