5 ms·

Registered Replication Report – Facial Feedback Hypothesis [pdf]

124 points by Jerry2 10y ago

Jerry2 10y ago
It you don't have the time to read the whole paper, jump to page 11 and check out the graph at the bottom of the page. Top confidence interval is from the original study and the rest are confidence intervals from studies that tried to replicate it.
- evanpw 10y ago
  The 95% CI for the original study contains zero? How does a study with a non-significant result which can't be replicated become "seminal"?
  - lj3 10y ago
    > How does a study with a non-significant result which can't be replicated become "seminal"? How does anything become "seminal"? People we trust told us so. Whenever something like this happens, you should be asking yourself who you're trusting that you probably shouldn't be.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    The same way people write "citation needed" and then put their brains to sleep. It's not as if they will then go to replicate and evaluate those citations (if they were, they could just as well try to evaluate what the other person told them directly, or at least try finding those citations for or against it themselves). They just need some comforting assurances -- which will then repeat freely, few (or nobody) bothering to examine those "citations" at any step of the chain. For me, unless the science is old enough to be including in University 101 courses, I don't much care about it. Unless you work in the field (and will actually use and evaluate the results mentioned in it) a peer reviewed paper is worth almost nothing to the casual HN reader.
    - mabcat 10y ago
      By the way, "holding a pen in your mouth makes you feel smiley" is definitely in psych 101 courses, and social 201, and also showed up in cognition 301 if memory serves.
leereeves 10y ago
Psychology (and social science in general) has a serious problem. Standards for publication are far too low, incentives for replication almost nonexistent, negative results rarely reported. How many of the published results in social science are trustworthy? https://www.xkcd.com/882/ https://www.xkcd.com/882/
- dominotw 10y ago
  what do you think can be done here? These people obviously know that their studies can't be replicated, they are not ignorant so they are obviously malicious.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    How exactly do you jump into the first conclusion: "These people obviously know that their studies can't be replicated" and what's so "obvious" about it? Or, also, about the second jump to conclusion: "they are not ignorant, so they are obviously malicious." Perhaps they fell prey to the same thinking that everything is "obvious" instead, taking for granted a lot of things that they should have checked?
  - drcross 10y ago
    Just treat everything you read in social science with a grain of salt. The studies will never be able to alleviate problems of reproducible with the sample sizes we have.
  - function_seven 10y ago
    > These people obviously know that their studies can't be replicated I don't think that's fair to say at all. I can come up with several ways a study can non-maliciously arrive at a false conclusion: 1. The researchers may accidentally leak information to the participants regarding the hypothesis being studied. When using human subjects, it's very difficult to avoid biasing them toward results they may think you're looking for. 2. Researchers may not sufficiently blind themselves during the experiment, causing them to have undue influence on the outcome, even if they're not consciously trying to exert it. 3. Some unknown confounding effect may be at play during the experiment that wasn't properly accounted and controlled for. Those are just three I could think of. When dealing with behavioral sciences, I can't imagine how difficult it must be to design a test protocol that eliminates all the messiness of the meatbags being studied.
sp332 10y ago
I'm pretty sure the first picture on page 4 shows a misunderstanding of how the pen is supposed to be used. You're supposed to put it in your teeth cross-wise, so your mouth is forced into a kind of smiling position.
- laser 10y ago
  LOL anecdotally putting it crosswise was far more amusing just now. Although, that graph on page 11 is pretty damning.
- nkurz 10y ago
  Actually, the replication seems to be correct. See Figure 1 in the original here: http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-al-1988-cartoons.pdf http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-a... I applaud both the original and replication authors for including clear illustrations. And at a glance, Strack et al seems to be a well written paper.
MollyR 10y ago
Sigh. I wish I could explain this better to my business managers who read PopSci like this, and try to remold the business to follow them.
Kenji 10y ago
The rise of social 'science' is equal to the demise of intellectual rigour and common sense. The sad part is that social science could be done right, but few do it right because most people who don't suck at statistics go for fields that are more worthwile.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sly010 10y ago
Also, smelling farts prevents cancer. Look it up.
Osiris30 10y ago
Also see previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030791
tootie 10y ago
That study wasn't really key to the book.
yalogin 10y ago
The more I see these the more I am thinking these psychological conclusions are just placebos. You pick the one that appeals to you most and ignore the rest. They work only because you want them to be true.
- nondescriptuser 10y ago
  It's funny, because your statement is a topic in the book.
threepipeproblm 10y ago
I thought I knew the basic premise of "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" even though I haven't read it... but I don't understand why this would be a key study for the book. Can anyone provide a quick explain?
- paulsutter 10y ago
  I agree - this study doesn't seem key to the premise of the book, the title seems misleading.
- dvanduzer 10y ago
  Biting a pen with your teeth or your lips should induce one of two different "Type I Thinking" facial expressions, associated with Kahneman's "fast thinking" as I understand it. This study appears to discuss the link between forcing a type I physical response, while attempting to prompt a type II response (laughter/humor). As I'm reading it, this study is talking about a previous study in which fuzzing the "fast thinking" system affected the "slow thinking" system. This new paper calls those results into question.
jfager 10y ago
It's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and the study in question is hardly "key" to the book, it gets all of one paragraph in chapter 4.
- dewarrn1 10y ago
  Both valid points, but this failure-to-replicate does erode some confidence in the general notion of embodied cognition (and I believe deservedly so because these phenomena have always seemed rather incredible). Much of Kahneman's other work has a more solid empirical foundation.
xzion 10y ago
Is the post title referring to "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, or something else?
brownbat 10y ago
There's a fun p-hacking game embedded in this article from Fivethirtyeight: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/ Really drives home how tough it is to thread the needle of both interesting and useful results.
haddr 10y ago
It's not key study, as title suggests.
rer 10y ago
Here's a link to the 1988 paper they're disputing http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-al-1988-cartoons.pdf http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-a... I wonder if it'd make a difference if the pen was horizontal in the participant's mouth, touching both corners of the lips. That's the mental image I walked away with when I read "Thinking, Fast and Slow".
pajop 10y ago
From the pdf, data and registered protocols in the Open Science Framework site: https://osf.io/pkd65/ https://osf.io/pkd65/

124 points by Jerry2 10y ago

It you don't have the time to read the whole paper, jump to page 11 and check out the graph at the bottom of the page. Top confidence interval is from the original study and the rest are confidence intervals from studies that tried to replicate it.

evanpw 10y ago
The 95% CI for the original study contains zero? How does a study with a non-significant result which can't be replicated become "seminal"?
- lj3 10y ago
  > How does a study with a non-significant result which can't be replicated become "seminal"? How does anything become "seminal"? People we trust told us so. Whenever something like this happens, you should be asking yourself who you're trusting that you probably shouldn't be.
- coldtea 10y ago
  The same way people write "citation needed" and then put their brains to sleep. It's not as if they will then go to replicate and evaluate those citations (if they were, they could just as well try to evaluate what the other person told them directly, or at least try finding those citations for or against it themselves). They just need some comforting assurances -- which will then repeat freely, few (or nobody) bothering to examine those "citations" at any step of the chain. For me, unless the science is old enough to be including in University 101 courses, I don't much care about it. Unless you work in the field (and will actually use and evaluate the results mentioned in it) a peer reviewed paper is worth almost nothing to the casual HN reader.
  - mabcat 10y ago
    By the way, "holding a pen in your mouth makes you feel smiley" is definitely in psych 101 courses, and social 201, and also showed up in cognition 301 if memory serves.

leereeves 10y ago

Psychology (and social science in general) has a serious problem. Standards for publication are far too low, incentives for replication almost nonexistent, negative results rarely reported. How many of the published results in social science are trustworthy? https://www.xkcd.com/882/ https://www.xkcd.com/882/

dominotw 10y ago
what do you think can be done here? These people obviously know that their studies can't be replicated, they are not ignorant so they are obviously malicious.
- coldtea 10y ago
  How exactly do you jump into the first conclusion: "These people obviously know that their studies can't be replicated" and what's so "obvious" about it? Or, also, about the second jump to conclusion: "they are not ignorant, so they are obviously malicious." Perhaps they fell prey to the same thinking that everything is "obvious" instead, taking for granted a lot of things that they should have checked?
- drcross 10y ago
  Just treat everything you read in social science with a grain of salt. The studies will never be able to alleviate problems of reproducible with the sample sizes we have.
- function_seven 10y ago
  > These people obviously know that their studies can't be replicated I don't think that's fair to say at all. I can come up with several ways a study can non-maliciously arrive at a false conclusion: 1. The researchers may accidentally leak information to the participants regarding the hypothesis being studied. When using human subjects, it's very difficult to avoid biasing them toward results they may think you're looking for. 2. Researchers may not sufficiently blind themselves during the experiment, causing them to have undue influence on the outcome, even if they're not consciously trying to exert it. 3. Some unknown confounding effect may be at play during the experiment that wasn't properly accounted and controlled for. Those are just three I could think of. When dealing with behavioral sciences, I can't imagine how difficult it must be to design a test protocol that eliminates all the messiness of the meatbags being studied.

sp332 10y ago

I'm pretty sure the first picture on page 4 shows a misunderstanding of how the pen is supposed to be used. You're supposed to put it in your teeth cross-wise, so your mouth is forced into a kind of smiling position.

laser 10y ago
LOL anecdotally putting it crosswise was far more amusing just now. Although, that graph on page 11 is pretty damning.
nkurz 10y ago
Actually, the replication seems to be correct. See Figure 1 in the original here: http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-al-1988-cartoons.pdf http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-a... I applaud both the original and replication authors for including clear illustrations. And at a glance, Strack et al seems to be a well written paper.

MollyR 10y ago

Sigh. I wish I could explain this better to my business managers who read PopSci like this, and try to remold the business to follow them.

Kenji 10y ago

The rise of social 'science' is equal to the demise of intellectual rigour and common sense. The sad part is that social science could be done right, but few do it right because most people who don't suck at statistics go for fields that are more worthwile.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sly010 10y ago

Also, smelling farts prevents cancer. Look it up.

Osiris30 10y ago

Also see previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030791

tootie 10y ago

That study wasn't really key to the book.

yalogin 10y ago

The more I see these the more I am thinking these psychological conclusions are just placebos. You pick the one that appeals to you most and ignore the rest. They work only because you want them to be true.

nondescriptuser 10y ago
It's funny, because your statement is a topic in the book.

threepipeproblm 10y ago

I thought I knew the basic premise of "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" even though I haven't read it... but I don't understand why this would be a key study for the book. Can anyone provide a quick explain?

paulsutter 10y ago
I agree - this study doesn't seem key to the premise of the book, the title seems misleading.
dvanduzer 10y ago
Biting a pen with your teeth or your lips should induce one of two different "Type I Thinking" facial expressions, associated with Kahneman's "fast thinking" as I understand it. This study appears to discuss the link between forcing a type I physical response, while attempting to prompt a type II response (laughter/humor). As I'm reading it, this study is talking about a previous study in which fuzzing the "fast thinking" system affected the "slow thinking" system. This new paper calls those results into question.

jfager 10y ago

It's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and the study in question is hardly "key" to the book, it gets all of one paragraph in chapter 4.

dewarrn1 10y ago
Both valid points, but this failure-to-replicate does erode some confidence in the general notion of embodied cognition (and I believe deservedly so because these phenomena have always seemed rather incredible). Much of Kahneman's other work has a more solid empirical foundation.

xzion 10y ago

Is the post title referring to "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, or something else?

brownbat 10y ago

There's a fun p-hacking game embedded in this article from Fivethirtyeight: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/ Really drives home how tough it is to thread the needle of both interesting and useful results.

haddr 10y ago

It's not key study, as title suggests.

rer 10y ago

Here's a link to the 1988 paper they're disputing http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-al-1988-cartoons.pdf http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-a... I wonder if it'd make a difference if the pen was horizontal in the participant's mouth, touching both corners of the lips. That's the mental image I walked away with when I read "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

pajop 10y ago

From the pdf, data and registered protocols in the Open Science Framework site: https://osf.io/pkd65/ https://osf.io/pkd65/