-
Bower Reflects on Integrating Two Theoretical Frameworks
As a Yale university graduate student back in the mid 1950s, APS Past President and William James Fellow Gordon H. Bower was being indoctrinated into the then-dominant learning theory of Clark Hull, who sought to explain learning and motivation by scientific laws of behavior. But he became a devotee of William K. Estes’s statistical theory of learning after meeting him at a 1957 workshop. At the APS-Psychonomic Society W. K. & K. W. Estes Lecture at the 2016 APS Convention in Chicago, Bower delivered a 60-year retrospective on his attempts to integrate or translate Hull’s theory into Estes’s statistical framework.
-
Workshop Shows How to Make Open Science an Everyday Practice
How can we carry out research that is credible and useful in solving social problems? What are the interventions, tools, and techniques that will improve the daily practice of psychological science? These are the questions that motivate researcher Brian Nosek, Courtney Soderberg, and the rest of the team at the Center for Open Science (COS) in Charlottesville, Virginia.
-
Ariely Packs Address With Jokes, Anecdotes, and Lots of Science
True to form, Dan Ariely packed his Fred Kavli Keynote Address with plenty of jokes and humorous anecdotes in the opening night of the 2016 APS Annual Convention in Chicago. But his 40-minute speech still incorporated plenty of the behavioral science that has made him famous. Ariely, the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, discussed his years of research, involving tens of thousands of study participants, showing how people cheat or lie just a little — in a way that still allows them to view themselves as generally honest and decent people.
-
Kraut to Lead PCSAS as New Executive Director
The Board of Directors of the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS), the new system that began with one program in 2009 and now has accredited 30 of the best clinical programs in the United States and Canada, has announced that Alan G. Kraut will be its new Executive Director. Kraut previously served for 27 years as the founding Executive Director of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). The PCSAS Board announced Kraut’s appointment today in Chicago, where PCSAS was meeting in conjunction with the APS 2016 Annual Convention.
-
Albert Bandura Receives National Medal of Science
President Obama presented eminent psychological scientist Albert Bandura with the National Medal of Science in a ceremony held at the White House on May 19, 2016. Awarded annually by a committee of presidential appointees, the National Medal of Science recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to science, technology, and engineering. Bandura, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, has received both the APS William James Fellow Award and the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award and is considered one of the most influential psychological scientists in the world.
-
Rise in Reporting p-Values as “Marginally Significant”
A researcher collects data, runs a statistical test, and finds that the p value is approximately .07. What happens next? According to a study conducted by Laura Pritschet (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Derek Powell (University of California, Los Angeles), and Zachary Horne (also at the University of Illinois), that researcher may be likely to report that result as “marginally significant” -- not quite significant, but getting there. While it may be common, Pritschet and colleagues argue that this practice is “rooted in serious statistical misconceptions” and is likely to lead to false-positive errors (and sometimes false negatives, too).
