PSYC 528

Advanced Methods in Social Psychology and Personality

Readings

Week 1 (Friday January 15): Introductions & some basics

Read for sure:

Schwartz, M. A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, 121, 1771.

Casadevall, A, & Fang, F. C. (2016). Rigorous science: a how-to guide. mBio, 7, e01902-16.

Nelson, L. D., Simmons, J., & Simonsohn, U. (2018). Psychology's renaissance. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 511-534.

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Brewer, M. B. (1998). Experimentation in social psychology. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T., Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th Ed., pp. 99-142). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

McGrath, J. E. (1981). Dilemmatics: The study of research choices and dilemmas. American Behavioral Scientist, 25, 179-210.

Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., & Reis, H. T. (2015). Best research practices in psychology: Illustrating epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 275-297.

Funder, D. C., Levine, J. M., Mackie, D. M., Morf, C. C., Vazire, S., & West, S. G. (2014). Improving the dependability of research in personality and social psychology: Recommendations for research and educational practice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18, 3-12.

Rozin, P. (2001). Social psychology and science: Some lessons from Solomon Asch. Personality and Social Psychology, Review, 5, 2-14.

Rohrer, J. M. (2018). Thinking clearly about correlations and causation: Graphical causal models for observational data. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 27-42.

Kravitz, D. J., Mitroff, S. R., & Bauer, P. J. (2020). Practicing good laboratory hygiene, even in a pandemic. Psychological Science, 31, 483-487.

Jaremka, L. M., Ackerman, J. M., Gawronski, B., Rule, N. O., Sweeny, K., Tropp, L. R., Metz, M. A., Molina, L., Ryan, W S. & Vick, B. (2020). Common academic experiences no one talks about: Repeated rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15, 519-543.

Week 2 (Friday January 22): Constructs (measuring and manipulating them)

Read for sure:

Flake, J. K., Pek, J., & Hehman, E. (2017). Construct validation in social and personality research: Current practice and recommendations. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 370-378.

Flake, J. K., & Fried, E. I. (in press). Measurement schmeasurement: Questionable measurement practices and how to avoid them. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

Chester, D. S., & Lasko, E. N. (in press). Construct validation of experimental manipulations in social psychology: Current practices and recommendations for the future. Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Blanton, H., & Jaccard, J. (2019). From principles to measurement: Theory-based tips on writing better questions. In H. Blanton, J. M. LaCroix, & G. D. Webster (Eds.), Measurement in social psychology (pp. 1-28). Routledge / Taylor & Francis.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Clark, L. A., & Watson, D. (2019). Constructing validity: New developments in creating objective measuring instruments. Psychological Assessment, 31, 1412-1427.

Schwarz, N. (1999). Self reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54, 93-105.

Hauser, D. J., Ellsworth, P. C., & Gonzalez, R. (2018). Are manipulation checks necessary? Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 998.

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2012). Sources of method bias in social science research and recommendations on how to control it. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 539-569.

Hussy, I., & Hughes, S. (2020). Hidden invalidity among 15 commonly used measures in social and personality psychology. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 3, 166-184.

Wetzel, E., & Roberts, B. W. (in press). Commentary on Hussey and Hughes (2020): Hidden invalidity among 15 commonly used measures in social and personality psychology. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. S., & Funder, D. C. (2007). Psychology as the science of self-reports and finger movements: Whatever happened to actual behavior? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 396-403.

Week 3 (Friday January 29): Mediation and causal chains

Read for sure:

Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173-1182.

Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., & Fong, G. T. (2005). Establishing a causal chain: Why experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 845-851.

Bullock, J. G., Green, D. P., & Ha, S. E. (2010). Yes, but what's the mechanism? (Don't expect an easy answer). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 550-558.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Zhao, X., Lynch, J. G., Jr., & Chen, Q. (2010). Reconsidering Baron & Kenny: Myths and truths about mediation analysis. Journal of Consumer Research, 37, 197-206.

MacKinnon, D. P., & Fairchild, A. J. (2009). Current directions in mediation analysis. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 16-20.

Preacher, K. J. (2015). Advances in mediation analysis: A survey and synthesis of new developments. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 825-852.

Sigall, H., & Mills, J. (1998). Measures of independent variables and mediators are useful in social psychological experiments: But are they necessary. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 218-226.

Muller, D., Judd, C. M., & Yzerbyt, V. Y. (2005). When moderation and mediated and mediation is moderated. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 852-862.

Week 4 (Friday February 5): Sampling decisions and implications

Read for sure:

Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 155-159.

Bertamini, M., & Munafo, M. R. (2012). Bite-size science and its undesired side effects. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 67-71.

Wells, G. L., & Windschitl, P. D. (1999). Stimulus sampling and social psychological experimentation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1115-1125.

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61-83.

(Note: In addition to article specified here, this pdf also contains a bunch of commentaries, and a reply to commentaries. Those are not in the Read for sure category, but they are certainly worth reading, when you have the time.)

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Westfall, J., Judd, C. M., & Kenny, D. A. (2015). Replicating studies in which samples of participants respond to samples of stimuli. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 390-399.

McClelland, G. G. (1997). Optimal design in psychological research. Psychological Methods, 2, 3-19.

Gosling, S. D., & Mason, W. (2015). Internet research in psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 877-902.

Week 5 (Friday February 12): Getting inside the head

Read for sure:

Greenwald, A. G., & Lai, C. K. (2020). Implicit social cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 71, 419-445.

Gawronski, B., & Hahn, H. (2019). Implicit measures: Procedures, use, and interpretation. In H. Blanton, J. M. LaCroix, & G. D. Webster (Eds.), Measurement in social psychology (pp. 29-55). Routledge / Taylor & Francis.

Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (2000). The mind in the middle: A practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In H. T. Reis & C. M. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social psychology (pp. 253-285). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Wentura, D., & Degner, J. (2010). A practical guide to sequential priming and related tasks. In B. Gawronski, & B. K. Payne (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications. New York: Guilford Press.

Cameron, C. D., Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., & Payne, B. K. (2012). Sequential priming measures of implicit social cognition: A meta-analysis of associations with behavior and explicit attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 330-350.

Loersch, C., & Payne, B. K. (2011). The situated inference model: An integrative account of the effects of primes on perception, behavior, and motivation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 234-252.

Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.

Roese, N. J., & Jamieson, D. W. (1993). Twenty years of bogus pipeline research: A critical review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 363-375.

MID-TERM BREAK

Week 6 (Friday February 26): Going into the real world

Read for sure:

Mortensen, C. R., & Cialdini, R. B. (2010). Full cycle social psychology for theory and application. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 53-63.

Pelham, B. W. (2019). Data to die for: Archival research. In H. Blanton, J. M. LaCroix, & G. D. Webster (Eds.), Measurement in social psychology (pp. 174-200). Routledge / Taylor & Francis.

Rafaeli, A., Ashtar, S., & Altman, D. (2019). Digital traces: New data, resources, and tools for psychological-science research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28, 560-566.

Adjerid, I., & Kelley, K. (2018). Big data in psychology: A framework for research advancement. American Psychologist, 73, 899-917.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Ellsworth, P. C. (1977). From abstract ideas to concrete instances. Some guidelines for choosing natural research settings. American Psychologist, 32, 604-615.

Maner, J. K. (2016). Into the wild: Field research can increase both replicability and real-world impact. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 100-106.

Simonton, D. K. (2003). Qualitative and quantitative analysis of historical data. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 617-640.

Chung, C. K., & Pennebaker, J. (2019). Textual analysis. In H. Blanton, J. M. LaCroix, & G. D. Webster (Eds.), Measurement in social psychology (pp. 153-173). Routledge / Taylor & Francis.

Chan, M.-p. S, Morales, A., Farhadloo, M., Palmer, R. J., & Albarracín, D. (2019). Social media harvesting. In H. Blanton, J. M. LaCroix, & G. D. Webster (Eds.), Measurement in social psychology (pp. 228-264). Routledge / Taylor & Francis.

Week 7 (Friday March 5): Connecting to other levels of analysis

Read for sure:

Beer, J. S., & Lombardo, M. V. (2007). Patient and neuroimaging methodologies. In R. W. Robins, R. C. Fraley, & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in personality psychology (pp. 360-369). New York: Guilford Press.

Diamond, L., & Otter-Henderson, K. D. (2007). Physiological measures. In R. W. Robins, R. C. Fraley, & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in personality psychology (pp. 370-388). New York: Guilford Press.

Harden, K. P., & Koellinger, P. D. (2020). Using genetics for social science. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 567-576.

Goetz, F. M., Stieger, S., Gosling, S. D., Potter, J., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2020). Physical topography is associated with human personality. Nature Human Behavior, 4, 1135-1144.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Mitchell, J. P. (2008). Contributions of functional neuroimaging to the study of social cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 142-146.

Amodio, D. M., Bartholow, B. D., & Ito, T. A. (2014). Tracking the dynamics of the social brain: ERP approaches for social cognitive and affective neuroscience. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 385-393.

Amodio, D. M., & Cikara, M. (2021). The social neuroscience of prejudice. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, xxx-xxx.

Zoccola, P. M. (2019). Psychobiological measurement. In H. Blanton, J. M. LaCroix, & G. D. Webster (Eds.), Measurement in social psychology (pp. 75-101). Routledge / Taylor & Francis.

Gosling, S. D. (2008). Personality in non-human animals. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 985-1001.

Sng, O., Neuberg, S. L., Varnum, M. E. W., & Kenrick, D. T. (2018). The behavioral ecology of cultural psychological variation. Psychological Review, 125, 714-743.

Muthukrishna, M., Henrich, J., & Slingerland, E. (2021). Psychology as a historical science. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, xxx-xxx.

Week 8 (Friday March 12): Replication and cumulative knowledge

Read for sure:

Asendorpt, J. B., et al. (2013). Recommendations for increasing replicability in psychology. European Journal of Personality, 27, 108-119.

Shrout, P. E., & Rodgers, J. L. (2018). Psychology, science, and knowledge construction: Broadening perspectives from the replication crisis. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 487-510.

Crandall, C. S., & Sherman, J. W. (2016). On the scientific superiority of conceptual replications for scientific progress. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 93-99.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Noah, T., Schul, Y., & Mayo, R. (2018). When both the original study and its failed replication are correct: Feeling observed eliminates the facial-feedback effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114, 657-664.

Pashler, H., & Harris, C. R. (2012). Is the replicability crisis overblown? Three arguments examined. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 531-536.

McShane, B. B., Tackett, J. L., Boeckenholt, U., & Gelman, A. (2019). Large-scale replication projects in contemporary psychological research. The American Statistician, 73 (S1), 99-105.

Brandt, M. J., et al. (2014). The replication recipe: What makes for a convincing replication? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 217-224.

Simonsohn, U. (2015). Small telescopes: Detectability and the evaluation of replication results. Psychological Science, 26, 559-569.

Spellman, B. (2015). A short (personal) future history of Revolution 2.0. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 886-899.

Romero, F. (2018). Who should do replication labor? Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 516-537.

McShane, B. B. and Boeckenholt, U. (2017). Single paper meta-analysis: Benefits for study summary, theory-testing, and replicability. Journal of Consumer Research, 43, 1048-1063.

Carter, E. C., Schoenbrodt, F. D., Gervais, W. M., & Hilgard, J. (2019). Correcting for bias in psychology: A comparison of meta-analytic methods. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2, 115-144.

Marshall, I. J., et al. (2020). Semi-automated evidence synthesis in health psychology: Current methods and future prospects. Health Psychology Review, 14, 145-158.

Uhlmann, E. L., et al. (2019). Scientific utopia III: Crowdsourcing science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14, 711-733.

Harder, J. A. (2020). The multiverse of methods: Extending the multiverse analysis to address data-collection decisions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15, 1158-1177.

Moshontz, H., et al. (2018). The psychological science accelerator: Advancing psychology through a distributed collaborative network. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 501-515.

Week 9 (Friday March 19): Ideas, theories, models, hypotheses

Read for sure:

Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2013). Six guidelines for interesting research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 549-553.

Van Lange, P. A. M. (2013). What we should expect from theories in social psychology: Truth, abstraction, progress, and applicability as standards (TAPAS). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 40-55.

Schaller, M. (2016). The empirical benefits of conceptual rigor: Systematic articulation of conceptual hypotheses can reduce the risk of non-replicable results (and facilitate novel discoveries too). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 107-115.

Smaldino, P. E. (2017). Models are stupid, and we need more of them. In R. Vallacher, S. Read, & A. Nowak (Eds.), Computational social psychology (pp. 311-331). Routledge.

Other things worth reading, when you have the time:

Nisbett, R. E. (1990). The anticreativity letters: Advice from a senior tempter to a junior tempter. American Psychologist, 45, 1078-1082.

Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (2019). Interview with Shelley E. Taylor. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 1-8.

Zanna, M. P. (2004). The naive epistemology of a working social psychologist (or the working epistemology of a naive social psychologist): The value of taking "temporary givens" seriously. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 210-218.

McGuire, W. J. (1997). Creative hypothesis generating in psychology: Some useful heuristics. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 1-30.

Greenwald, A. G., Pratkanis, A. R., Leippe, M. R., Baumgardner, M. H. (1986). Under what conditions does theory obstruct research progress? Psychological Review, 93, 216-229.

Gray, K. (2017). How to map theory: Reliable methods are fruitless without rigorous theory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12, 731-741.

Oberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2019). Addressing the theory crisis in psychology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26, 1596-1618.

Jackson, J. C., Rand, D., Lewis, K., Norton, M. I., & Gray, K. (2017). Agent-based modeling: A guide for social psychologists. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 387-395.

Smaldino, P. E. (2020). How to translate a verbal theory into a formal model. Social Psychology, 51, 207-218.

Week 10 (Friday March 26): Student presentations

Week 11 (Friday April 2): Student presentations

Week 12 (Friday April 9): Student presentations

If we had more weeks in the term, there are additional topics that could have been fun and useful to dig into. Here are a few such topics, and some relevant readings that you might find worthwhile to read, when you have the time:

Thinking thoughtfully about statistical analyses and statistical results:

Gigerenzer, G. (2018). Statistical rituals: The replication delusion and how we got there. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 198-218.

Cumming, G. (2014). The new statistics: Why and how. Psychological Science, 25, 7-29.

Steel, E. A., Liermann, M., & Guttorp, P. (2019). Beyond calculations: A course in statistical thinking. The American Statistician, 73 (S1), 392-401.

Cohen, J. (1990). Things I have learned (so far). American Psychologist, 45, 1304-1312.

Krueger, J. (2001). Null hypothesis significance testing: On the survival of a flawed method. American Psychologist, 56, 16-26.

Fiedler, K. (2011). Voodoo correlations are everywhere - not only in neuroscience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 163-171.

Prentice, D. A., & Miller, D. T. (1992). When small effects are impressive. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 160-164.

Funder, D. C., & Ozer, D. J. (2019). Evaluating effect size in psychological research: Sense and nonsense. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2, 156-168.

Writing (and scientific communication more generally):

Gernsbacher, M. A. (2018). Writing empirical articles: Transparency, reproducibility, clarity, and memorability. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 403-414.

Bem, D. J. (2004). Writing the empirical journal article. In J. M. Darley, M. P. Zanna, & H. L. Roediger, III (Eds.), The compleat academic: A career guide. Washington DC: APA.

Brown, S. D., Furrow, D., Hill, D. F., Gable, J. C., Porter, L. P., & Jacobs, W.J. (2014). The duty to describe: Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 626-640.

Kerr, N. L. (1998). HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 196-217.

Bishop, D. V. M. (2018). Fallibility in science: Responding to errors in the work of oneself and others. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 432-438.

Fine, M. A. & Kurdek, L. A. (1993). Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations. American Psychologist, 48, 1141-1147.