Mickey and Yoel chat with Nick Hobson, a psychologist who has moved from academia to applying behavioral science in the real world. What are some of the challenges that face academics-turned-practitioners? How can you apply psychological research in a rigorous way while, at the same time, keeping the bosses happy? We talk to Nick to find out.

Plus: Yoel's eventful evening, and microdosing.

Special Guest: Nick Hobson.

Links:

• A Smiling Serial Shitter Is Terrorizing Toronto - VICE
• Call Me | chipmunks on 16 speed
• The Behaviorist
• ‎It's All Just a Bunch of BS on Apple Podcasts

Are many classic social psychology experiments more theater than science? Mickey and Yoel discuss "The Rise and Fall of Social Psychology," a book by the sociologist Augustine Brannigan that makes this provocative claim. Given the complexity of social life, are laboratory experiments just the wrong way to measure most social phenomena?

Bonus: who is Don Cherry, and what is his beef with Yoel?

Links:

• Home - Beau's
• ‘I don’t regret a thing.’ Don Cherry not backing down after being fired by Sportsnet | The Star
• Ron MacLean says Coach's Corner 'is no more' after Don Cherry firing | CTV News
• The Rise and Fall of Social Psychology: Augustine Brannigan: 0000202307433: Amazon.com: Books
• RÜFÜS DU SOL ●● You Were Right

Mickey and Yoel take advantage of the SESP (Society for Experimental Social Psychology) conference to ask guests some hard-hitting questions about the present and future of social psychology (and, of course, beers). We then answer the same questions ourselves.

Bonus: why are we banning applause on the show?

Special Guests: Hanah Chapman, Keith Maddox, Laura Niemi, and Pam Smith.

Links:

• Beau's Brewing Co. - Lug Tread
• Oxford students vote to replace clapping with silent jazz hands | News | The Times
• SESP
• Laura Niemi | Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
• Hanah Chapman
• Pamela Smith | Faculty | Rady School of Management | UC San Diego
• Yidan Yin
• Tufts University, Department of Psychology: People
• Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases | Science
• Exploring the landscape of modern academic psychology: Finding and filling the holes. (Paul Rozin) — Like any other domain of human activity, psychology has its fads and fashions. One consequence of fads is an overconcentration of resources on specific problems or approaches, which leaves other important problems or approaches (holes) underappreciated and understudied. This article is primarily about different factors (such as negativity bias, polarization of positions, focus on internal causes of behavior, dedication to a narrow view of what science is) that result in holes and about explorations of some of these holes that have interested the author. Psychologists should look more in the holes left behind by current enthusiasms.
• The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect: Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie: 9780465097609: Amazon.com: Books
• Watch Undone - Season 1 | Prime Video

Mickey and Yoel talk with Debra Mashek, the executive director of Heterodox Academy, an organization working to increase open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement in academia. But what does that mean exactly? Aren't these just codewords for "more conservatives"? We talk to Debra to find out.

We also ask Debra about her decision to leave her tenured faculty position and move across the country to take this job.

Special Guest: Debra Mashek.

Links:

• A Beer Sommelier's No Name Beer Review
• Blood Orange - Flagship Brewing Company - Untappd
• Welcome to Heterodox Academy - Heterodox Academy
• Half Hour of Heterodoxy w/ Chris Martin - Heterodox Academy
• Pa Salieu - Dem A Lie - YouTube

Jessica Flake joins Mickey and Yoel to talk measurement. What is it, how do you do it well, and do social psychologists care about it? What does measurement theory tell us about the validity of standardized tests like the GRE? Jessica also talks about how she went from high-school dropout to professor at McGill.

Bonus: what the hell is Kentucky Gentleman?

Special Guest: Jessica Flake.

Links:

• Brasserie Harricana, Montréal, Quebec, Canada | RateBeer
• JK Flake 📈📏 on Twitter: "What? The GRE is not a face valid measure of quantitative + verbal reasoning? These discussions are off the rails."
• Construct Validation in Social and Personality Research: Current Practice and Recommendations - Jessica K. Flake, Jolynn Pek, Eric Hehman, 2017
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Measurement Schmeasurement: Questionable Measurement Practices and How to Avoid Them
• Psychological Science Accelerator – a distributed laboratory network
• Kentucky Gentleman - Wikipedia
• Warpaint - 'Billie Holiday (Rough Trade Sessions)' - YouTube

By listener request, Yoel quizzes Mickey about ego depletion. How did we start studying it? How has the replication crisis changed how we think about it? After more than a decade studying ego depletion, does Mickey still have any faith in the phenomenon?

Bonus: what does it mean to say, "don't @ me"?

Links:

• De Hemel Brewery
• Don't @ me
• The Strength Model of Self-Control — Self-control is a central function of the self and an important key to success in life. The exertion of self-control appears to depend on a limited resource.
• Is Ego Depletion Real? An Analysis of Arguments — An influential line of research suggests that initial bouts of self-control increase the susceptibility to self-control failure (ego depletion effect). Despite seemingly abundant evidence, some researchers have suggested that evidence for ego depletion was the sole result of publication bias and p-hacking, with the true effect being indistinguishable from zero.
• Self-Control, Ego Depletion, and Social Psychology’s Replication Crisis — Provides Baumeister's perspective on ego depletion and its status in the context of psychology's replication crisis. Reviews history, controversy, evidence.
• A series of meta-analytic tests of the depletion effect: Self-control does not seem to rely on a limited resource. - PsycNET — We find very little evidence that the depletion effect is a real phenomenon, at least when assessed with the methods most frequently used in the laboratory. Our results strongly challenge the idea that self-control functions as if it relies on a limited psychological or physical resource.
• Bias-Correction Techniques Alone Cannot Determine Whether Ego Depletion is Different from Zero: Commentary on Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015 by Michael Inzlicht, Will Gervais, Elliot Berkman :: SSRN — Despite our admiration for this program of meta-research, we suggest that bias-corrected meta-analyses cannot yet resolve whether the overall ego depletion is different from zero or not.
• RRR – The Ego-Depletion Paradigm — A Multi-Lab Pre-Registered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Paradigm

Yoel and Mickey discuss the role of eminence in science. Is there a role for eminence in psychology? What makes a researcher eminent? Would we be better off disregarding eminence entirely?

Your hosts also discuss common myths in psychology plus a recent mini-controversy in which someone compared New York Times columnist Brett Stephens to a bedbug.

Plus: what did Yoel bring back from Hawaii?

Links:

• Evil Genius | STACY’S MOM CITRA IPA — Stacy’s Mom is our American IPA dry-hopped exclusively with Citra hops. Soft on the palate with extremely low bitterness, this is a great example of a new-school American IPA. Citra hops provide an explosive aroma of tropical fruits, lemon peel, peach and mango, complimented by a clean and slightly toasty malt base. Think you don’t like IPAs? Give Stacy’s Mom a try!
• Bret Stephens 'bedbugs' spat: Times writer's latest column links phrase to Nazi rhetoric during Holocaust - The Washington Post
• 10 Myths About The Mind | Psychology Today Canada — It’s high time we put the most enduring myths about human behavior to bed, and see the mind—and the world—as it is.
• Parenting doesn’t matter that much—as long as you don’t do anything super-weird. — We’re all terrified we’re going to mess up our kids. The science says we probably won’t have much impact at all.
• Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom - YouTube
• Our obsession with eminence warps research : Nature News & Comment
• PsyArXiv Preprints | Against Eminence

Yoel and Mickey discuss sacred values. How are sacred valued different from other values? What are the hallmarks of values that have become sacrilized? Why does it seem crass, or even offensive, to suggest trading off a sacred value (such as diversity value) against other, more mundane considerations? What does it mean that sacred values are dose insensitive and evidence insensitive?

Bonus: Do scientists who attended conferences sponsored by the late Jeffrey Epstein need to morally cleanse?

Links:

• St. Mary Axe | INDIA PAGAN ALE — A robust pale ale - hazy, juicy and aggressively hopped.
• Divercity Helles Lager – Lost Craft — Divercity is our beer, from Toronto, for everyone.

Yoel and Mickey welcome Associate Professor of Psychology, Alexa Tullett from the University of Alabama to the podcast. Co-host of The Black Goat podcast and board member of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS), Alexa talks about being a Canadian early career researcher working in the US. What research is Alexa most excited about these days? How did she become interested in meta science? What advice would she give to non-Americans thinking of working in academia in the US? How did the Black Goat podcast come about?

Bonus: Follow-up on the effect of parenting on happiness.

Special Guest: Alexa Tullett.

Links:

• Hoegaarden
• Boaty McBoatface wins poll to name polar research vessel | Environment | The Guardian
• Break Music: Psapp - Marshrat
• The Black Goat podcast
• The Compleat Academic: A career Guide
• The Pains and Pleasures of Parenting: When, Why, and How Is Parenthood Associated With More or Less Well-Being?
• A Reassessment of the Defense of Parenthood - Saurabh Bhargava, Karim S. Kassam, George Loewenstein, 2014
• Parents Are Slightly Happier Than Nonparents, but Causality Still Cannot Be Inferred: A Reply to Bhargava, Kassam, and Loewenstein (2014) - S. Katherine Nelson, Kostadin Kushlev, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014

Playing devil's advocate, Yoel and Mickey mount a criticism against the scientific study of mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Can we measure it? Is mindfulness-based therapy effective? Can mindfulness improve the quality of attention beyond the meditation cushion? Are effects of mindfulness mostly placebo effects produced by motivated practitioners and adherents? Should we be impressed by mindfulness meditation’s supposed effects on conceptions of the self? Is mindfulness, in all its complexity, amenable to scientific study?

Bonus: Is the value of diversity and inclusivity a core part of open science?

Links:

• Burdock Bottle Shop
• Collective Arts Brewing (Art + Brewing) — Lunch Money is a straight-up, easy drinking, ale brewed exclusively with German Magnum and Centennial hops to fuel your creativity.
• Will this time be different? — Prepared remarks delivered by Sanjay Srivastava to the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) on July 9, 2019 in Rotterdam.
• Can We End the Meditation Madness? — I AM being stalked by meditation evangelists. ... Before we're all swept into this fad, we ought to ask why meditation is useful.
• The benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. - PubMed - NCBI — Mindfulness is an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. This research provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the role of mindfulness in psychological well-being. The development and psychometric properties of the dispositional Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) are described.
• Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation. - PubMed - NCBI — During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism. Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed.
• Argentine tango dance compared to mindfulness meditation and a waiting-list control: a randomised trial for treating depression. - PubMed - NCBI — OBJECTIVES: To determine whether tango dancing is as effective as mindfulness meditation in reducing symptoms of psychological stress, anxiety and depression, and in promoting well-being.
• Spirituality, mindfulness and substance abuse. - PsycNET — ...A positive relationship between mindfulness and smoking/frequent binge drinking behavior was uncovered
• Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis | Complementary and Alternative Medicine | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network — Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety, depression, and pain and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health–related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight. We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (ie, drugs, exercise, and other behavioral therapies).
• Mindfulness training affects attention--or is it attentional effort? - PubMed - NCBI — Our data demonstrate that previously observed improvements of attention after MBSR may be seriously confounded by test effort and nonmindfulness stress reduction
• Meditation, mindfulness and executive control: the importance of emotional acceptance and brain-based performance monitoring. - PubMed - NCBI
• Cognitive effects of MBSR/MBCT: A systematic review of neuropsychological outcomes. - PubMed - NCBI — Overall studies did not support attention or executive function improvements. We found preliminary evidence for improvements in working memory and autobiographical memory as well as cognitive flexibility and meta-awareness.
• Mindfulness training as cognitive training in high-demand cohorts: An initial study in elite military servicemembers. - PubMed - NCBI
• A randomised active-controlled trial to examine the effects of an online mindfulness intervention on executive control, critical thinking and key thinking dispositions in a university student sample | BMC Psychology | Full Text — No evidence was found to suggest that engaging in guided mindfulness practice for 6 weeks using the online intervention method applied in this study improves critical thinking performance.