Charting the future of social psychology on stormy seas: Winners, losers, and recommendations

Abstract

Social psychology's current crisis has prompted calls for larger samples and more replications. Building on Sakaluk's (in this issue) distinction between exploration and confirmation, I argue that this shift will increase correctness of findings, but at the expense of exploration and discovery. The likely effects on the field include aversion to risk, increased difficulty in building careers and hence more capricious hiring and promotion policies, loss of interdisciplinary influence, and rising interest in small, weak findings. Winners (who stand to gain from the mooted changes) include researchers with the patience and requisite resources to assemble large samples; incompetent experimenters..