Tag: Debate
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Best reads of 2020
2020. Of all the years I’ve been alive, this has been one of them. For a year of near constant lows at least there were some interesting things to read. Predictably, a lot of them are about politics but there’s still a range of things in there. It’s also quite US-centric and I want to…
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Does everything come in twos? Problems with dual-process theories
Dual process theories are everywhere in psychology [zotpressInText item=”{5421944:A45HTJM4}”]. From decision making to emotions, the idea that complex cognitive phenomena can be categorised into two classes with specific common features is very alluring. [zotpressInText item=”{5421944:DT8HLGCV}” format=”%a% (%d%, %p%)”] identified psychologists’ penchant for dichotomies (nature vs nurture etc.) but this dichotomisation began with the cognitive revolution.…
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Growth mindset fails to increase grades or non-cognitive skills. What now?
Growth mindset is a popular classroom intervention which attempts to change children’s views towards studying and class work. The core principle is teaching students their brain has the potential to grow by exerting mental effort during challenging tasks. This will increase the pupil’s willingness to persevere with work, and will subsequently improve their grades (Dweck,…
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Should you analyse ordinal data like interval or ratio data?
A couple of months ago, I wrote a summary of a recent paper arguing you shouldn’t analyse ordinal data like interval or ratio. If you do so, there’s a risk of inflated Type I and Type II error rates, as well as reduced power [zotpressInText item=”{VD8XETGZ}”][note]Open access version here[/note]. In response, Helen Wauck wrote a…
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Should you calculate a p-value when there isn’t randomisation?
The thought behind this question was prompted by reading [zotpressInText item=”{TIBTBKWD}” format=”%a% (%d%, %p%)”], which argues against frequentist inferential statistics. One of the arguments refers to an underlying assumption required to compute p-values; they need random sampling. Without this, a p-value is meaningless. But this is rare in social science research [zotpressInText item=”{VRZPC486}” format=”%a% (%d%,…
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The Death of the Academic Author: why we should focus less on the writer
A recent article exploring the relationship between exercise and mental health (Chekroud et al., 2018) has stirred a lot debate. It was an interesting study and gained a lot of traction, with over 2500 retweets of the original summary thread by Adam Chekroud and multiple articles by various news outlets e.g. the BBC, Time. There was…
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Do video games cause violence? A deeper look at the evidence
For almost as long as there have been video games, there have been people arguing that they are bad for you. There also seems to be a wealth of experimental evidence behind it (Hasan et al., 2013, to name just one of many). But there have been suggestions that these negative outcomes are oversold. Problems…
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Are people’s performance impacted by negative stereotypes?
Don’t you just love being wrong? Of course you don’t, no one does. But there is a grim satisfaction in no longer believing something that there isn’t good enough evidence for. This is what I experienced after examining the phenomenon known as ‘stereotype threat’. In short, it’s the idea that groups with negative stereotypes about…
PsychBrief 