PSYC11H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Statistical Hypothesis Testing, Natural Science, Fallacy
PSYC11: Social Psychology Laboratory Clara Rebello
PSYC11 Lecture 2
• B = f (P, E)
o Attempt to predict behaviour through interaction of dispositions/characteristics and
environment
o Kurt Levin
• What should science be?
o Looking at two seemingly contradictory ideas
o Keep an open mind no matter how ridiculous the ideas seem to be
o Creativity and accepting challenges
o Trying to break boundaries
• If we focus on constant replication, we become more conservative from that
o Results in us losing creativity
• Lots of cultural shifts in psychology
o Because of different research systems put in place
• All of our most innovative discoveries in science were considered at some point crazy and
nonsense, and received lots of criticism and backlash
o Are we okay with listening to many bad ideas if one will end up become a ground-
breaking discovery?
• Kuhn: Paradigm shift
o According to Kuhn, a scientific revolution occurs when scientists encounter anomalies
that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific
progress has thereto been made
o The paradig is’t siply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists
▪ And all of the implications which come with it
• Post replication → Natural science
o Replicability crisis
• We built bad scientific infrastructure that led to the current climate crisis
o We ere’t reiforig or reardig the right leel of reatie thought i siee
o In the past, peer review publishers wanted to only see positive (significant) results in
researcher papers that were sent to them
▪ Researchers were being rewarded for getting those positive outcomes
▪ Error in thinking was that if the researchers got a positive result in their study,
then they must have been doing their procedure creativity
▪ Fallacy in judgment
o File-drawer effect
▪ Whe a researher does’t fid positie outoes i his study, instead of
suittig it regardless, he does’t pereie his stud as haig a
otriutios to siee ad puts it aa i a file draer
o Publishers should be more accepting of null effects
▪ Can still contribute to future studies of a similar research topic
• Researchers conducting meta-analyses may request both published and unpublished works
from a researcher
• You can replicate an unpublished study if the researcher was willing to share that study
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