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Here's a fundamental problem with psychology reproducibility even in principle: experiments often depend on the subject not knowing about the experiment; theref

by xamuel 8y ago

Here's a fundamental problem with psychology reproducibility even in principle: experiments often depend on the subject not knowing about the experiment; therefore, the more well-known an experiment, the harder it is to perform. For example, it would be difficult to perform a large Stanford Prison Experiment without any of the participants knowing about the Stanford Prison Experiment (which knowledge would taint the results). And if you select for ignorant participants, your sample is no longer random.

gboudrias 8y ago
An interesting point and not untrue, but it's only important if we're trying to get at "human nature" in itself, which to me seems kind of silly as we're social animals by nature. In practice, there's nothing wrong with testing different levels of awareness, and if an experiment is part of popular culture then it's part of us too. It should be noted that the SPE's methodology was totally fucked in the first place, and before reproducing it we'd need to actually perform it "right" at least once (which can't be done now that ethics* boards are a thing).
- xamuel 8y ago
  >if an experiment is part of popular culture then it's part of us too. Sure, but so what? The point is that certain psychological experiments can, just by being known to the participants, have their results change, and this means in some sense there are fundamental problems with the replicatability of those experiments.