President's Column
Daniel Ozer
UC Riverside
This is my first column as President of ARP, and when I first sat down to compose it, I felt a moment of panic—just what have I been doing for ARP? To answer that, I started taking a look at the email subject lines in my ARP mailbox, and I was reminded of the diverse set of issues and concerns that have presented themselves to our small society.
Perhaps the most noteworthy matter dealt with by the Executive Board was negotiating with the Personological Society to bring the Murray award address to the biennial ARP meeting. With the Personological Society, we will share responsibility for naming Award Committee members, and we will share responsibility for maintaining the continuation of this award into the future. Jennifer Pals Lilgendahl, our Secretary/Treasurer and a current member of the Murray Award Committee was instrumental in making this collaboration happen. For years to come, when you enjoy a Murray Award address at an ARP meeting, remember to think a “thanks” to Jen.
On the topic of collaborative efforts with other societies, several Board members met with the board of the European Association of Personality Psychology to explore ways the two associations might usefully collaborate. ARP and EAPP agreed to identity one member of each Executive Board to serve as a delegate on the other Association’s board to better enable effective communications. Thanks to our Past-President, Will Fleeson, for agreeing to assume this position (ARP Delegate to EAPP), and we are (at press time) waiting for EAPP to name their delegate to our Board. We’ve also agreed to turn over the programming of one symposium at each of our biennial meetings to the other Association as a way to highlight the presence of each group in the home conference of the other. I want to thank Will for his efforts in this international collaboration—it was on his watch as President the impetus for these initiatives got underway.
A number of Board members met informally for lunch in Austin during the SPSP meeting, and discussed several issues that the Board would need to address in coming months. One of the most important tasks was to identify a colleague able and willing to step into the role of Executive Officer when Lynne Cooper steps down at the end of the year (more on this, below). Fortunately for us, Rebecca Shiner has agreed to serve as our new Executive Officer. I also want to welcome our new Secretary/Treasurer, Jennifer Tackett, and two new Board Members, Julie Norem and Tom Widiger. On behalf of the Association I want to thank Jen Lilgendahl for her service as Secretary/ Treasurer and our outgoing Board Members, Brent Donnellan and Ken Sheldon for their service.
I want to thank Lynne Cooper for her exemplary service to ARP. Lynne served as ARP Secretary/Treasurer (2009-2010) before assuming the Executive Officer position in 2011. Lynne has provided ARP with four years of excellent service and leadership, and we are far the better for all of her efforts on our Association’s behalf. Lynne will assume the editorship of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences so it is not as if she will get time off! Thanks Lynne, for all you’ve done for ARP and for your continued willingness to serve our subdiscipline.
Having this platform of a “President’s Column” offers me too great a temptation to resist commenting on a set of related issues pertaining to the quality of research in personality and social psychology. By now, I am sure all are well aware of the “replicability crisis” and the concerns about the quality of research that have been appearing in blogs, Facebook discussions, and the journals of our field. Check out some of the links collected on our metablog at http://www.personality-arp.org/metablog/ if you need a reminder.
Many of our ARP colleagues have played important and visible roles in drawing attention to a whole variety of problems in our research practice, from small sample sizes to exploratory analyses masquerading as theory testing. The inability of significance testing to offer leverage against problems of inductive inference in psychological research aimed at understanding individual differences, personality, and social process was a lesson I learned reading Paul Meehl 35 years ago. The concerns being raised are not new. What is new is that (1) a substantial number of visible and successful researchers are expressing awareness of these problems and (2) there is a growing belief that something can be done, be it by pre-registration of studies, replication efforts made reputable, the use of larger sample sizes, or a greater focus on effect sizes and confidence intervals. This sense of possibility and growing list of realistic ways to better our science is so encouraging I don’t quite know how, or if, I want to express one concern: That as we raise our expectations about what is possible beyond our present capacity to meet them, we will become discouraged and come to regard our efforts as misplaced.
That is, those of us not already expert in seeing the dangers of small samples, questionable research practices, or causal claims based solely on observed association are quickly becoming so. And it is important that as researchers, as reviewers, and as editors that we develop our critical faculties. But this critical effort should serve a constructive purpose. We cannot write off one study because it is underpowered, another because it is merely correlational, and a third because we suspect p-hacking. There will be nothing left. When we apply all of our most demanding criteria, will any study really pass muster? At the end of our critical evaluation, when we have identified all that we would label as insufficient, inadequate, or improper, we must ask: What remains? What can be learned? What can be fairly concluded? I submit that the answer is rarely “nothing” even if it is not all that is claimed. I hope we learn to recognize and sufficiently appreciate that which survives our critical demands without being disappointed when we realize that our empirical efforts fail to provide indisputable evidence toward some final truth. Our immodest claims will be wrong and our honest conclusions will be limited.