from Hacker News

The Vast Emptiness of Social Psychology

by carderne on 8/4/24, 9:03 AM with 3 comments

• by CM30 on 8/4/24, 1:30 PM

  It's sadly not too surprising because the incentives push for flashy stories and easy to understand narratives, and "studies show that people are selfish monsters that will backstab each other at the drop of a hat" gets a lot more attention than "most people are pretty good and prefer to cooperate".

  One gets the researcher a ton of attention and provides the basis for a cushy job and career, one probably gets buried 5 minutes after being published. Same reason we get so many studies making bold claims about other scientific topics, while the "no correlation" ones don't get much attention.

• by spacebacon on 8/5/24, 12:24 PM

  If we could all be as genuinely interested in disproving our theories as we are in proving them then we can all get closer to the less profitable and harder to control truth.

  Excitement gets in the way and many of us marry our first idea quickly. We force it and manipulate the audiences for attention, wealth, and power.

  Confirmation bias and inflated egos have been publishing “the facts” since stone tablets.

• by Ambolia on 8/4/24, 9:36 AM

  I like the rule of thumb: "If the result of a social psychology experiment doesn't agree with your grandma, it's probably fake."