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Volume 32, Issue9November 2019
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Presidential Column

Photo of Lisa Feldman Barrett
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Northeastern University
APS President 2019 - 2020
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In this Issue:
Looking at Psychology Through the Lens of Metascience

About the Observer

Published 6 times per year by the Association for Psychological Science, the Observer educates and informs on matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology; promotes the scientific values of APS members; reports on issues of international interest to the psychological science community; and provides a vehicle for the dissemination on information about APS.

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Featured

  • 2020 APS James McKeen Cattell Fellows

    Thomas E. Joiner is honored for his applied research on suicidal behavior and its prevention, and Richard M. Lerner is recognized for his work on positive youth development.

  • Back Page: Nap Tracker

    A pioneer in studying learning and memory during atypical development, University of Arizona professor Jamie Edgin is uncovering the effects of poor sleep on learning in children with Down syndrome.

Up Front

  • magnifying glass and puzzle pieces

    Looking at Psychology Through the Lens of Metascience

    As psychological scientists, we think hard about the science we do. We formulate hypotheses and design studies. We observe our participants—the speed of button presses, fluctuations in blood pressure, the content of verbal reports—and we infer psychological meanings. I’d like to turn our focus to the process of science in general, which has been dubbed metascience. I mean, who can resist a little navel-gazing now and then? In early September 2019, I attended a conference that encouraged a multidisciplinary study of how scientists do science. This metascientific effort (one among many)[1] considered diverse factors that influence the questions we choose to ask, the experiments we decide to run, the priors we harbor when interpreting the data, and the conclusions we draw.

Practice

  • Teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science

    Edited by C. Nathan DeWall and David G. Myers Teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science offers advice and guidance about teaching a particular area of research or topic covered in this peer-reviewed APS bimonthly journal, which features reviews covering all of scientific psychology and its applications. The Benefits of Humble Pie Teaching Sleep to the Sleep-Deprived The Benefits of Humble Pie By C. Nathan DeWall Van Tongeren, D. R., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., & van Oyen Witvliet, C. (2019). Humility. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28, 465-468. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419850153 Ta-Nehisi Coates has every reason to brag. He grew up learning to weather adversity in Baltimore’s Mondawmin neighborhood. Police brutality, murder, and the crack epidemic were parts of daily life.

First Person

  • Student Notebook: Meta-Analyses, To Do or Not to Do

    Meta-analysis is the statistical procedure for aggregating and analyzing multiple data sets on a specific topic to answer one or more questions. Meta-analyses are designed to synthesize data across studies and provide statistical evidence for a specific effect, or lack thereof. The evidence from a meta-analysis is typically stronger than any single study or literature review. Further, meta-analyses can test why effects might vary across the data sets by conducting moderator analyses. You might be asking yourself, “Should I conduct a meta-analysis?” It’s a big question. I’ll share the pros and cons I learned from conducting my own (King, Katz, Thompson, & Macnamara, 2019). The idea of publishing a meta-analysis can be very attractive.

More From This Issue

  • Beyond Words

    Babies don’t learn language just by listening to speech, but also through what they see and how they move. This and other findings from APS William James Fellow Janet F. Werker.

  • Stop Blaming Mental Illness

    From Science 16 Aug 2019: Vol. 365, Issue 6454, pp. 623, doi: 10.1126/science.aaz0997. Reprinted with permission from AAAS The United States is experiencing a public health epidemic of mass shootings and other forms of gun violence. A convenient response seems to be blaming mental illness; after all, “who in their right mind would do this?” This is utterly wrong. Mental illnesses, certainly severe mental illnesses, are not the major cause of mass shootings. It also is dangerously stigmatizing to people who suffer from these devastating disorders and can subject them to inappropriate restrictions.

  • Future Directions for Current Directions

    APS Fellow Robert L. Goldstone will begin a 4-year term as Editor of Current Directions in Psychological Science on January 1, 2020. Goldstone is Distinguished Professor and Chancellor’s Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences, at Indiana University Bloomington, where he directs the Percepts and Concepts Laboratory. His research focuses on concept learning and representation, perceptual learning, collective behavior, and computational modeling of human cognition. He has served in editorial roles with many other journals, including the post of Executive Editor of Cognitive Science.

  • Why Your Understanding of Collectivism Is Probably Wrong

    While collectivist societies are often viewed as caring and cooperative, new research techniques reveal that the tight social ties of these cultures may also foster tension and distrust, behavioral scientist Thomas Talhelm explains.

  • 2020 APS James McKeen Cattell Fellows

    Thomas E. Joiner is honored for his applied research on suicidal behavior and its prevention, and Richard M. Lerner is recognized for his work on positive youth development.

  • Back Page: Nap Tracker

    A pioneer in studying learning and memory during atypical development, University of Arizona professor Jamie Edgin is uncovering the effects of poor sleep on learning in children with Down syndrome.

  • Psi Chi Celebrated at Yale

    Scientists and students gathered at Yale University for a convocation to mark the 90th birthday of Psi Chi  — the International Honor Society in Psychology.

  • Biennial International Seminar on the Teaching of Psychological Science

    The 2nd Biennial International Seminar on the Teaching of Psychological Science (BISTOPS) will take place on 13 – 17 July, 2020 in Paris at Maison Suger, at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme—Maison Suger’s residential and working facility. The seminar will accommodate about 20 participants who have experience in conducting and publishing research on teaching psychology and in successful grant-writing, as well as those who are developing ideas for such research or have a strong interest in doing so.