New Content From Perspectives on Psychological Science

Gender Nonconformity and Minority Stress Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals: A Meta-Analytic Review
Brian C. Thoma, Kristen L. Eckstrand, Gerald T. Montano, Taylor L. Rezeppa, and Michael P. Marshal

Gender nonconformity appears to be associated with minority stress experiences (i.e., stress in social environments in the form of prejudice based on sexual orientation) among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals. Thoma and colleagues examined studies and found that gender nonconformity among LGB individuals appeared to be associated with experiencing more prejudice, less concealment of sexual orientation, lower internalized homonegativity, and higher expectations of rejection related to sexual orientation. Moreover, gender nonconformity among men appeared more associated with experiencing prejudice than among women. These findings suggest that researchers should further examine gender nonconformity when studying the role of minority stress in health outcomes among LGB individuals.

Sorting the File Drawer: A Typology for Describing Unpublished Studies
David A. Lishner

Lishner describes various types of unpublished studies and reasons for their nonpublication, categorized as either result-dependent or result-independent. He also reports whether the different types of reasons for nonpublication have a greater effect on individual researchers’ decisions to submit (or not to submit) or on reviewers/editors’ decisions to not accept a study. He argues that result-dependent reasons are more likely to introduce publication bias than result-independent reasons. Lishner describes some reasons for nonpublication (e.g., poor methodology) that would produce beneficial (i.e., rigor bias) rather than problematic publication bias. The typology he proposes may facilitate understanding the universe of study results within subdisciplines of psychological science.

Psychological Science Is Not Race Neutral
Cydney H. Dupree and Michael W. Kraus

Following up on Roberts and colleagues’ article about how editors, authors, and participants across fields of psychological science are overwhelmingly White, Dupree and Kraus inspect possible reasons for and consequences of this lack of diversity. They report three phenomena that create and maintain racial inequality: racial ignorance, threats to belonging (i.e., scholars of color may not feel they belong in the field), and racial-progress narratives that lead scholars to assume that racism no longer exists. Dupree and Kraus propose steps to reduce racial inequality and emphasize that effective change will require the participation of everybody in the field.

Putting the Self in Self-Correction: Findings From the Loss-of-Confidence Project
Julia M. Rohrer et al.

Rohrer and researchers from diverse fields of psychology explore the “self” in science’s self-correction process. In 13 statements, researchers share how and why they have lost confidence in one of their own published findings. The authors discuss these loss-of-confidence statements and extract the common reasons for the loss of confidence. They also report the results of an anonymous survey indicating that loss-of-confidence sentiments are common but rarely made public. Rohrer and colleagues argue that removing barriers to individual self-correction is key to making psychological science the self-correcting enterprise that science more broadly is perceived to be.

From Genome-Wide to Environment-Wide: Capturing the Environome
Sophie von Stumm and Katrina d’Apice

Some of the principles that underlie genetic influences on psychological traits might also underlie environmental influences, von Stumm and d’Apice suggest. Genome-wide association studies have shown that a high number of DNA variants, each with very small effect sizes, drive the genetic influences on individual characteristics. The researchers propose that a high number of environmental elements, albeit with small effect sizes, can also influence individual differences. They compare the availability of DNA microarrays in genetics to the availability of digital technologies that enable psychological scientists to collect rich data about the environment and compute the environome, akin to the genome.

Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? Comparing Linear and Nonlinear Effects of Cognitive Ability on Life Outcomes
Matt I. Brown, Jonathan Wai, and Christopher F. Chabris

There is no such thing as being too smart, Brown and colleagues suggest. They used data from four longitudinal studies with 48,558 participants, from 1957 to the present, and found that participants who showed higher cognitive ability in youth were more likely to have more positive occupational, educational, health, and social outcomes later in life. The researchers did not find support for any disadvantage of higher ability nor a threshold beyond which high ability scores stopped being beneficial to the individual. These findings go against the idea that high cognitive ability beyond a certain point can be harmful.

Do We Report the Information That Is Necessary to Give Psychology Away? A Scoping Review of the Psychological Intervention Literature 2000–2018
Bharathy Premachandra and Neil A. Lewis, Jr.

Articles about psychological interventions appear to not report all of the information needed to implement interventions. Premachandra and Lewis present this conclusion after conducting a scoping review (i.e., a descriptive overview of the articles as a whole rather than the individual studies) of the psychological-intervention literature published between 2000 and 2018. The researchers found that the 56 studies reviewed report, at most, 64% of the information needed to implement interventions. This indicates a gap between the information reported and the information practitioners need to implement findings.

The Development of Identity Fusion
Elaine Reese and Harvey Whitehouse

Reese and Whitehouse describe a new developmental account for the origins of fused personal and group identities, which can lead to self-sacrifice to benefit the group. Their account and proposed program of research might help to better understand identity fusion and harness it for peaceful rather than violent forms of self-sacrifice. They explain that shared biology among group members, cued by appearance similarities, enables fusion and occurs early in childhood. In adolescence, individuals develop autobiographical reasoning, connecting past experiences to their present self, which enables fusion based on shared experiences.

Be Happy: Navigating Normative Issues in Behavioral and Well-Being Public Policy
Mark Fabian and Jessica Pykett

Well-being public policy (WPP) is emerging as a domain of psychological science that can be applied in a general way, like behavioral public policy (BPP). Fabian and Pykett review the normative debates about BPP and elaborate normative principles for WPP. They argue that a nudging framework (interventions designed to direct people’s behavior while preserving their freedom of choice) worked for BPP but is inappropriate for WPP and suggest that a boosting framework (interventions that foster people’s competence to make their own choices) would be better for the legitimacy of WPP.

Estimating the Prevalence of Transparency and Reproducibility-Related Research Practices in Psychology (2014–2017)
Tom E. Hardwicke et al.

Hardwicke and colleagues examined a random sample of 250 psychology articles published between 2014 and 2017 and estimated the prevalence of research practices that may increase transparency and reproducibility. They found that over half of the articles were publicly available (65%), but sharing of materials, study protocols, raw data, and analysis scripts was rare (from 0% to 14%). Preregistration was also rare (3%), as were replication studies (5%). Moreover, few studies were included in systematic reviews or meta-analyses (11% and 7%, respectively). More than half of the articles included funding disclosure statements (62%), but conflict-of-interest statements were less common (39%).

Saving Science Through Replication Studies
John E. Edlund, Kelly Cuccolo, Megan S. Irgens, Jordan R. Wagge, and Martha S. Zlokovich

Edlund and colleagues discuss three research paradigms that have been subject to scrutiny through replications: sex differences in jealousy, power posing, and the effects of priming cleanliness on moral judgments. Whether the replications point to a real finding or not, they allow researchers to discuss how scientists can learn and improve science, they write. Edlund and colleagues discuss what researchers can learn from replications and what they believe researchers should do to improve science inquiry. They also provide several approaches to replication (e.g., multilab replications of many or specific effects) and explain how these approaches advance science.