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Nearly 100 scientists spent 2 months on Google Docs to redefine the p-value. Here’s what they came up with
Psychologist Daniël Lakens of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands is known for speaking his mind, and after he read an article titled “Redefine Statistical Significance” on 22 July 2017, Lakens didn’t pull any punches: “Very disappointed such a large group of smart people would give such horribly bad advice,” he tweeted. In the paper, posted on the preprint server PsyArXiv, 70 prominent scientists argued in favor of lowering a widely used threshold for statistical significance in experimental studies: The so-called p-value should be below 0.005 instead of the accepted 0.05, as a way to reduce the rate of false positive findings and improve the reproducibility of science.
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Taming Traffic Tension with Behavioral Science
Stress, heat, expensive cars, and even larger-size driving seats are associated with aggression or rudeness on the road.
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You think you’re clairvoyant, but your brain is just tricking you
Have you ever felt as though you predicted exactly when the light was going to turn green or sensed that the doorbell was about to ring? Imagine the possibility that these moments of clairvoyance occur simply because of a glitch in your mind’s time logs. What happened first — your thought about the doorbell or its actual ringing? It may have felt as if the thought came first, but when two events (ringing of doorbell, thought about doorbell) occur close together, we can mistake their order. This leads to the sense that we accurately predicted the future when, in fact, all we did is notice the past.
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Why the UK Just Appointed a Minister for Loneliness
There's a new minister in the United Kingdom, and the position's theme song might as well be The Beatles' hit song "Eleanor Rigby," which implores the public to "look at all the lonely people." More than 9 million people in the United Kingdom report that they often or always feel lonely, according to a December 2017 report from the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. This report prompted U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May to appoint politician Tracey Crouch as the new minister of loneliness yesterday (Jan. 17), according to The New York Times. In doing so, the government is acknowledging years of research showing that loneliness can be detrimental to people's health.
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Santos course breaks enrollment record
When professor of psychology and Head of Silliman College Laurie Santos decided to teach “Psychology and the Good Life,” she expected more than 100 students to enroll. Her classes tended to be popular, after all. What she did not expect was that “Psychology and the Good Life” would soon become the most popular class in the history of Yale College, with an enrollment surpassing 1,200. The class, offered for the first time this semester, focuses on psychological bases for methods to increase happiness and reduce stress.
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Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders
Intelligence makes for better leaders—from undergraduates to executives to presidents—according to multiple studies. It certainly makes sense that handling a market shift or legislative logjam requires cognitive oomph. But new research on leadership suggests that, at a certain point, having a higher IQ stops helping and starts hurting. Although previous research has shown that groups with smarter leaders perform better by objective measures, some studies have hinted that followers might subjectively view leaders with stratospheric intellect as less effective.