Social Psychology in the Information Age: When a conference on the crisis in confidence is not what it appears

Sunday, January 12, 2020

When a conference on the crisis in confidence is not what it appears

Read Dorothy Bishop's blog on the matter here. Not every organization that appears on the surface to show interest in improving the replicability and reproducibility of scientific results is actually interested in doing so. Anything sponsored by the National Association of Scholars (which apparently uses the same acronym as the genuinely respected National Academy of Sciences) is best treated with some suspicion. The choice of acronym alone seems designed to confuse. Beyond that, Dr. Bishop does a good job of exposing this organization's political agenda. In other words, this bunch is interested in improving science as much as it is protecting a particular political perspective in line with the current occupant in the White House with regard to climate science.

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About

Hi! I am A. James Benjamin, Jr., PhD. Most folks call me James or JB eventually.

I am an educator trained as a social psychologist. I work as an Associate Professor at University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. I earned my PhD from University of Missouri-Columbia in 2000. Much of my research has touched on cognitive and behavioral effects of aggression-related cues (e.g., video games and weapon images), increasingly from a critical and skeptical perspective. I have also examined person variables such as authoritarianism and short-term media exposure in relation to attitudes toward violence and toward torture. My more recent interests involve the psychometric properties of various measures of aggressive cognition that are commonly used by aggression researchers. My work intersects with that of related researchers in areas such as Media Communication.

As an educator, I primarily teach methodology courses and the undergraduate survey course in social psychology. I also regularly teach the introductory psychology course. I make a point of introducing students at all levels to the replication crisis. Increasingly, I am trying interactive activities to engage students to become more critical readers of the research literature in my field.

I use this blog to express my own professional and personal perspectives. This blog is completely independent of any organizations with which I am affiliated. Assume that the views I express here are exclusively mine and do not reflect the views of any employer.