3017 Social Psychology in Crisis, Existential, and Genetic

Describe the history of social psychology through Cohen's research

Jacob Cohen (1962): The first power analysis of psychological research

Created Cohen's d → effect size

Low power/effect (18%), medium power/effect (48%), good power/effect (83%)

Wrote a review journal of abnormal social psychological research

Publication bias: editors are more likely/comfortable to submit successful research compared to unsuccessful research

* It is not about the content or quality but the results

Describe the antecedents and sparks that followed Cohen's research

Stapel (2011): studied emotions

Prime fear/disgust using flickering photos

Do we have feelings we are unaware of but affect us

Bem (2011): research focused on precognition (the phenomenon/ability to predict the future more than chance would suggest)

Predict where the erotic picture is located (compared to the non-erotic picture)

After the Ps make a choice, the computer randomly assigns a picture location

Ps correctly identified the erotic picture location significantly more than the 50% predicted chance rate (across 9 studies)

Proves precognition; time is not linear (disproved)

Describe the fallout from Bem (2011)

Wagenmakers et al. (2011): differentiating between exploration v confirmation

Exploration allows a full range of possibilities, confirmation is honed into one specific outcome

Bayesian test: probability of the null hypothesis being correct

Focus on the fault processes through peer reviews and self-correcting science (requires repetition)

Focus on systemic aspects: status and achievement measures, rewards e.g. publications

Discuss the research that proves/disproves the replicability of research

36 independent labs replicating a single original study

Investigated variations in replicability → 10/13 effects were replicated consistently

Open science replicated three journals 60 years later to estimate the reproducibility of psychological science

Effect size was halved from the initial publication

97% significant results in the initial publication → only 36% in the replicated publication

Weak support for replicability

Define replicagate and identify the 3 main focuses/arguments

Replicagate describes the state of social psychology in that studies are not being properly peer-reviewed or carried out in a scientific way.

1. Flawed Methodologies and Questionable Research Practices (QRPs)

2. Low Statistical Power and Inflated Effect Sizes

3. A Call for Open Science and Systemic Reform

Describe Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) such as false positive psychology and p-hacking

False positive psychology: undisclosed flexibilities in data analysis allows presenting anything as significant

Researchers' degrees of freedom

P-hacking: changing the likelihood of the p-value through various repeated testing and only use significant results

For simulations with no population effect → manipulate the variables to repeated samples of 5% to achieve a significant effect

Choosing DVs, sample size, using covariates (controlling for non-relevant variability), reporting selective conditions

Listening to "when I'm 64" song makes Ps feel younger

Opposes priming effects

Only when p-hacking sample size and covariates

Describe replication findings of the Many Lab Reproducibility Project (MLP)

Open science collaboration (OSC) replication studies drew samples from different population samples → Do not share the same stereotypes

35% replication for the MLP compared to the 85% replication rate in the original studies

Aggregating the data increases the chance of replication

Fault method used by OSC

Endorsed protocols produced a 4x higher replication rate

The original study greatly underestimates the effect size; however, only 5% replicated studies found a larger effect size

Many failed replications are unable to show significant effects

What are the 6 principles of open science ODF

Open data: all researchers can access the data to allow others to double check

Open source: allowing public access to code

Open access: allowing researchers to publish their work to the public

Open methodology: complete report of all methodological reports to create the method and design → allowing replications

Open peer review: engaging reviewers and experts in the field

Open educational resources

Allows direct replications and pre-registrations: Increases trust that the p-value is valid

What are the recommendations in response to replicagate

Focus on boundary conditions: when and how something happens

Adversarial collaborations: Researchers with conflicting research come together to test each other's theories

Use of overarching theory: to make sense of scientific endeavours

Publications are currency → cheating may be rewarding

Create systems that make fraud hard: normative transparency, incentives

Describe the power poses study (Carney et al., 2010)

Testosterone, hormones, risk-taking increased when held a pose for longer (n=42)

Replicated by multiple people with larger effect sizes → disproven

P-hacking evidence: selective reporting were solely responsible for the significant effects that are published

The distribution of p's is indistinguishable from what is expected when average effect size is zero

Confounds (gender, winning, blinding) were not accounted for

Sample size was small, flimsy data, excluded some results (outliers), inconsistent results, self-report DVs were p-hacked

Be familiar with Terror Management Theory (TMT)

Human behaviour is largely driven by the terror/anxiety/existential fear of our own mortality

Our ability to reflect on the future is an outcome of us being highly intelligent thinkers

→ Self consciousness = awareness of mortality

Failing the instinct of self-preservation

* Kierkegaard: the most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have

Becker: Understanding different cultures' dealings with death

Culture is a response to the experience of death anxiety

Describe mechanisms to combat the salience of mortality

1. Proximal: conscious thoughts → deny vulnerability, distract yourself

2. Distal: non conscious thoughts → uphold self-esteem and world-view defence

→ Self preservation/living on through contributions to culture

Describe experiements studying the mortality salience prime

Sent mortality salience primes to judges then gave them distractor items (distal)

Judges in the mortality-salient condition assigned the defendant (prostitute) a much higher bond than judges in the control condition (MS / control = $455 and $50)

All values are held closer → violations of moral perceptions/culture are held to a higher standard

Ps read either a pro-nationalist or anti-nationalist passage; measured agreement with the passage

Pro: MS > Control; Anti: MS < Control

Shown commercials or videos about death → distraction → "coff_ _" word completion

Ps mortality primed filled in coffin, while control Ps filled in coffee

Death anxiety and mental illnesses (OCD) → high relation in both subjective and objective measures

Not just death anxiety of yourself but of others/loved ones too

Compulsive washers → mortality salience primed or control

Ps with mortality salience showed more washing behaviours

Be familiar with the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM)

Life has no meaning once you lose the illusion of being eternal

Meaning: innate drive to create mental representations to organise perceptions of the world

→ Making sense by creating associations (expected relations)

What are violations of expected relations: 5A's of MMM

Assimilation: trying to assimilate your moral stance to the occurrence

Accommodation: create a conditional exception to allow the occurrence to exist

Affirmation: doubling down; fluid compensation (e.g. validate an unrelated belief)

Assembly: replacing our moral understanding with something more nuanced (e.g. conspiracy theory)

Abstraction: reaffirming alternative framework (e.g. identify new/underlying patterns and rules) → strengthening a domain different to the violation

Describe experiements studying the MMM

Ps come to the lab and greeted by the experimenter, and another would returned dressed the same

When experimenters changed, Ps set bail higher than in the control condition

There was no significant difference between experimenters changing and mortality salience

Half Ps were told their feelings of discomfort was due to a lighting issue (misattribution)

Misattribution Ps did not show a rise in setting bail → only no misattribution Ps

Ps recounted shy and outgoing memories → Experimenters argued there were two selves inhabiting the body (violating expectations of self-unity)

Ps read Kafka or a standard novel and completed an artificial grammar task (find patterns in a string of letters)

Ps under meaning threat (Kafka or self unity) were more accurate and efficient in identifying the string patterns

Ps received a social threat, took Panadol or placebo, then watched Simpsons or Lynch film (eerie)

No difference in Simpsons group

Panadol Ps assigned greater punishment for rioters but only after watching a Lynch film

→ Physical pain and social rejection use the same brain circuitry

Describe Darwin's theory in Evolutionary Psychology

Heredity: characteristics passed from one generation to the next

Variability (in characteristics): demand for resources produces selective pressure

Some individuals will be more successful in their environment than others

Darwin's theory of natural selection: only members of a species able to compete successfully for limited resources will survive and reproduce (how a species evolves overtime)

Define the products of evolution

Adaptations: inherited and reliably developing characteristics resulting from natural selection → meaningful in relation to survival/reproduction (e.g. umbilical cord)

By-products: characteristics that do not solve adaptive problems and do not have functional design (coupled to adaptations e.g. belly button)

Noise: random effects produced by genetic drift and change mutations that do not affect survival/reproductive success (e.g. third nipple)

Exaptation: features that did not originally arise for their current use but were co-opted for new purposes (e.g. birds' feathers)

Describe the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) vs. Evolutionary Psychology (EP) debate

SSSM: the human mind as a blank slate at birth, experience/associations as shaping the human mind

EP: critiques SSSM for ignoring the role of human evolution in shaping human behaviour

Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness: the mind as evolved from ancestral environments/experiences

What are some evolutionary-relevant ancestral Issues

Problems of survival: the organism reaching a capability of reproduction

Problems of mating: selecting, attracting, and retaining and mate long enough to reproduce

Problems of parenting: helping offspring survive long enough that they are capable of reproducing

Problems of aiding genetic relatives: tasks relevant to assisting non-descendent kin

Describe the role of the Behavioural Immune System (BIS) in survival

Parasites and infectious diseases → Selection pressure, evolved defence mechanisms, physiological immune system, the mind

Disease avoidance → Disgust

Medical anthropology: most conventions pertaining to subsistence and social behaviour operate as prescriptions to avoid illness

Context-contingent conformity → threat perception high (respond harshly to non-conformists) or low (allow more openness, encourage development)

Recall task (IVs): vulnerable to disease, danger, or non-threatening

Ps gave opinions on a neutral task (put a penny in one of two jars - one jar had significantly more)

Conformity evaluation (DVs): liking conformist, valuation of obedience, self-reported conformity

Salience of diseases > other dangers > non-threatening

Describe the Parental Investment Theory

A parent's investment in the offspring's chances of surviving at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other offspring

Female reproductive strategy: more picky, has more to lose if chooses wrong mate

Physical features (size/strength) and behavioural features (ability to invest/good parenting)

Seek quality not quantity

Male reproductive strategy: less picky and have less to lose

Seek quantity (not tied to offspring)

Variable success

Describe research conducted about women's ovulatory cycle

Wet t-shirt study: measured scent and symmetry of men

Women not on their ovulation cycle did not show correlation between symmetry and attractiveness of scent

Women ovulating evaluated symmetrical men as more attractive, upon smelling

Women at a higher fertility phase seek to poach better genes (socialise more, more acute avoidance of danger e.g. assault), less satisfaction with lower fitness men and more flirtation/fantasies with higher-fitness men

Be familiar with Psychological & Genetic Essentialism

Ps: fatness as genetic/social/control and a taste test

Ps exposed to the fat gene argument ate significantly more cookies

Genetic revolution: psychological essentialism → genetics communication → genetic essentialism

Psychological essentialism: innate characteristics (identity/behaviour/nature) that is featured in all members of a group

Genetic essentialism: genes as an essence placeholder/determiner of characteristics

Ignore social and environmental influences

Articulate biases associated with perceiving genetic aetiology (innateness) and identify a manner that may reduce genetic essentialism

Immutability and determinism (out of own control)

Specific etiology (neglect other explanation's)

Homogeneity and discreteness of groups (ingroup-outgroup separation → prejudices)

Naturalness (need to accept regardless of morality)

To reduce: blur categorical boundaries → undermine rigid perception

Describe research on the links between mental illness and genetics

When Ps believe mental illness was genetic, they believed it to be more serious, were less willing to date a schizophrenic person's sister, and believed punishment should be less severe

What are some experimental findings demonstrating these genetic biases

Belief in genetic determinism

Priming the geography of genes → Ps read an article about the distribution of genes v control

DV: opinions on eastern-European migrants

Ingroup: essay Ps felt more positively than control Ps

Outgroup: essay Ps felt less positively than control Ps

How genetic closeness v distance affects how individuals view each other and the conflict

1. US Media article: Jews and Arabs as genetic cousins or strangers

Genetic closeness reduced explicit biases but there were no differences for implicit biases

Asked to noise blast an Arab → genetic closeness decreases intensity but does not impact duration

2. Jews in Israel: same IVs + control

Genetic distance reduced hope for the Israel-Palestine genocide, reduced support for a compromise, and reduced constructive emotions towards Palestinians

Genetic closeness/control reduced support for political exclusion and collective punishment