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Kraut to Lead PCSAS as New Executive Director
The Board of Directors of the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS), the new system that began with one program in 2009 and now has accredited 30 of the best clinical programs in the United States and Canada, has announced that Alan G. Kraut will be its new Executive Director. Kraut previously served for 27 years as the founding Executive Director of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). The PCSAS Board announced Kraut’s appointment today in Chicago, where PCSAS was meeting in conjunction with the APS 2016 Annual Convention.
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Effective Apologies Include Six Elements
Whether you’re the company CEO or the summer intern, knowing how to say you’re sorry—and have people actually believe you—is an important business skill. If your subordinate is caught embezzling, or you’re the head of a company in the midst of a massive public safety scandal, simply saying “I’m sorry” probably isn’t going to cut it. New research from psychological scientists Roy Lewicki (The Ohio State University), Beth Polin (Eastern Kentucky University), and Robert Lount Jr. (The Ohio State University) confirms that not all apologies are equally effective.
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Albert Bandura Receives National Medal of Science
President Obama presented eminent psychological scientist Albert Bandura with the National Medal of Science in a ceremony held at the White House on May 19, 2016. Awarded annually by a committee of presidential appointees, the National Medal of Science recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to science, technology, and engineering. Bandura, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, has received both the APS William James Fellow Award and the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award and is considered one of the most influential psychological scientists in the world.
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Hacking Memory to Follow Through with Intentions
Linking tasks that we intend to complete to distinctive cues that we’ll encounter at the right place and the right time may help us remember to follow through.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: From Creatures of Habit to Goal-Directed Learners: Tracking the Developmental Emergence of Model-Based Reinforcement Learning Johannes H. Decker, A. Ross Otto, Nathaniel D. Daw, Catherine A. Hartley In making decisions, people may engage in deliberate processing that draws on existing cognitive models or more automatic processing that relies on reward-based feedback. Adults can toggle between these slow and fast strategies, but the developmental trajectory of such decision making is unknown.
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Rise in Reporting p-Values as “Marginally Significant”
A researcher collects data, runs a statistical test, and finds that the p value is approximately .07. What happens next? According to a study conducted by Laura Pritschet (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Derek Powell (University of California, Los Angeles), and Zachary Horne (also at the University of Illinois), that researcher may be likely to report that result as “marginally significant” -- not quite significant, but getting there. While it may be common, Pritschet and colleagues argue that this practice is “rooted in serious statistical misconceptions” and is likely to lead to false-positive errors (and sometimes false negatives, too).
