I'm Thankful For Female Role Models in Psychological Science

Zoe! Science!

My brain may still be in a fog from all the food I ate yesterday, but that isn't going to stop me from being thankful. I'm thankful for a great many things in my life: My family, my health, and my job are three things that first come to mind. I am especially thankful for my daughter Zoe, who just turned 8 months old last week, and is, pretty much, the best baby in all the universe (admittedly, I haven't been EVERYWHERE in the universe, but I think it's at least a fair hypothesis with some empirical support). When I think about Zoe growing up, I wonder about the kind of person she is going to be and the things she is going to be interested in doing for her life. Along with these thoughts, I worry about whether Zoe's interests will conflict with what the world around her says about what she can or cannot do. If she wants to go into science, for instance, will there be people or institutions telling her that science simply isn't a thing that "people like her" are interested in? Thinking about this must be raising my blood pressure.

You're an intelligent bunch, PYM readers, so I don't need to review all the details, but when women pursue science careers they face barriers that men do not. These barriers include norms and expectations that socialize men and women to think that a science career is only compatible with the male gender, unwanted sexual advances from superiors (typically men) who make the science environment a hostile workplace (here), and direct and indirect discriminatory practices that make it more difficult for women to succeed in a science career (here for an example, and here behind a paywall).

And yet, despite these significant obstacles, women still pursue science careers and excel! Today, I would like to give thanks to my female role models in psychological science. These are female scientists who have shaped my research career and through their own path-breaking work, have made science more accessible to women everywhere!

Look Everyone: A Social Priming Finding with Direct Replications!

If you visit this blog occasionally (or follow me on twitter, because of course!) then you know that social psychology has come under criticism recently for its lack of integrity in research methods and the complete absence of exact replication. The criticism has been strongest with respect to a subfield in social psychology known as social priming. Social priming refers to a now classic psychological phenomenon where the activation of one social concept in memory can elicit changes in behavior, physiology, or self-reports of a related social concept without conscious awareness. Social priming has been used to explain why reading words related to elderly concepts (e.g., Florida, retire) can lead you to walk slower (although, this particular social priming finding does not replicate across different laboratories).

The criticism about social priming stems from (a) a growing number of high profile replication attempts of classic findings that failed, (b) the steady stream of fanciful/unbelievable social priming effects that appear in glamour psychology journals (e.g., messyrooms make people more creative), and (c) the inappropriate reactions of prominent social priming researchers to this scrutiny (e.g., criticizing the scientific integrity of replication attempts and the journals that publish those attempts). It’s been like watching a car wreck in super slow motion!

What Your Resistance to Halloween Candy Predicts About Your Life

Tempting Halloween candy

Thanks to yesterday’s festivities, both kids and adults have a few more sweet treats on hand than normal. With a big bowl of candy sitting at home on the kitchen table or stashed in a desk drawer, many of us now face the annual challenge of eating our Halloween candy in moderation. Some of us will succeed; others won’t. We face situations like this constantly in life, where we are tasked with resisting temptations and overriding our impulses.  What might our responses to these situations reveal about the rest of our lives? Are we happy? Are we satisfied? To approach this question, let’s imagine a couple of eight-year olds and their new stashes of Halloween candy. 

The Art of Constructive Self-Criticism

When we fail at something important to us, whether in relationships, at school, or at work, it can be very painful. These experiences can threaten the very core of who we think we are and who we want to be.

To cope with failure, we often turn to self-protective strategies. We rationalize what happened so that it places us in a more positive light, we blame other people, and we discount the importance of the event. These strategies may make us feel better about ourselves in the short term, but they are less likely to help us improve or avoid repeating our mistakes in the future. Research shows that people who have an overly inflated view of their performance on an academic task show decrements in subsequent motivation and performance, compared to people who view themselves more realistically. It makes sense: if you already think you're great, it may feel like there's no need to put the effort into improving yourself.

Six Guidelines For Interesting Research: The Remix

I may get back pain every now and then when I lift my daughter up off the ground, but I am still relatively early in my career as a social psychologist. And being young, I am always on the lookout for ways to improve my writing and scholarship. This pursuit is great for me, because as my research improves, I conduct better science and help the world understand itself more completely. It's also great for you here at PYM, because if I learn something useful I like to pay it forward to you, the reader!

Anyway, I was lucky enough to read the paper Six Guidelines for Interesting Research over the summer. It's a sure classic written by Kurt Gray--rising star in psychological science and Professor at UNC--and the late Dan Wegner--one of the leaders of modern social psychology. I love this paper because it really got me thinking about what makes interesting research. And though I don't agree with all the points raised by Gray and Wegner, I think the underlying message--be interesting--is one that researchers can sometimes forget. Let's get to my amendments:

The Science of Touch and Emotion

Today we have a guest post by a blogger for the Berkeley Science Review on the science of touch and emotion. BSR will be hosting an event about touch on October 27th. For more info, go to the bottom of this post.

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If someone told you it was possible to communicate gratitude to a complete stranger with a two second touch, would you believe it? Although the power of speech allows us to imbibe great subtlety and complexity in our messages, psychological researchers have demonstrated that something as complex as gratitude or sympathy can be communicated with a simple touch.

In social species, prosocial emotions are those that promote the well-being of the group. By engaging in acts of trust and cooperation, social groups survive. Parents and offspring form attachments, and individuals act in mutually beneficial, altruistic ways to sow trust between one another. A growing number of studies on touch and emotion reveal our deep-seated need for human contact and warmth. Touch may be the key for communicating prosocial emotions, and for promoting group cohesion and survival.

A Learning Tip from Dancers

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If you watch any of the numerous dance shows on TV, such as Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, or even Dance Moms, you know that dancing at the elite level requires a lot more than strong muscles, a flexible body, and fierce determination. Professional dancers are smart. Not only are their bodies working at a high level, but their minds are as well. When performing, dancers are juggling numerous thoughts as they strive to execute each movement as precisely as possible. “Point my feet, lengthen my neck, drop my shoulders, SMILE!” Somehow, dancers must get their bodies to perform all of these movements with specific qualities, all the while making the dance appear both physically and mentally effortless. As someone who has danced my whole life, I often joke that dance is the only kind of physical exercise I enjoy because dancing well means I don’t have any mental resources left to realize I’m exhausted!

In addition to all the mental effort required of dancers onstage, there is a whole lot of it needed behind the scenes as well. In both rehearsals for performances and in classes honing one’s technique, choreography has to be committed to memory. At the elite level, choreography is taught quickly and in large amounts. Dancers have to be attentive and skilled at learning lots of information in a short amount of time and then putting that information to use immediately. Not only do they need to remember the movements themselves – where each part of the body should be - but they also need to memorize the timing of the movement and the quality with which it should be done. Because so many elements need to be encoded for each moment of a dance routine, learning choreography requires that dancers be completely present mentally.

SWAG: My favorite reason to "Just Post It!"

Every Wednesday Thursday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays Thursdays and Grub (SWTAG)--we're going STAG now!

In last week's journal club we read about a recent paper in Psychological Science with a very clear message: It should be the norm for researchers to post their data upon publication. In the article, the author (Uri Simonsohn) lays out the major reason why he thinks posting data is a good idea: It helps our field catch scientific fraud in action (e.g., fabricated data). Simonsohn details some methods he has used in the past to catch fraud in the paper and on his new blog over at datacolada.org (I'll have mine blended!).

I agree that posting data will make it harder for people to fabricate data. However, my favorite reason to increase norms for posting data has nothing to do with data fabrication.