On the Importance of Avoiding Shortcuts in Applying Cognitive Models to Hierarchical Data

This post summarizes the content of an article that is in press for Behavior Research Methods. The preprint is available on PsyArXiv. Psychological experiments often yield data that are hierarchically structured. A number of popular shortcut strategies in cognitive modeling do not properly accommodate this structure and can result in biased conclusions. First, we considered a modeling strategy that ignores…

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Musings on Preregistration: The Case of the Facial Feedback Effect

tl;dr. In 2016, the results of a multi-lab preregistered replication effort cast doubt on the idea, motivated by the “facial feedback hypothesis”, that holding a pen with one’s teeth (instead of with one’s lips) makes cartoons appear more amusing. The effect’s progenitor, Dr. Strack, critiqued the replication effort and suggested that the presence of a camera (put in place to…

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Karl Pearson’s Worst Quotation?

The famous statistician Karl Pearson was also a eugenicist, so there are a great many hair-raising quotations to choose from. I nominate the following two for being particularly shocking (for more information see Wikipedia and the Guardian). Brace yourself, here is quotation number one:                       “History shows me one way,…

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