Is social psychology really in crisis?

My latest ‘behind the headlines’ column for The Conversation. Probably all old news for you wised-up mindhacks.com readers, but here you go:

The headlines

Disputed results a fresh blow for social psychology

Replication studies: Bad copy

The story

Controversy is simmering in the world of psychology research over claims that many famous effects reported in the literature aren’t reliable, or may even not exist at all.

The latest headlines follow the publication of experiments which failed to replicate a landmark study by Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis. These experiments are examples of what psychologists call “social priming”, which is a phenomenon where people who are exposed to ideas unconsciously incorporate them into their behaviour. So people who are reminded of old age are reported to walk slower, and people asked to think about university professors do better on a trivial pursuit knowledge test.

What they actually did

The first of Dijksterhuis’ original experiments asked people to think about the typical university professor and list on paper their appearance, lifestyle and behaviours. After this they answered 42 questions taken from Trivial Pursuit.

The experiment found that people who had thought about professors scored 10% higher than people who hadn’t been primed in this way. In this latest report, David Shanks, Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London and colleagues tried to replicate this effect in nine separate experiments. They didn’t find the effect in any of their experiments, which they suggest calls into question the validity of the original research.

How plausible is it

It’s extremely plausible that people are influenced by recent activities and thoughts – the concept of priming is beyond question, having been supported by decades of research.

What’s less established is whether these effects are really “unconscious” (whatever that means) and whether sophisticated concepts like intelligence can really worm their way into our behaviour in such a profound way.

Tom’s take

The headline reporting of this spat is misleading – there’s nothing worrying about disputed results for social psychology. The process of affirming, disputing and denying results is part of the normal part of science. What is worrying is that this failed replication comes on top of other failed replications of famous social priming results and after the discovery of some high profile frauds in psychology, such as Diederik Stapel.

This has led some to talk of a crisis in experimental social psychology, centring on whether standards of research in the area have slipped enough to allow false results to become easily accepted.

The whole situation is a wonderful opportunity to see “under the hood” of science and see how it really works (rather than how we’re taught it should work). Everything is in the mix: fundamental conceptual disagreements (about the nature of unconscious processing), disciplinary tribalism (between cognitive psychologists and social psychologists), big dog personalities and emotions running high, academic fashion creating a scientific “bubble” (this is that bubble bursting) and soul-searching questions about whether our methods as researchers are fit for purpose.

My guess is that, when the dust settles, we’ll find out that priming effects can work – but they aren’t as strong or common as reported. I have faith that most effects reported in the literature will turn out to true in some form – the vast majority of psychologists are honest and methodical – but we also know for sure than some effects will turn out to have been chimeras, we just can’t say for sure in advance which.

The really interesting aspects to the debate, from my point of view, is going to be clarifying exactly how unconscious these effects are. My prejudice is that social psychologists have been overly casual about using that word, using it in circumstances which would contradict the way most people use it, whether they’re psychologists or not.

Read more

Shanks, D. R., Newell, B. R., Lee, E. H., Balakrishnan, D., Ekelund, L., Cenac, Z., Fragkiski, K. & Moore, C. (2013). Priming Intelligent Behavior: An Elusive Phenomenon, PloS one, 8(4), e56515.

Ed Yong on Bargh’s response to another failure to replicate

Rolf Zwaan on the theory of social priming

Rolf Zwaan on replication done right

Tom Stafford does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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A history of the mid-life crisis

Scientific American’s Bering in Mind has a fantastic article on how the concept of the mid-life crisis was invented and whether it has any evidence behind it beyond the occasional inadvisable pair of cycling shorts and sudden interest in cheesy sports cars.

It turns out that the idea of the ‘mid-life crisis’ is surprisingly new – first touted in 1965 – but was invented to refer to a crisis of creativity in geniuses – rather than a sudden urge to dye one’s greying hair.

There isn’t actually any evidence that middle age is more of a time of crisis than any other period of life, but the concept has stuck.

In the decades since Jacques and Levinson posited their mostly psychoanalytic ideas of the midlife crisis, a number of more empirically minded psychologists have attempted to validate it with actual data. And with little success. Epidemiological studies reveal that midlife is no more or less likely to be associated with career disillusionment, divorce, anxiety, alcoholism, depression or suicide than any other life stage; in fact, the incidence rates of many of these problems peak at other periods of the lifespan.

Adolescence isn’t exactly a walk in the park either—as a teen, I’d worry so much about the uncertainties of my future that I vividly recall envying the elderly their age, since for them, no such uncertainties remained. Actually, old people—at least Swiss old people—aren’t fans of the “storm and stress” of adolescence, either. Freund and Ritter asked their elderly respondents which stage of their lives they’d prefer to return to, if they could. Most said middle age.

From another point of view, of course, the concept could also be a socially convenient way of helping to curtail certain behaviours in men when their actions are no longer thought to be age appropriate.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Link to Bering in Mind on the mid-life not so crisis.

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12 Ways To Solve A Crisis

Crisis, chaos, havoc, unleashed hell. I know you’ve been through this at least once in your lifetime. Going through such an experience is painful. But, as a person who probably hit considerably more crisis than the average, I know there is something even worse then going through a crisis. And that’s not learning something from it.

We’re still under the effects of one of the worst economical crisis in the history of the world and many of us are still feeling the effects. Maybe you lost your job or maybe your personal partnership faded away. Whatever the case, we’re swimming on an agitated ocean. Another crisis, being it profession or personal, may hit any time.

Without further ado, here’s a list of possible approaches to help you raise again after you got hit by the hurricane.

You can/t control something if you’re not accepting it. You simply don’t have handles for it. Denial is one of the most common answers to crisis and, unfortunately, one of the most toxic. As simple and dumb as it may seem, just accepting that you’re going through a crisis will clear a lot of the fog around. Just accept that things didn’t go like planned and see how you can move on.

Believe it or not, we’re doing the same mistakes over and over again. We may change some of the actors and circumstances, but, generally speaking, we’re repetitive in our mistakes. So, the first thing to do when hitting a crisis is to look back in your own history: have you been there before? Why? What did you do to escape it? How is the current crisis different form the last similar one?

But since we’re creative individuals, we can also make new mistakes. In that case, your personal experience may not help. Luckily, chances that other people have been exposed to the same disaster that you’re going through right now are really high. So, try to find out how other people dealed with that. Read on, listen, ask questions, be curious. It will help.

It’s not like running away, but more like trying to understand what you’re going through in a different way. A new “thinking hat” or the famous thinking “outside of the box”. It’s not always possible, but having this option somewhere in your bag can help. Just try to say to yourself something like “It’s obvious that my current thinking brought me here, let’s just try something else”.

Reach out. Ask. Be open and honest about your situation. You’ll be surprised how many reliable persons are out there, just waiting to be pitched. Many times our crisis are erupting exactly because we try to do too much on our own, without interacting with other people. We’re social animals and not asking for help goes against our nature. Forget pride. During crisis, pride is the first thing you should throw away.

One of the most painful things during a crisis is the pressure. We have to do things (or respond to various stimuli) very fast. A strategy that seemed to work for me was to try to buy some time. Postpone responses for as long as you can. The crisis time window is usually very narrow. Eventually, things will be back on track, one way or another.

Nothing is set in stone. Yes, you may have lost something (your job, your house, your relationship) but that doesn’t mean you can’t react to that. Always negotiate. You have this right and you should use it. If your culture banishes negotiation for being “ungentlemanly’ just look around and evaluate. Is your crisis a ”gentlemanly“ situation? I thought so…

The worst thing you can do when an arsonist is putting your house on fire is to chase the guy and leave your house burning. That’s a buddhist proverb, by the way. Subsequently, during a crisis you should always try to minimize the damage as fast as you can, in order to keep yourself functional. Trying to eliminate the cause of the crisis while you’re still under its effects is useless.

Or just throw away anything that is useless. During a crisis, it’s vital that you move fast. Being slim takes a new meaning. Responding fast to stimulus, moving on with lightening speed may make the difference between death and survival. More often than not, crisis are arising specifically because we get too attached to habits, contexts or persons who are no longer good for us.

This may seem strange and passive, but many times, at the end of a personal crisis, I realized that winning or losing was merely a question of how many vital resources I had. Rationalize food, for instance, if you’re lost in the woods. Stop spending money foolishly, if you’re fired. Whatever it takes so that your resources will not dry faster than you need them.

By far my favorite approach. Just take a sheet of paper and write down everything that may go wrong. And I mean everything. Write the worst that may happen to you. If you do this the right way, being totally honest, that is, something incredible will happen: your panic will dissolve. We fear the unknown more than anything else. If you know what to expect, everything will look manageable again.

Not the easiest option, but, sometimes, the only one we really have. Sometimes, crisis are entering our lives because we need to grow, we need to leave the old behind and embrace the new. We’re designed to evolve and improve but, somehow, we decided not to. At this moment, the only way we can become more than we are right now, is to go through a crisis. Surrender to it and go with the flow.

Dragos Roua is a serial online entrepreneur, personal development fanatic, blogger, father, dreamer, and risk taker. Maker of the iAdd iPhone / iPad app. One third of the wordpress framework WPSumo. Full time blogger at DragosRoua.com. Think happiness is a process, not a goal.

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