Two Psychologists Four Beers

Latest Episodes:

Episode 34: The Future of Social Psychology Nov 13, 2019

Show notes

Mickey and Yoel take advantage of the SESP (Society for Experimental Social Psychology) conference to ask guests some hard-hitting questions about the present and future of social psychology (and, of course, beers). We then answer the same questions ourselves.

Bonus: why are we banning applause on the show?

Special Guests: Hanah Chapman, Keith Maddox, Laura Niemi, and Pam Smith.

Links:

Beau's Brewing Co. - Lug Tread
Oxford students vote to replace clapping with silent jazz hands | News | The Times
SESP
Laura Niemi | Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
Hanah Chapman
Pamela Smith | Faculty | Rady School of Management | UC San Diego
Yidan Yin
Tufts University, Department of Psychology: People
Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases | Science
Exploring the landscape of modern academic psychology: Finding and filling the holes. (Paul Rozin) — Like any other domain of human activity, psychology has its fads and fashions. One consequence of fads is an overconcentration of resources on specific problems or approaches, which leaves other important problems or approaches (holes) underappreciated and understudied. This article is primarily about different factors (such as negativity bias, polarization of positions, focus on internal causes of behavior, dedication to a narrow view of what science is) that result in holes and about explorations of some of these holes that have interested the author. Psychologists should look more in the holes left behind by current enthusiasms.
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect: Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie: 9780465097609: Amazon.com: Books
Watch Undone - Season 1 | Prime Video

Episode 33: What is Heterodox Academy? (with Debra Mashek) Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

Mickey and Yoel talk with Debra Mashek, the executive director of Heterodox Academy, an organization working to increase open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement in academia. But what does that mean exactly? Aren't these just codewords for "more conservatives"? We talk to Debra to find out.

We also ask Debra about her decision to leave her tenured faculty position and move across the country to take this job.

Special Guest: Debra Mashek.

Links:

Episode 32: Measurement Schmeasurement (with Jessica Flake) Oct 16, 2019

Show notes

Jessica Flake joins Mickey and Yoel to talk measurement. What is it, how do you do it well, and do social psychologists care about it? What does measurement theory tell us about the validity of standardized tests like the GRE? Jessica also talks about how she went from high-school dropout to professor at McGill.

Bonus: what the hell is Kentucky Gentleman?

Special Guest: Jessica Flake.

Links:

Episode 31: Is Ego Depletion Real? Oct 02, 2019

Show notes

By listener request, Yoel quizzes Mickey about ego depletion. How did we start studying it? How has the replication crisis changed how we think about it? After more than a decade studying ego depletion, does Mickey still have any faith in the phenomenon?

Bonus: what does it mean to say, "don't @ me"?

Links:

De Hemel Brewery
Don't @ me
The Strength Model of Self-Control — Self-control is a central function of the self and an important key to success in life. The exertion of self-control appears to depend on a limited resource.
Is Ego Depletion Real? An Analysis of Arguments — An influential line of research suggests that initial bouts of self-control increase the susceptibility to self-control failure (ego depletion effect). Despite seemingly abundant evidence, some researchers have suggested that evidence for ego depletion was the sole result of publication bias and p-hacking, with the true effect being indistinguishable from zero.
Self-Control, Ego Depletion, and Social Psychology’s Replication Crisis — Provides Baumeister's perspective on ego depletion and its status in the context of psychology's replication crisis. Reviews history, controversy, evidence.
A series of meta-analytic tests of the depletion effect: Self-control does not seem to rely on a limited resource. - PsycNET — We find very little evidence that the depletion effect is a real phenomenon, at least when assessed with the methods most frequently used in the laboratory. Our results strongly challenge the idea that self-control functions as if it relies on a limited psychological or physical resource.
Bias-Correction Techniques Alone Cannot Determine Whether Ego Depletion is Different from Zero: Commentary on Carter, Kofler, Forster, & McCullough, 2015 by Michael Inzlicht, Will Gervais, Elliot Berkman :: SSRN — Despite our admiration for this program of meta-research, we suggest that bias-corrected meta-analyses cannot yet resolve whether the overall ego depletion is different from zero or not.
RRR – The Ego-Depletion Paradigm — A Multi-Lab Pre-Registered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Paradigm Meta-analysis of the studies revealed that the size of the ego-depletion effect was small with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) that encompassed zero (d = 0.04, 95% CI [−0.07, 0.15].

Episode 30: Evaluating Eminence Sep 18, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey discuss the role of eminence in science. Is there a role for eminence in psychology? What makes a researcher eminent? Would we be better off disregarding eminence entirely?

Your hosts also discuss common myths in psychology plus a recent mini-controversy in which someone compared New York Times columnist Brett Stephens to a bedbug.

Plus: what did Yoel bring back from Hawaii?

Links:

Evil Genius | STACY’S MOM CITRA IPA — Stacy’s Mom is our American IPA dry-hopped exclusively with Citra hops. Soft on the palate with extremely low bitterness, this is a great example of a new-school American IPA. Citra hops provide an explosive aroma of tropical fruits, lemon peel, peach and mango, complimented by a clean and slightly toasty malt base. Think you don’t like IPAs? Give Stacy’s Mom a try!
Bret Stephens 'bedbugs' spat: Times writer's latest column links phrase to Nazi rhetoric during Holocaust - The Washington Post
10 Myths About The Mind | Psychology Today Canada — It’s high time we put the most enduring myths about human behavior to bed, and see the mind—and the world—as it is.
Parenting doesn’t matter that much—as long as you don’t do anything super-weird. — We’re all terrified we’re going to mess up our kids. The science says we probably won’t have much impact at all.
Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom - YouTube
Our obsession with eminence warps research : Nature News & Comment
PsyArXiv Preprints | Against Eminence

Episode 29: Sacred Values Sep 04, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey discuss sacred values. How are sacred valued different from other values? What are the hallmarks of values that have become sacrilized? Why does it seem crass, or even offensive, to suggest trading off a sacred value (such as diversity value) against other, more mundane considerations? What does it mean that sacred values are dose insensitive and evidence insensitive?

Bonus: Do scientists who attended conferences sponsored by the late Jeffrey Epstein need to morally cleanse?

Links:

St. Mary Axe | INDIA PAGAN ALE — A robust pale ale - hazy, juicy and aggressively hopped.
Divercity Helles Lager – Lost Craft — Divercity is our beer, from Toronto, for everyone.
What it was like to be a scientist in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle. — The “Girls” Were Always Around
Opinion | Don’t Mess With My ‘Sacred Values’ - The New York Times
Thinking The Unthinkable: Sacred Values and Taboo Cognitions — "Many people insist that their commitments to certain values (e.g. love, honor, justice) are absolute and inviolable – in effect, sacred. They treat the mere thought of trading off sacred values against secular ones (such as money) as transparently outrageous – in effect, taboo."
The psychology of the unthinkable: taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals. - PubMed - NCBI
Protected Values - ScienceDirect
Specks of Dirt and Tons of Pain: Dosage Distinguishes Impurity From Harm - Joshua Rottman, Liane Young, 2019 — Levels of moral condemnation often vary with outcome severity (e.g., extreme destruction is morally worse than moderate damage), but this is not always true. We investigated whether judgments of purity transgressions are more or less sensitive to variation in dosage than judgments of harm transgressions.
I hate open science – [citation needed] — Now that I’ve got your attention: what I hate—and maybe dislike is a better term than hate—isn’t the open science community, or open science initiatives, or open science practices, or open scientists… it’s the term. I fundamentally dislike the term open science.

Episode 28: Better Advice (with Alexa Tullett) Aug 21, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey welcome Associate Professor of Psychology, Alexa Tullett from the University of Alabama to the podcast. Co-host of The Black Goat podcast and board member of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS), Alexa talks about being a Canadian early career researcher working in the US. What research is Alexa most excited about these days? How did she become interested in meta science? What advice would she give to non-Americans thinking of working in academia in the US? How did the Black Goat podcast come about?

Bonus: Follow-up on the effect of parenting on happiness.

Special Guest: Alexa Tullett.

Links:

Episode 27: Against Mindfulness Aug 07, 2019

Show notes

Playing devil's advocate, Yoel and Mickey mount a criticism against the scientific study of mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Can we measure it? Is mindfulness-based therapy effective? Can mindfulness improve the quality of attention beyond the meditation cushion? Are effects of mindfulness mostly placebo effects produced by motivated practitioners and adherents? Should we be impressed by mindfulness meditation’s supposed effects on conceptions of the self? Is mindfulness, in all its complexity, amenable to scientific study?

Bonus: Is the value of diversity and inclusivity a core part of open science?

Links:

Burdock Bottle Shop
Collective Arts Brewing (Art + Brewing) — Lunch Money is a straight-up, easy drinking, ale brewed exclusively with German Magnum and Centennial hops to fuel your creativity.
Will this time be different? — Prepared remarks delivered by Sanjay Srivastava to the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) on July 9, 2019 in Rotterdam.
Can We End the Meditation Madness? — I AM being stalked by meditation evangelists. ... Before we're all swept into this fad, we ought to ask why meditation is useful.
The benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. - PubMed - NCBI — Mindfulness is an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. This research provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the role of mindfulness in psychological well-being. The development and psychometric properties of the dispositional Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) are described.
Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation. - PubMed - NCBI — During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism. Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed.
Argentine tango dance compared to mindfulness meditation and a waiting-list control: a randomised trial for treating depression. - PubMed - NCBI — OBJECTIVES: To determine whether tango dancing is as effective as mindfulness meditation in reducing symptoms of psychological stress, anxiety and depression, and in promoting well-being.
Spirituality, mindfulness and substance abuse. - PsycNET — ...A positive relationship between mindfulness and smoking/frequent binge drinking behavior was uncovered
Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis | Complementary and Alternative Medicine | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network — Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety, depression, and pain and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health–related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight. We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (ie, drugs, exercise, and other behavioral therapies).
Mindfulness training affects attention--or is it attentional effort? - PubMed - NCBI — Our data demonstrate that previously observed improvements of attention after MBSR may be seriously confounded by test effort and nonmindfulness stress reduction
Meditation, mindfulness and executive control: the importance of emotional acceptance and brain-based performance monitoring. - PubMed - NCBI
Cognitive effects of MBSR/MBCT: A systematic review of neuropsychological outcomes. - PubMed - NCBI — Overall studies did not support attention or executive function improvements. We found preliminary evidence for improvements in working memory and autobiographical memory as well as cognitive flexibility and meta-awareness.
Mindfulness training as cognitive training in high-demand cohorts: An initial study in elite military servicemembers. - PubMed - NCBI
A randomised active-controlled trial to examine the effects of an online mindfulness intervention on executive control, critical thinking and key thinking dispositions in a university student sample | BMC Psychology | Full Text — No evidence was found to suggest that engaging in guided mindfulness practice for 6 weeks using the online intervention method applied in this study improves critical thinking performance.

Episode 26: Terrible Advice (with Paul Bloom) Jul 24, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey welcome Paul Bloom to the podcast, who is not only a returning guest but also the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. We first give terrible advice on parenting. Does parenting affect happiness, relationship satisfaction, and meaning? Does parenting screw with prospective decision making because it leaves the decision maker utterly transformed? We next discuss perversity. Why do we enjoy doing transgressive things? Who is likely to be perverted? Is perversion ever a good strategy?

Bonus: How would Paul rate Yoel on a scale of 1 to 5?

Special Guest: Paul Bloom.

Links:

Parenthood and Marital Satisfaction: A Meta‐Analytic Review - Twenge - 2003 - Journal of Marriage and Family - Wiley Online Library — This meta‐analysis finds that parents report lower marital satisfaction compared with nonparents
Long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration of first-time and experienced mothers and fathers. - PubMed - NCBI — Following the sharp decline in sleep satisfaction and duration in the first months postpartum, neither mothers' nor fathers' sleep fully recovers to prepregnancy levels up to 6 years after the birth of their first child.
In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery - S. Katherine Nelson, Kostadin Kushlev, Tammy English, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2013 — The results indicate that, contrary to previous reports, parents (and especially fathers) report relatively higher levels of happiness, positive emotion, and meaning in life than do nonparents.
A Reassessment of the Defense of Parenthood — In this Commentary, we report a reanalysis of the data, which suggests that it is premature to abandon the idea that children reduce happiness
WHAT YOU CAN’T EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING — It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to have one. I argue that choosing on this basis is not rational, raising general questions about our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision.
Idealizing Parenthood to Rationalize Parental Investments - Richard P. Eibach, Steven E. Mock, 2011 — Although raising children has largely negative effects on parents’ emotional well-being, parenthood is often idealized as a uniquely emotionally rewarding role.
Break Music: St.Vincent - Smoking Section
The Strange Appeal of Perverse Actions — Why do we enjoy doing things for no good reason?

Episode 25: Truth and Political Bias in Psychology (with John Jost) Jul 03, 2019

Show notes

Yoel and Mickey welcome Professor of Psychology and Politics John Jost from New York University to the podcast. Author of the most influential political psychology paper of the last two decades, John talks about the role of psychology in politics and the role of politics in psychology. Is it fair to characterize conservatives as dogmatic, rigid, and close-minded? Given replication failures, are conservatives indeed more attuned to negative stimuli in their environments? Does the description of conservatives as resistant to change applicable in the Trump era? Should social scientists be advocates/activists, neutral fact-finders, or something in between? Why is the dominance of liberals in social psychology (and academia more broadly) not a problem?

Bonus: What is with all the homo-eroticism?

Special Guest: John Jost.

Links:

Juicy Ass - Flying Monkeys
Farmageddon (Raspberry & Black Raspberry - 2019) – Bellwoods Brewery
Modelo Especial | Casa Modelo Mexican Beer
Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition — Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism—intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification).
The Politics of Fear: Is There an Ideological Asymmetry in Existential Motivation? | Social Cognition — Although the association between fear of death and conservatism was not reliable, there was a significant effect of mortality salience (r = .08–.13) and a significant association between subjective perceptions of threat and conservatism (r = .12–.31).
Ideological Asymmetries and the Essence of Political Psychology - Jost - 2017 - Political Psychology - Wiley Online Library — Individuals are not merely passive vessels of whatever beliefs and opinions they have been exposed to; rather, they are attracted to belief systems that resonate with their own psychological needs and interests, including epistemic, existential, and relational needs to attain certainty, security, and social belongingness.
Ideological asymmetries in conformity, desire for shared reality, and the spread of misinformation. - PubMed - NCBI — Ideological belief systems arise from epistemic, existential, and relational motives to reduce uncertainty, threat, and social discord.
Neoliberal Ideology and the Justification of Inequality in Capitalist Societies: Why Social and Economic Dimensions of Ideology Are Intertwined
An Asymmetrical “President-in-Power” Effect | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core — When political polarization is high, it may be assumed that citizens will trust the government more when the chief executive shares their own political views.
A quarter century of system justification theory: Questions, answers, criticisms, and societal applications - Jost - 2019 - British Journal of Social Psychology - Wiley Online Library — A theory of system justification was proposed 25 years ago by Jost and Banaji (1994, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 33, 1) in the British Journal of Social Psychology to explain ‘the participation by disadvantaged individuals and groups in negative stereotypes of themselves' and the phenomenon of outgroup favouritism.
Do Needs for Security and Certainty Predict Cultural and Economic Conservatism? A Cross-National Analysis — We examine whether individual differences in needs for security and certainty predict conservative (vs. liberal) position on both cultural and economic political issues and whether these effects are conditional on nation-level characteristics and individual-level political engagement.
Political Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology — A lack of political diversity in psychology is said to lead to a number of pernicious outcomes, including biased research and active discrimination against conservatives.
The Ideology of Social Psychologists (and Why it Matters) | SPSP
We tried to publish a replication of a Science paper in Science. The journal refused. — Our research suggests that the theory that conservatives and liberals respond differently to threats isn’t actually true.

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