Marginally Significant

As professors, we often serve in many different roles: teacher, researcher, mentor, administrator, program director. With so many jobs, how do we define ourselves? With which role do we most identify? In this episode, we talk about our academic identities, how they have changed over time, and how our identities might shape other people's perceptions of us.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

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• How replicable are links between personality traits and consequential life outcomes?

How do we mentor and train graduate students so we don't simply churn out intellectual clones? How do we help students with mental health issues? Should we set up a Kobayashi Maru for our students? In this episode, we talk about our experienes and philosophies with mentoring students.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

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• The Emotional Toll of Graduate School

Research designs and the required statistical analyses are getting more and more complicated. It is becoming increasingly common for researchers to consult with statisticians to analyze their data. This can create an issue where the lead researcher on a project does not know how to run the analysis they describe in their papers and presentations. In this episode we discuss whether the lead researcher has an obligation to know how to run, interpret, and describe the analyses in their research projects. Smith raises concerns and potential issues with relying on someone to run the analyses without being able to double check for accuracy. Wingrove and Holden argue that we should trust the statisticians to do their job.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

Evolutionary Psychology has been criticized as simply generating "just-so" stories—plausible explanations that lack evidence. In this episode, Smith and Monroe question whether evolutionary psychology is useful for generating predictions rather than simply generating post-hoc stories. Chris—the evolutionary psychology expert in the group—defends his area and articulates the instances where evo psych can help inform people's predictions. We also get a bit sidetracked talking about sperm competition theory.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

People have attitudes they are aware of (explicit attitudes) but also supposidly have attitudes they don't know they have (implicit attitudes). Did you know you might love the Backstreet Boys, even though you think you hate them? This distinction between implicit and explicit attitudes has been extremely influential in Social Psychology and many other fields of social science. It has also led to the development of (mostly ineffective) implicit bias training. In this episode, Smith questions the distinction between implicit and explicit attitudes. Certainly, there are different ways of measuring attitudes, but it is unclear if these different measures tap into separate constructs or are simply different ways of measuring the same construct.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

Links:

• Psychology’s Racism-Measuring Tool Isn’t Up to the Job -- Science of Us

We all have active research labs that meet on a regular basis. Typically, we discuss our current projects, train students on running our studies, and perhaps have students present their findings. However, can lab meetings be used for more than just discussing our own research? Are there practical skills or useful information we could cover during lab meetings that would be helpful for our students? In this episode, we talk about what we currently do in our lab meetings. Perhaps more importantly, we discuss what we could be doing to most effectively use this time for the benefit of our graduate and undergraduate students.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

Don’t email us with questions about this episode until you’ve read the syllabus! Students often ask questions that could easily be answered if they read the syllabus. In this episode we talk about whether it is a realistic expectation that our students read the syllabus before asking questions, what information we put in a syllabus, whether our policies sometimes deviate from what the syllabus states, and if the syllabus does—or at least should—act as a contract between the professor and the students.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

How do we teach students about the replication crisis in a way that is honest but also doesn’t completely undermine their trust in psychological science? In this episode, we describe what we’ve done in the past and discuss possible strategies we can use in the future.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

Links:

• How (and Whether) to Teach Undergraduates About the Replication Crisis in Psychological Science - William J. Chopik, Ryan H. Bremner, Andrew M. Defever, Victor N. Keller, 2018

Welcome to our new, shorter episodes. In this episode, we discuss our experiences with teaching about political, religious, and other potentially sensitive topics in our classes. We talk about ways that we’ve handled these topics in the past, issues that have come up, and give suggestions about how to mitigate potential problems.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

In part 1 of this episode, Monroe rants about why we should publish fewer papers. He contends that there is too much mediocre research being published. Therefore, we should all choose to publish only the most meaningful and impactful research. In part 2 of the episode, we talk about using MTurk for participant recruitment and some of the issues with the platform. Monroe then tries to convince us that we should stop using MTurk and instead rely on other methods for recruiting participants.

You can contact Marginally Significant on Twitter (@marginallysig), through email ([email protected]), or on the web (marginallysignificant.fireside.fm/contact).

Links:

• Let's Publish Fewer Papers: Psychological Inquiry: Vol 23, No 3