Social Psychology in the Information Age: February 2022

Friday, February 4, 2022

A long-overdue retraction

After sounding the alarm bells several years ago, a paper that I had failed to get retracted (the editor of PAID at the time offered a superficially "better" Corrigendum in 2019 instead) is now officially retracted. Dr. Joe Hilgard really put the work in to make it happen. Here is his story:

At long last, Personality and Individual Differences has retracted this paper by Qian Zhang and colleagues.

Let me tell you about the reasons and how long the process took... https://t.co/WdFyDMBMAR
— Joe Hilgard, data guy, thanks you for reading. (@JoeHilgard) February 3, 2022

The saga of this weapons priming article is over. There are plenty of articles remaining that have yet to be adequately scrutinized.

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.