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In the first experiment, researchers sought to observe how parents would interact with their children (in this case, 3-year-olds) after the parents were asked t

• reader_mode 5y ago
  It fits my world view so it must be true. Jokin aside I've seen way better studies of this kind where the parents would wear a mic at home and they would then do a word count, word analysis, etc.
  • jimmygrapes 5y ago
    Wouldn't this method have its own issues with observation awareness biases?
    • reader_mode 5y ago
      That's only relevant if it affects one group more than the other, maybe you can control for this or take another approach, in any case I would find the results way more convincing than a survey. Especially considering that going through a tough time will colour your memory and memory is extremely unreliable.
    • xwdv 5y ago
      No they don’t know what you’re observing for specifically
    • fouc 5y ago
      idea: it could be disguised as an Alexa or Google Home
  • CJefferson 5y ago
    They did do exactly that. The article doesn't do a good job of explaining the paper.
• mc32 5y ago
  There was a report by a psychologist who said Native American mascots have a negative effect on children of native Americans. This may or may not be the case or may be true in some specific circumstances (Redskins, for example) but may not be true for all, however, many high schools are changing their team names based on this one study/conclusion which was funded by a tribe. Which is fine, but usually when there is a conflict of interest one wants to have additional independent studies that come to a similar conclusion.
  • pryce 5y ago
    If you're referring to Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman & Stone 2008, do you think that schools deciding to change their team names/mascots might have something to do with far larger and more broad cultural trends over the last couple of decades rather than these schools decisions resting primarily on the robustness and applicability (or otherwise) of this one paper?
  • staticman2 5y ago
    In your example there's no downside to changing the name, though. It's a low stakes decision. In the book "Trust- a Very Short Introduction" the author argues if the situation is "low stakes" you should need a lower level of evidence to trust someone than high stakes. While I think the author might discuss it only in the context of human interactions, I imagine you could apply the paradigm to this situation.
    • zepto 5y ago
      > In your example there's no downside to changing the name, though. Changing a name in response to a conflicted and un-valid paper is a downside in itself.
      • staticman2 5y ago
        It didn't require a scientific paper to create the mascot but you seem to be arguing it requires a "good paper" that's been validated to rename it? You are demonstrating a status quo cognitive bias.
• slavboj 5y ago
  As long as there is demand for a "safe" explanation for The Gap, an immense amount of spurious research will be funded and lauded.
  • seventytwo 5y ago
    Stop dog whistling.
    • elefanten 5y ago
      There are multiple performance and outcome gaps that are unequivocal in research across multiple disciplines. There lots of debate about what causes them. None of them necessarily imply anything permanent/immutable about any group. Plugging your ears and crying ethical foul impoverishes the discussion and all it’s observers. You could instead add real arguments to the debate. That enriches the discussion.
      • seventytwo 5y ago
        I agree with you 100% that more research is needed, but the person above me seemingly doesn’t, or they wouldn’t have made such a dismissive comment implying funding should be cut because the “true” answer is already known. Don’t get mad at me for calling that person out. I’m the one who wants more research - they apparently already know the answer.
• h0l0cube 5y ago
  Do you hold an oracle which tells you which studies will not replicate, or is there some particular trait of the study that provably doesn't replicate?
  • reedjosh 5y ago
    It's not about an Oracle. It's that the mentioning of a topic prior to some conclusion generating observation has practically never generated replicable results. Still, these studies make news all the time because they're easy to p-hack into some interesting conclusion.
    • h0l0cube 5y ago
      Reading the study it appears they went to some pains in not revealing their intentions: > The caregiver and child were seated across from one another at a table. The child completed an unrelated experiment with the researcher, while the caregiver completed the Scarcity or Control manipulation survey on a tablet. When the caregiver had finished, the researcher left the room under the guise of loading a second survey onto the iPad, leaving the caregiver and child alone with a toy the experimenter happened to offer as she left. A video camera and/or tape recorder recorded their interactions. The conclusion could be that being reminded or queried about hardships has a chilling effect
  • tqi 5y ago
    People are good at predicting this: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/scientists-can-collectively-sense-which-psychology-studies-are-weak/568630/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/scientis...
    • h0l0cube 5y ago
      > People To be specific: > They recruited 206 volunteers—a mix of psychologists and economists, students and professors, none of whom were involved in the SSRP itself
      • 5y ago
• dalbasal 5y ago
  >>How many studies like this need to not replicate before we stop treating them seriously? Hard to answer this, IMO. It would be hard to stop keep versions of such anecdata from informing our personal worldviews, for example. Business knowledge is basically made out of such stuff. Replicability, for questions like this may be the wrong bar. Should we expect a relationship between financial hardship and talking to three year olds to be the same for a group of parents in 2021 california and 1997 Tokyo? A lot of the replication crisis is shoddy work. Bad research. But... a lot of it is a problem of the subject matter itself. It's complex, and can't be isolated. Does dumping a ton of manure in a forest result in more leaves? more flies? Hard to describe the relationship between the manure and leaves in a replicable way. You can do controlled experiments, but the lab version doesn't answer the same question... the one about complexity. IDK... I'm not excusing the replication crisis and many of the worst affected fields do need to pay attention to the gunk they've accumulated. OTOH, we do need ways of describing relationships that are complex. "We know nothing" is insufficient.
  • enkid 5y ago
    It's not "we know nothing." It's "we have low confidence in this thing." Which is exactly what you should be willing to say if you want an accurate view of the world. You can take action of knowing something with low confidence, you just make sure it's not too extreme, and it's not incompatible with being wrong.
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  Well, they did two studies, with different methodology, that came to the same conclusion. I would agree that it would be better to see another group try to replicate, and the actual study link (https://psyarxiv.com/byp4k https://psyarxiv.com/byp4k) has this: "Data Availability: For Study 1, all materials and analysis scripts, including the protocol to be used in the case of a future replication, are available on OSF..." But, inspecting the data closer, it does seem like the effect is not huge, and that is perhaps why the Berkeley website that is summarizing the results did not choose to mention anything about the size of the effect.
• mjevans 5y ago
  A more repeatable study designed today might partner with smartphone megacorps and/or also use in home microphones like Alexa, etc. The ethics considerations of microphones always on would need to be extremely stringent, and only for safety of the children or others should they be breached. The study might also require the provisioning of basics like Internet access and such devices. Though these days Internet access is as necessary for a productive member of society as power and water are, and IMO it should be a universal right.
  • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >A more repeatable study designed today might partner with smartphone megacorps and/or also use in home microphones like Alexa, etc. and would be done by Facebook or Google to sell the data that you need money to loan companies.
  • kortilla 5y ago
    > Though these days Internet access is as necessary for a productive member of society as power and water are No it’s not. I have an uncle who is a plumber and gets by without Internet just fine. Banks with ATMs, branch offices, and phones. Pays bills using the the mail, etc. In the US utilities are required to offer mail options for bills, but not email or phone. Unless you work from home over the Internet or have children remote learning, it’s absolutely just a luxury.
• throwadogabone 5y ago
  I'm glad you posted and took the the time to check it, because intuitively I would agree with the headline, less money = more stress = less talking (probably not for everybody, but most people will talk less when under stress, especially over time). At the limit, this is "my parents couldn't afford proper care for a debilitating diesease" vs they could. There is one group there that would talk more. if you're poor, broke, alcholic, meth head, on heroin, you're probably not gonna be talking to your kids as much as someone who is not. To see that idea with a self survey is kinda hilarious. kutgw to get this stuff right.
  • wesleywt 5y ago
    Why are the poor in the America described in terms of "meth heads"? Being poor is not a moral failure.
    • silly-silly 5y ago
      I think you're reading his list as an 'and', read the list as an 'or'.
      • wesleywt 5y ago
        I just picked one, but I noticed this more than once. Either the poor are referred to as "trailer trash", "Walmart monsters" or "meth heads". It is just interesting to see how American culture is so anti being poor that it seeps into your language without you knowing.
        • shadowlight 5y ago
          All cultures have anti poor sentiments as well as empathetic attitudes towards the poor. What is "interesting" here is prejudice attitudes from people like you towards america. Also stop calling Americans "interesting." Using a term like this is a deliberate insult on a culture or a person. You are examining the culture like it's a lab rat and commenting on how the behavior is "interesting." You are not an idiot. People do not talk like this in real life by remarking on how behavior is "interesting" to the subjects face. You and others only use these terms behind the anonymity of a forum. Therefore you are aware this is insulting. Stop. This is a common tactic used to get around the HN rules. You say "interesting" posing it as an innocent remark. It is not, you are conducting a deliberate and insulting attack on American culture here.
• h0l0cube 5y ago
  Because people are reading this excerpt from the article without reading the paper itself, this isn't a self-survey. The survey itself is a 'manipulation'. (But I won't comment on the reproducability or value of this methodology) > This left us with a final sample of 84 dyads, randomly assigned to either the Scarcity (n=42) or Control (n=42) conditions. Dyads across conditions did not differ in age, child or caregiver sex, caregiver education, or family income > The caregiver and child were seated across from one another at a table. The child completed an unrelated experiment with the researcher, while the caregiver completed the Scarcity or Control manipulation survey on a tablet. When the caregiver had finished, the researcher left the room under the guise of loading a second survey onto the iPad, leaving the caregiver and child alone with a toy the experimenter happened to offer as she left. A video camera and/or tape recorder recorded their interactions. And there was also a second experiment: > The second experiment used [..] tiny “talk pedometer” devices worn by children that record their conversations and count the words they hear and say. > [..] analyses revealed that parents engaged in fewer conversational turns with their children at the month’s end, a time that typically coincides with money being tight
• venkat223 5y ago
  Value system is also important.As they bring up behaviour is getting moulded by epigentics on emotional levels
• spywaregorilla 5y ago
  On top of that, skimming the results I see an effect size of 40 fewer words, not statistically significant. Paper doesn't really support the headline.
  • relaxing 5y ago
    How did you arrive at a calculation of statistical significance from “40 fewer words”?
    • spywaregorilla 5y ago
      40 fewer words is the average effect size. Statistical significance is a measure of the likelihood of getting that effect size by random if the two approaches didn't actually affect the outcome. With a large enough sample size, an effect size of 1 fewer word could be "statistically significant", even if it is practically meaningless. In this case they got a p-value of 0.1 iirc. So assuming there's nothing special about the circumstances, you'd expect to get samples this different 1 in 10 times you ran the experiment by luck alone.
      • relaxing 5y ago
        No I know what statistically significant means, I was curious why you phrased it that way. The authors listed many results, and noted whether each was significant. It seems weird that you keyed in on one measure (caregiver vocabulary) with a higher p-value, and not the other results that did suggest that when money is tight, parents talk less.
        • spywaregorilla 5y ago
          Oh I see I jumped the gun. The first result seemed close to the headline of the paper but its actually a bit different. The actual headline is from further down. I'd still ignore it though. You see how the first 3 are under "pre registered analyses" and the significant finding is under "exploratory analyses"? That's another way of saying their experiment failed to find anything interesting so they combed the rest of the dataset to try and find something they could publish. Basically just classic p-hacking. Probably not malicious or intentionally deceiving, but p-hacking nonetheless. If you throw your hands up and decide to check what's interesting on a 14x14 correlation matrix, you've just tested around 100 hypotheses without realizing it. If your significance threshold is 0.05, you should expect to have 5 false positives in there already.