Writing a Psychology Report: Sections Explained
Half of all published psychology papers that use significance testing contain at least one p-value that does not match its own test statistic (Nuijten…
Category: Research
Features of Science in Psychology: Falsifiability and Paradigms
When 100 published psychology studies were repeated, 97% of the originals had reported significant results but only 36% of the repeats did. The featur…
Measures of Central Tendency and Dispersion in Psychology
In 1907 Francis Galton lined up 787 guesses of an ox's weight. The middle guess, the median, was 1,207 lb. The ox weighed 1,198 lb (Galton, 1907). Cho…
Normal and Skewed Distributions in Psychology: A-Level Guide
When Theodore Micceri tested 440 large sets of psychology and education scores for a normal distribution, every single one failed the test (Micceri, 1…
Self-Report Methods in Psychology: Questionnaires and Interviews
Offered on a list, "to think for themselves" was chosen by 61.5% of people. Asked the same question with no list, only 4.6% said it. That gap is the c…
Observational Techniques in Psychology: Types and Design
When eight sane people secretly had themselves admitted to psychiatric hospitals, staff never spotted them, but 35 of 118 patients counted on the ward…
Types of Experiment in Psychology: Lab, Field, Natural, Quasi
In one of psychology's best-known field experiments, 21 of 22 hospital nurses were ready to give a patient double the maximum dose of an unfamiliar dr…
Peer Review in Psychology: Process, Types and Evaluation
In 1982, two psychologists resubmitted 12 already-published papers to the journals that had printed them, under made-up names. Peer review spotted onl…
Validity in Psychology: Types, Assessment and Improvement
In 1973, eight people with no mental illness claimed to hear voices and were admitted to 12 psychiatric hospitals. Not one was detected by staff, whic…
Reliability in Psychology: Types, Assessment and Improvement
When two psychiatrists independently assessed the same patients in the DSM-5 field trials, their agreement on major depressive disorder reached a kapp…