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This chapter discusses the use of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) for causal inference in the observational social sciences. It focuses on DAGs’ main uses, discusses central principles, and gives applied examples. DAGs are visual representations of …

The field of psychology, including cognitive science, is vexed by a crisis of confidence. Although the causes and solutions are varied, we focus here on a common logical problem in inference. The default mode of inference is significance testing, …

The Evolving Guide on How the Internet is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing

Concerns have been raised recently about the replicability of behavioral priming effects, and calls have been issued to identify priming methodologies with effects that can be obtained in any context and with any population. I argue that such …

When consumers of science (readers and reviewers) lack relevant details about the study design, data, and analyses, they cannot adequately evaluate the strength of a scientific study. Lack of transparency is common in science, and is encouraged by …

Language can be viewed as a complex set of cues that shape people’s mental representations of situations. For example, people think of behavior described using imperfective aspect (i.e., what a person was doing) as a dynamic, unfolding sequence of …

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup …

Across the social sciences, growing concerns about research transparency have led to calls for pre-analysis plans (PAPs) that specify in advance how researchers intend to analyze the data they are about to gather. PAPs promote transparency and …

Notes that social psychologists' early enthusiasm has been replaced by serious doubts about the future of their field. Difficulties in conducting research, unfulfilled expectations about research payoffs, and outside pressures had all contributed to …

Adrianus Dingeman de Groot (1914-2006) was one of the most influential Dutch psychologists. He became famous for his work "Thought and Choice in Chess", but his main contribution was methodological--De Groot co-founded the Department of Psychological …