lewin
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Posts posted by lewin
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On 7/24/2017 at 3:22 PM, Trillian8 said:
interpersonal relationships, online dating, and romantic relationships
Interpersonal relationships is a gigantic research area. You could check out the website for International Association for Relationships Research--they have a directory of some members--and look for pubs in their (several) journals. Some bigger names to look for: Eli Finkel, Paul Eastwick, Harry Reis, Joanne Wood, Shelly Gable, Sandra Murray, Brooke Feeney, Nickola Overall, Omri Gillath, Emily Impett, Ben Karney, James McNulty, Geoff McDonald, Mario Mikulincer, David Sbarra, Jeff Simpson, John Lydon, Ed Lemay, Margaret Clark..... those are mostly off the top of my head as someone outside that area.
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On 6/2/2017 at 2:53 PM, Traveller27 said:
why we dream and what purpose dreaming serves
Outside of psychoanalytic circles, I'm curious whether there is actually an answer to this question beyond what Freud called the "day residue" and memory consolidation. Some social psychologists have studied the motivated interpretation of dreams, i.e., to what extent dream interpretations are affected by preexisting beliefs, and the effects of dreams on judgments. Morewedge & Norton 2009
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On 5/23/2017 at 1:18 AM, elemosynarical said:
P.S. I'm sorry of my anxiety disorder symptoms are manifesting...
I really don't know if I'm sane or not... but I do know that I tend to worry about a lot of things...I'm not a clinical psychologist and not diagnosing anything but I think you're making the correct attribution because the worrying and rumination being exhibited here is far beyond typical responding. It's not about your sanity, but it does seem that you're disproportionately worried about what seems to be a trivial incident.
I'd echo the earlier advice about bringing it up with your professional, if you have one, because it will also help you cope with similar situations in the future. For example, a recent movement in psych is automated tools that check the stats of published papers for errors. If you're constantly worried that a little stats mistake will cause a paper to be retracted or sink your career that'll be paralyzing.
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On 5/16/2017 at 11:08 PM, rising_star said:
(And also, what good is writing a master's thesis for someone who wants to be doing therapy, counseling, or other hands-on work? What would they gain from devoting extensive time to research, rather than to field experiences?)
According to a colleague of mine (and in my experience as a dilettante studying pseudoscience in mental health treatment), MA-level therapists who lack the research experience that a PhD brings tend to be more taken in by faddish treatments, e.g., rebirthing therapy, recovered memories, EMDR.
Clinical psychologists also tend to take on more complex case presentations (e.g., schizophrenia, anxiety, major depression) but that level of training isn't needed for every person seeking therapy, e.g., a nurse practitioner can treat many 'family doctor' conditions that don't require a medical doctor.
I'm blanking on the source but I recall reading that efficacy studies show that newly trained PhDs are more effective practitioners than MAs initially--because they get more training hours--but the difference disappears after something like five years (when equating the type of case being treated).
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On 2/12/2017 at 9:36 AM, FacelessMage said:
Not if you're in Quebec or Ottawa.
You must mean that some French or bilingual programs don't require the GRE, right? Because there are GRE dates in Ottawa.
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23 hours ago, psychsquirrel said:
a big shot professor told me that emailing typically doesn't sway their decision either way.
I get why people email, and it's not going to hurt anyone's chances unless one says something stupid, but I've also heard this sentiment (e.g., "It's bypassing the official process, which is there for a reason.") Coincidentally, I saw the website of a princeton faculty member who has this on her webpage:
"I often receive emails from prospective Ph.D. applicants with requests to talk about my work and what it would be like to do research with me. As of 9-8-13, I decided to refrain from having these personal conversations in advance of reading all applications, because I do not wish to favor students who received advice about how to connect with prospective advisors or who have connections to me through my current colleagues. Before we make final admissions decisions in our department, we fly out our top candidates to visit the campus and to have one-on-one discussions with their desired mentors, graduate students, and researchers in the department. I view this as the time when the candidates and prospective mentors can have these types of conversations, to figure out whether Princeton (and my research group) would be a good fit."
I wonder if this is getting more common... maybe POIs are getting sick of being flooded with emails, hah.
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On 11/13/2016 at 0:17 AM, St0chastic said:
certain practices adopted by the left in the US might have downsides (e.g., affirmative action),
One of the downsides is that candidates are stigmatized or seen as less capable when seen (rightly or wrongly) as an affirmative action hire. Heilman at NYU has a comprehensive program of research on this, much from the 1990's.
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On 10/31/2016 at 10:42 AM, laura23 said:
I am applying for CIHR, but the application is limited to 5 schools
[deleted, I answered my own question]
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On 11/6/2016 at 11:58 AM, St0chastic said:
I would otherwise try to ignore these "diversity" factors as much as possible and focus on candidates' qualifications.
The challenge is that lotsssss of research shows that intergroup factors influence raters' perceptions of candidates' qualifications. e.g., men get hired for potential but women based on past achievement; equivalent resumes are rated as worse if accompanied by a stereotypically female or African American name. Put another way, there's probably no such thing as an objective assessment of qualifications and it's better to recognize than minimize group differences.
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On 9/24/2016 at 3:19 PM, St0chastic said:
Just wanted to chime in. Aside from sending brief messages asking whether PIs were accepting students, I didn't reach out to anyone I applied to. This didn't seem to affect my chances in any way, so I wouldn't worry about this too much. Professors are busy people and have overflowing inboxes, so I wouldn't read into a non-response too heavily.
A mentor of mine said he disliked any contact beyond the "are you taking students?" type because he saw it as students trying to curry favor and bypass the application process. My judgment is that this is a minority opinion, but also that students should keep it in mind when considering whether to flood their POI's inboxes.
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On 9/24/2016 at 9:52 PM, Azsy16 said:
Thanks guys. I guess if they need to know more, they will probably get back to me around December. Seeing as I've already been encouraged to apply, I don't want to risk annoying them with follow-up emails that have no actual questions.
Sit tight. Independence and the ability to not obsess about something that you can't do anything about (e.g., paper under review) are valued traits in a graduate student.
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On 9/24/2016 at 7:24 PM, The_Old_Wise_One said:
Meehle's criticisms of social sciences
Meehl also critiqued medical science quite a bit and those didn't take either
Or if they had, much of medical diagnosis would take place by computer (Dawes, Faust, & Meehl, 1989) -
On 9/25/2016 at 0:55 PM, St0chastic said:
We need to start rewarding people for the quality of their work rather than the wow factor of their findings
I think I agree, but the line between superficial merit "wow factor" and more substantive merit "this work has scientific value that your peers acknowledge" can be really fuzzy. Is "wow" just whether the work seems to get attention outside of the discipline? Or attracts media attention? Sometimes it's only clear in retrospect.
You're right that the incentives tilt towards superficial "wow" rather than substantive "wow".... I don't know whether it's still there, but a few years ago wow factor was relatively explicitly written into the reviewer guidelines at Psych Science ("would you go down the hallway to tell one of your colleagues in a different discipline about this?"). I applied for grants recently and "knowledge mobilization" (aka, putting your work out there to the [social] media, etc.) is a merit evaluation category just like student training. The problems are systematic and institutional... and given how pervasive they are, I find myself being really sympathetic towards individuals like Amy Cuddy who happened to play the publicity game really well--like everybody told us to do--and is now being ripped for it. I definitely don't think that quality and wow factor need to be in opposition to each other, in principle.
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1 hour ago, The_Old_Wise_One said:
Gelman's reputation is far from tarnished. In fact, he is a hero in many people's mind for coming out and telling researchers that they are abusing statistical methods in order to perpetuate their own theories. The only people who don't appreciate what Gelman is doing for science are people who have not thought critically about the effects that bad methods have on society, and also those who refuse to admit that they are wrong.
Comparing this with Trump is absurd. First off, it isn't a minority of people that are taking these issues seriously, it's a large number of people across every field. Second, Gelman has absolutely nothing to gain from doing so this; he is doing it because he wants to see people do better science. Others have tried in the past, and they have failed because they do not take a direct approach.
Just to clarify, I didn't have Gelman in mind particularly when I wrote my other comment about tarnished reputations but in retrospect I see why it looked that way. Mea culpa. I'm not in statistics and don't know much firsthand about Gelman's rep one way or another.
About my Trump metaphor... "minority" and "large number of people" aren't mutually exclusive terms; Trump has a large number of supporters but they're still a minority of Americans. Regardless, my point wasn't about the raw numbers of people involved but rather the sense of resentment and disenfranchisement that's occurring. Of course there are a lot of dissimilarities with Trumpers, but in common what I see is a some number of people--perhaps many numerically, but not the majority proportionally--that are nursing sense of umbrage and resentment that there are other popular people in the "establishment" that have status (measured in pubs, TED talks, or ivy league tenure) that is unearned, and those people deserve to be taken down a peg or two, and that the reformers have been unfairly shut out. Gelman probably gets increased support because he's a big name, and he's finally "calling out" the other popular kids.
Stepping back to the OP's point.... for new grad students my advice would be to keep your head down and avoid any kind of controversial advisors, i.e., too strongly in any camp. Establish a track record of good research and worry about the internecine feuds later.
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41 minutes ago, eternallyephemeral said:
There's a real shift in the way people are thinking about science and doing science, and there are people who are not adapting to these new requirements. Is it politics to call them out on it?
People might ask: What are these "new requirements" and who are the people setting them? Science is a collaborative enterprise and things happen by consensus. "Call them out" is an interesting choice of words because I think that's what people chafe at because it sounds like admonishing and shaming; rather, there should be discussion, debate, and persuasion.
To highlight the point that it's possible to be a methods-focused person without being an asshole about it. The best examples I can think of are Preacher and Hayes. They realized that people weren't doing mediation analyses properly but instead of just kicking at past work, they created tools to facilitate proper mediation analyses. Their SPSS macro is enormously popular and has driven the field forward, allowing novel study designs that weren't possible in the past because we didn't have readily accessible means of analyzing the data. They have a good reputation because they're smart, creative, respective, productive, and collegial.
The criticism I often hear leveled at (some) replicators and (some) methods people is that they want to rip apart what other people are producing without producing anything useful of their own. Build up, not tear down. When people like Alison Ledgerwood say: "We're trying to improve methods in our lab, here's what we've been doing if you want to try it too..." this is helpful and people respect it. When others, who I won't name, say that they'll only trust findings that were pre-registered because they assume those findings were p-hacked or whatever, that's not helpful. It signals distrust of and disrespect for your colleagues.
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2 hours ago, The_Old_Wise_One said:
The take away for me is – choose an advisor who keeps up with current methods.
There's also: Choose an advisor who doesn't have a reputation for being an asshole. These political debates tarnish reputations on both sides, and my read on the field's sentiment is that it's a lot worse to be someone who rips on others via social media.
A lot of what's going on in social psychology lately reminds me of what's going on with Trump supporters: A minority that feels disenfranchised and embittered, and produces a lot of vitriol and aggression to try and provoke reform from the establishment. Make Science Great Again.
- Piagetsky, TXInstrument11 and neur0cat
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Coincidentally, I came across this review recently, which looks on point and easy to digest.. might give you some advice for dealing with the relatives...
https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/780/docs/12_pspi_lewandowsky_et_al_misinformation.pdf
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Cognitive dissonance is more about rationalizing our behaviour when it misaligns with an attitude. e.g., Conservatives used to care about senate reform. Harper gets elected and does nothing about it, so people start to minimize the importance of senate reform (i.e., weaken their attitude in order to justify the lack of action).
You're asking a big question. At the most basic, Social Identity Theory talks about ingroup bias where we derive positive feelings from promoting our own social groups and derogating others. Broadly, you're also talking about "motivated social cognition" where we shape our thoughts in service of other goals (e.g., to be right, to feel good, to promote our group at the expense of others). So people see a meme disparaging Trudeau and conservatives are inclined to believe it (because it supports their prior beliefs) and liberals are inclined to be skeptical (because it contradicts their prior beliefs). The most specific term you're looking for is probably "biased assimilation" or "confirmation bias".
- Piagetsky, Solio and FutureLMHC
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Presumably the OP is American but for any Canadian readers, stipends that are classified as scholarships are not taxed. The portion that is classified as TA wages is taxed. You also get tuition credits that will (likely) be more than enough to get any taxes returned.
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On 3/27/2016 at 11:37 AM, PeppermintMocha said:
Does TAing affect research productivity?
Yes. There are only so many hours in the day.
In my grad program, internally funded students TA'd 10 hours/week for 2 of 3 terms/year as part of their funding package. Externally funded students (e.g., had a gov't fellowship) TA'd 5 hours/week for 1 of 3 terms/year. After a few years the divergent research productivity was very apparent. Twenty hours a week might be common but I can't imagine that I could have been as productive working that much.
- Oshawott and PeppermintMocha
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On 3/23/2016 at 8:47 PM, quietq said:
I'm struggling to find any reliable information on social psych rankings and their importance in academic hiring
Nosek has a 2010 PSPB that ranks social psych grad programs by research impact.
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I don't think this is a question that can be answered in the abstract -- an opinion very much depends on the specific PIs and schools involved, and knowledge of why you didn't make it this year and whether another year would help. I think you should seek out someone at your school who knows your area and ask their advice.
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23 hours ago, didion10 said:
Thanks guys. I was disclosed that my other offer is not a great fit and this is my first choice.
Minor thing but don't speak ill of your other programs even with vague terms like "fit". First, they might know people there and word gets around. Second, what if you end up there? Don't stress about having done it, but avoid in the future.
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16 minutes ago, kobekobekobe said:
i have no idea if im posting in the right place
To answer your question, no, this is not the right place to ask for homework help.
What counts as research/work/volunteer experience?
in Psychology Forum
Posted
Look for professors in your department who have active research programs, e.g., look for their websites or recent publications. If their website has instructions for potential research assistants follow those instructions. If not, read some recent papers of whichever professors look like they're doing interesting work and send them an email offering to volunteer if they need people with reference to what you found interesting from what you read. Or, if your department does independent study courses you could approach them from that angle, i.e., to work with them for credit. Last, look for funded opportunities from your university, e.g, there is a summer NSERC research award that can fund undergraduate students for the summer.