psychological research and society- exploring routes for bolstering disciplinary impact

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND SOCIETY

Psychological Research and Society:

Exploring Routes for Bolstering Disciplinary Impact

Jared Celniker

Chapman University

Honors Capstone

1


Introduction

I believe that psychology, as an institution and a discipline, can and should be doing more

to positively contribute to society. While there are many areas of potential contribution, I

believe that better educating the public about the misinformation effect and the bystander effect

would exemplify the practical significance that quality psychological knowledge offers all

individuals. Furthermore, revisiting the peer-review process, striving for parsimony in our

methods, and demanding integrity and honesty in our results are three suggestions for

psychologists to help foster a more critically developed, socially significant, and internally

resilient discipline. Finally, I believe that the privatization of knowledge hampers psychologists

from implementing these suggestions, and I believe that as psychologists further develop self-

efficacy and collective efficacy they will act towards changing this exclusionary system of

knowledge production and advocate for open access to information.

Areas Psychology can Foster Public Consciousness

The Misinformation Effect

Elizabeth Loftus, one of the preeminent memory researchers, succinctly defines the

misinformation effect as “the impairment in memory for the past that arises after exposure to

misleading information,” (2005, p. 361). As she states in her review of the research area,

investigators have asked many questions regarding this phenomenon for over 30 years and have

generated valuable data. For instance, researchers now have an understanding of what types of

memories are most susceptible to misinformation (Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978), the amount of

misinformation that can be planted in someone’s mind (Loftus, 1993; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995),

and ways to avoid encoding misinformation as factual information (Loftus, 2005). Loftus

proposes that these studies hold profound significance for everyday functioning and understands

2


“why the public would want to understand more about the misinformation effect and what it tells

us about our malleable memories,” (2005, p. 365). However, understanding why the public

would want this information does not mean that the public necessarily receives this information1.

An all too prevalent example of the lack of public awareness about the misinformation

effect can be seen in Americans’ consumption of cable news. Over one-third of American adults

watch cable news stations everyday (Enda, Jurkowitz, Mitchell, & Olmstead, 2013). The three

most watched cable news stations – CNN, MSNBD, and Fox News – hold the viewership of

millions of Americans each day, with Fox News having nearly three times as many viewers as

either of its two main competitors (Kenneally 2014). One might imagine that Fox’s command

over the cable news industry arose from providing the most accurate information; sadly, data

suggests that Fox may convey more misinformation than any other national television news

organization. In a recent study, investigators found that 72% of Fox News’ coverage of climate

science in 2013 was misleading, compared to 30% and 8% misleading for CNN and MSNBC,

respectively (Huertas & Kriegsman, 2014). The vast majority of Fox’s misleading statements

were classified as “understating the reality or effects of climate change” and “misleading debate”

on the topic. Another study found that those who identified themselves as Fox News watchers

were more likely to believe misinformation about nine items prevalent during the 2010 election

cycle out of 11 total items (Ramsay, Kull, Lewis, & Subias, 2010). The amount of

misinformation believed increased positively and incrementally with the level of exposure to Fox

News, and the effects for each of these questions were statistically significant. While some

viewers of the other news media tested incorrectly believed some misinformation, Fox News

viewers had the most pronounced levels of incorrect beliefs (Ramsay et al., 2010). Furthermore,

1 The economic structure of knowledge production benefits the corporations – news media – that benefit most from disseminating misinformation. This model will be explored in further detail later in this section and in subsequent sections.

3


another Program on International Policy Attitudes report showed that 80% of Fox News viewers

believed one of three misconceptions about the United States’ invasion of Iraq: these

misperceptions were that there was evidence of al-Qaeda links to Iraq, that a WMD was found,

and that world public opinion was in favor of the invasion2 (Kull, 2003). Although people “who

receive the most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have

misperceptions,” there was an astoundingly high level of misperceptions across the board of

news consumption (Kull, 2003, p. 12). The only organizations that had a majority of identified

respondents correctly reject the misperceptions were print media and NPR/PBS; alternatively,

Fox News, CBS, ABC, CNN, and NBC viewers were more likely to be misinformed than they

were to correctly reject all of the misperceptions. While live news serves a purpose in fast paced

modern lives, speed comes at a price of quality. Some organizations have a much higher

propensity for disseminating quality information than others, but it is also clear that there is a

rampant, generally naive public acceptance of news misinformation in the American journalistic

landscape3.

One may reasonably point the finger at news organizations and demand higher quality

reporting and more accurate dissemination of information. Still, the authors of an

aforementioned study suggest, “misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but

are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political

ads and so on,” (Ramsay et al., 2010). Further, media consumption is a volitional choice. A

2 This example may be incredibly poignant given the stance many in the US have taken to the Russian invasion of Crimea. It is much harder to turn a critical eye towards ourselves. 3 Why there are not fines or criminal charges brought against rampant disseminators of misinformation is a mystery to me. Misinforming the public about the invasion and beating the drums of war – actions that resulted in the deaths of American soldiers – seem like a treasonous offense to me, although this is rarely, if ever, discussed in public forums in such a fashion. “Media, War, and Propaganda: Strategies of Information Management During the 2003 Iraq War” provides a critical examination of the media-military industrial complex (Kumar, 2006).

4


critically thinking consumer can and should assess the quality of the information before

accepting some or all of the content.

I echo an insistence for increased news media integrity, yet I also assert that

psychologists can be a larger influence on this information environment and should play an

instrumental role in illuminating the deleterious effects of misinformation. Doing so will

hopefully encourage citizens and consumers of media to hold news organizations accountable for

the statements they spread into millions of homes. For instance, misinformation is more likely to

impact older memories than more recent ones, and the preponderance of recalling

misinformation increases the more it is repeated (Loftus, 2005). One phenomenon that, to me,

seems to fall into these categories is the idolization of President Ronald Reagan on Fox News

and its affiliates. As any avid viewer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart can attest to, Fox’s

pundits have a curiously biased and selective memory when it comes to a variety of facts

concerning our 40th president. While this selective attention has not, to my knowledge, been

empirically tested (aside from, perhaps, political voting behavior at the polls), journalists have

pointed out misrepresentations about Reagan’s record on taxes (Uwimana, 2011). Reagan raised

taxes numerous times during his presidency, and while this is an undisputable fact of history Fox

News pundits tend to acknowledge only Reagan’s single tax cut in 1981 (Politifact, 2012).

Historical facts such as this are ripe for misinformation, for these heavily repeated

misinterpretations (or at least incompletely informed interpretations) concern events that took

place over 30 years ago. Rewriting history in this way, whether intentional or unintentional,

paralyzes our democracy from having informed debates about current predicaments about

generating federal revenue, events that involve and necessarily relate to actions taken in the past.

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to correct misinformed beliefs once they have taken root

5


(Greene, Flynn, & Loftus, 1982); nevertheless, informing people that they are likely to receive

misinformation sometimes help them resist that misinformation (Loftus, 2005).

If psychologists unite and collectively tackle this issue, taking a stand against the news

outlets chronically misinforming the public and discussing the effects of misinformation (and

other topics) more directly with Americans, perhaps a larger public outcry for journalistic

integrity will be heard.

The Bystander Effect

There’s a homeless man lying on a street in your city. A young man, who claims that he

is cleaning the streets of waste, is assaulting the homeless man. You are standing in a crowd of

horrified onlookers. What do you do?

If you are like many, perhaps even most, people, you will not interact physically to deter

the assault (Atwood, 2013). There are numerous reasons for this, but one of the simplest and

most often overlooked is the bystander effect (Myers, 2013, p. 594-596). The bystander effect

has been defined as “the phenomenon that an individual’s likelihood of helping decreases when

passive bystanders are present in a critical situation,” (Fischer et al., 2011). This area of research

developed after the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964; researchers wanted to know why none of

Genovese’s numerous New York City neighbors responded to her audible cries for help. Three

psychological processes have been highlighted as being main contributors to the interference of

bystander intervention: diffusion of responsibility, evaluation apprehension, and pluralistic

ignorance. A meta-analytic review of the bystander effect literature pulled from the definitions

of these terms used by Latané and Darley (1970). Thus, Fischer et al. (2011) defined diffusion of

responsibility as, “the tendency to subjectively divide the personal responsibility to help by the

number (N) of bystanders. The more bystanders there are, the less personal responsibility any

6


individual bystander will feel,” (p. 518). Evaluation apprehension was defined as, “the fear of

being judged by others when acting publicly. In other words, individuals fear to make mistakes

or act inadequately when they feel observed, which makes them more reluctant to intervene in

critical situations,” (p. 518). Lastly, pluralistic ignorance referred to, “the tendency to rely on the

overt reactions of others when defining an ambiguous situation. A maximum bystander effect

occurs when no one intervenes because everyone believes that no one else perceives an

emergency,” (p 518). Numerous studies document the individual and environmental factors that

contribute to the bystander effect phenomenon, and the psychological impediments to action

outlined above have been shown to take hold in a variety of laboratory and naturalistic settings

over 40 years of research (see Fischer et al., 2011 for an examination of over 50 studies), Yet the

impact of the bystander effect imbedded in some of our social structures has received much less

attention.

Researcher Albert Bandura and others find that in large social structures such as the

military, the bystander effect is facilitated by depersonalization and moral disengagement (2002).

An illustration of this can be seen in the substantial increase in the number of drone aircrafts

used by the United States in the past decade. The development of drone warfare has created

“bureaucratized killing” that has implicitly operationalized the three aforementioned processes –

diffusion of responsibility, evaluation apprehension, and pluralistic ignorance – that reduce

bystander efficacy (Asaro, 2013, p. 198). An investigation of the situational and psychological

pressures affecting teams of drone operators found that “it is most appropriate to approach this

subject as a form of killing that has an elaborate and intentional bureaucratized structure,”

(Asaro, 2013, p. 198). A tragic consequence of this method of warfare can be seen in the internal

evaluations of a friendly-fire incident that resulted in the deaths of two enlisted service members

7


in Afghanistan. The Los Angeles Times covered the unreleased Pentagon review that did not

find any individual involved in the incident as culpable for the killings; instead, the report found

that the incident resulted from a “fatal mix of poor communications, faulty assumptions and ‘a

lack of overall common situational awareness,’” (Zucchino & Cloud, 2011). Asaro’s assessment

found a very literal diffusion of responsibility present in the bureaucratized nature of the killings,

evaluation apprehension present in heavy scrutiny accompanies intelligence and defense work,

and pluralistic ignorance in that the team “mistakenly believed that they had come to the same

conclusions or failed to communicate their alternate interpretations,” (2013, p. 212). Asaro did

not use these psychological terms in his investigation, yet I believe that command of this

psychological knowledge and vocabulary could have added even more to his comprehensive

analysis of drone infrastructure.

Thus, psychologists have a job to do in promoting our understanding of the bystander

effect and its mediating processes. Informing the public about these phenomena will increase

bystander efficacy in everyday situations and provide a valuable perspective for citizens to

evaluate the institutions and social structures in our society.

Some of this work has already been done. Researchers have proposed a model by which

behavioral intervention in bystander situations occurs in which correctly construing a situation as

an emergency, developing a sense of personal responsibility and confidence in lending

assistance, and reaching a conscious decision to intervene are foundational (Fischer et al., 2011).

Furthermore, research has found that reminding individuals about times when they have acted

without social inhibitions increases the likelihood that they will help in a bystander situation (den

Bos, Müller, & van Bussel, 2009). Additionally, my research project found that pairing silicone

bracelets with a one-minute long role model video, a one-minute long cognitive affective video,

8


or a prompt to be more mindful increased the likelihood that individuals would exhibit helping

behavior one week after the stimulus was viewed (Celniker et al., 2013, 2014). These and other

studies4 provide a skeleton that researchers and educators can build upon in order to further

investigate and facilitate positive social interventions, both individually and in organizations.

For example, the Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) created by Philip Zimbardo is evaluating

curriculum practices and beginning to understand the positive impact that can come from

teaching and informing young students about psychological phenomena such as the bystander

effect (http://heroicimagination.org).

Research is vital in directing energies towards successful real-world applications to social

and psychological issues, so when our research is undermined – in practice and in perception –

the quality and acceptance of potential applications are undermined as well. I believe that

informed psychology needs to be a bigger part of American public consciousness, and in order to

do that psychologists will need to put more energy into clearly articulating the merits and

applicability of psychological knowledge and critically evaluating ourselves and our methods of

gathering and disseminating knowledge.

Strategies for Bolstering the Impact of Psychology

Reevaluating the Peer-Review Process

“Scientific research should be publicly verifiable knowledge,” says the author of

Research Methods and Statistics: A Critical Thinking Approach (Jackson, 2012, p. 12). She

4 It should be noted that this body of research, while more intensely focused on after the murder of Kitty Genovese, also owes much to the studies on conformity by Asch (1951, 1955), and Milgram (1963) as well as the literature on the conformity, power of situations, and vulnerabilities for those in positions of power spearheaded by Craig Haney and Zimbardo (1973).

9


contends that publicly verifiable research is research that is presented to others so that

individuals are free to assess the merits of the research on their own accord. I agree with this

wholeheartedly, but after these statements the author greatly restricts her definition of public.

Public verification, she clarifies, comes from submitting research to peer-reviewed journals.

“You should be suspicious of any claims made without the support of public verification,” she

claims (2012, p. 12). However, there are instances where the peer-review process should face

stricter scrutiny as well.

To exemplify, Barbara Fredrickson, an esteemed University of North Carolina, Chapel

Hill professor with a respected research lab and years of published, peer-reviewed studies, had an

article appear in American Psychologist co-authored with mathematician Marcial Losada in

2005. This research described a mathematical model of positive emotions to negative emotions

summarized in a positivity/negative ratio. Based on Fredrickson’s 20-question survey, the

authors presented an emotional 3-to-1 positivity-to-negativity ratio, created with advanced

mathematical modeling, to quantify the ideal emotional ratio facilitating human flourishing

(Fredrickson & Losada, 2005). This approximate 3-to-1 ratio received a great deal of media and

popular press attention. According to Google Scholar, over 1100 researchers have cited this

article as of the due date of this paper. These early professional citations helped promote the

growth of positive psychology, a field that Fredrickson played a critical role in building as

evidenced by her receiving the inaugural Christopher Peterson Gold Medal awarded by the

International Positive Psychology Association in 2013. Additionally, professional and media

attention afforded Fredrickson the opportunity to publish a popular press book, Positivity, first

published in 2009.

10


The attention and the simplicity of her thesis made Positivity a popular media topic.

Enjoying the media spotlight and internal acclaim within psychology, Fredrickson’s single paper

with Losada received significant attention, far eclipsing the attention paid to her with her

previous research. Nobody was critical of the article until a part-time graduate student in

England checked the math that the legitimacy of the ratio was truly called into question

(Anthony, 2014).

In fact, Brown, Sokal, and Friedman (2013) demonstrated that any numbers plugged into

the mathematical model used would yield the same 3-to-1 ratio. Although a significant problem,

Dr. Fredrickson’s body of work preceding and following this one study has uncovered no issues.

In fact, in July of 2013, American Psychologist published the critique of the 2005 article

alongside a piece from Fredrickson titled “Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios.” In this piece,

Fredrickson concedes that Losada’s math was flawed, but she maintained the legitimacy of her

data and continued to support the idea that emotional tipping points exist. Her data – in this

instance and in other studies – was carefully collected, and her theories are well supported by

other researchers’ findings. Nevertheless, this redaction has impacted the perception of positive

psychology, particularly within the academic community of mainstream psychology. Critiquing

positive psychology for being based in poor mathematical models and inappropriate statistics,

the Fredrickson and Losada study became a Straw-man argument for opposing much of the

research associated with positive psychology.

Human error has been and will forever be a part of science. I believe that this is

something readily accepted today, yet I also believe that we are losing sight of human biases

inherent in our current model of knowledge production and dissemination, not just in the

11


collection of our evidence. In Biology as Ideology, geneticist R.C. Lewontin (1991) states his

concerns with sociobiological explanations for certain human behaviors:

The real problem is to find out whether any of these stories is true. One must distinguish

between plausible stories, things that might be true, and true stories, things that have

actually happened… All of the sociobiological explanations of the evolution of human

behavior are like Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories of how the camel got his hump and

how the elephant got his trunk. They are just stories. Science has been turned into a

game. (p. 100)

In this “game,” the winners are those who have the most evidence and receive the most

attention. But evidence and attention are not dependent on accuracy. There are many social

components that contribute to the distribution of research (Rudacille, 2006). As Lewontin

asserts, science is more than just a body of knowledge or a method of obtaining knowledge.

Science also “consists, in large part, of what scientists say about the world whatever the true state

of the world might be,” (1991, p. 103). Textbooks, popular books, and journals are not

necessarily filled with facts; they are filled with evidence. And evidence, despite our best

intentions, can often be misleading when we do not properly evaluate and verify our findings.

This is not a new problem for the sciences. As Lewontin illustrates, even the most prestigious

journals in academia, such as Nature, have published claims shortly before publishing its

retraction, forcing even the most loyal readers to question the integrity of the enterprise (1991, p.

72). Indeed, one of psychology’s most distinguished journals, Psychological Science, recently

retracted “Money and Mimicry: When Being Mimicked Makes People Feel Threatened,” an

article that was reviewed and published in 2011. Human error is an immutable component of the

12


scientific process, but the current system of peer-review does not adequately filter out and

distinguish the plausible stories from true stories.

One of the reasons for the deficiency in this evaluation of knowledge is that the peer-

review process has not caught up with the new model of knowledge production. In The New

Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies,

the authors distinguish two modes of knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 2010). Mode 1 is

the disciplinary structure that most of us think about as how knowledge is produced; researchers

produce evidence by studying something in their discipline, and experts in that discipline

evaluate the merits of the submitted research. Mode 2, the model being shifted towards in our

society, is based more on multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and takes more

considerations for economic and political interests. These two modes interact and inform one

another, but even this simplified synopsis of these two models highlights the problem we are

facing: Mode 2 knowledge is being evaluated with Mode 1 methods. Multidisciplinary and

interdisciplinary research often requires input from professionals in multiple disciplines, yet the

product of this disciplinary collaboration are often being judged solely by experts in a single

field. After the challenge to her work was published, Fredrickson conceded that the

mathematical dimensions of her previous article were outside of her expertise (Fredrickson,

2013). The editors of American Psychologist did not explicitly take part in this expression of

intellectual humility, although publishing Fredrickson’s updated thoughts can be seen as a

concession of oversight.

Psychology, and perhaps science as a whole, needs to better adapt to the blurring of

disciplinary boundaries in research. Enlisting in the help of outside experts for multidisciplinary

and interdisciplinary should become much more common and a point of pride in the scientific

13


community. Furthermore, the public that is supposedly served by the peer-review process

should have the chance to play a more active role in the valuation of published research. This

does not mean that the lay public should judge the merits of a study to be published; what this

can mean is that psychologists can share information with, and receive feedback directly from,

the public. The proliferation of Internet use affords researchers an unprecedented opportunity to

interact with the public without middlemen, yet psychologists have not yet made collective

efforts to engage the public in such a fashion. This will be addressed in the subsequent sections.

Parsimony in Statistical Methods

If measures are taken to interact with the public more directly, then efforts will need to be

taken to more succinctly and accurately lay out what we have found in our research, too. Our

research may produce less technical findings than other sciences (I am not convinced of this, but

some in the natural sciences are), but it seems that psychology research is too often crowded with

unnecessarily advanced statistical measures to make up for a perceived lack in complexity.

For instance, the article, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness,” reaches the

conclusion that the title suggests (Dunn et al., 2008). Participants were placed in either a

prosocial spending condition or a personal spending condition and completed measures of

happiness before and after the spending took place. On average, those who spent money on

others self-reported significantly higher happiness scores than those who spent money on

themselves. If one were to skim this short article – published in Science – one may be convinced

of the authors’ claims. However, looking more carefully at their results raises some questions.

Instead of using simple mean scores to illustrate the difference between the prosocial and

personal spending groups, the researchers decided to us use weighted mean differences, which

were M = 0.18, SD = 0.62 for the prosocial group and M = -0.19, SD = 0.66 for the personal

14


group. Admittedly, I had know idea how to interpret these statistics until consulting multiple

advisors, and all of us questioned the use of such obtuse statistical methods.

Although the differences between the groups were reported to be significant, I have had a

very hard time comprehending how a difference of less than half a point on a happiness scale can

be considered significant. I grant that I have not taken an advanced statistics course, yet I am a

more than averagely informed member of the public who cannot make much practical sense of

the conclusions drawn by the authors. I am not doubting that the authors found statistical

significance, though I would have appreciated them publishing their data5 alongside the esoteric

graphs and regression models in their published supporting materials (Dunn et al., 2008). What I

doubt is the practical relevance of a 0.38 difference in self-reported happiness scores. The

authors do not address the arguably small magnitude of change between the groups; they say that

they found significance and then move on to the implications of their research.

The statistical methods used in this study were beyond my level of understanding as a

senior honors psychology major, yet I hope that the study authors would recognize that adding

means and standard deviations would have been a clearer, and perhaps more accurate, way to

present their findings. At the very least, comparing mean scores by condition provides context

about the absolute value of the experimental difference. Moreover, I am forced to question the

motivations of this omission because the means for the experimental data were not presented in

the original article of the supporting materials. Maybe the average mean differences are an

accurate way of articulating the data, but not including the means at all, one of the most basic

and informative measures of data in the social sciences, seems like an intentional act.

Additionally, whether or not the omission of the means was intentional, Science should have

requested that data for the sake of the readers and the ideal of public verification. Even if basic

5 A suggestion and request that I hope all researchers will consider.

15


statistical findings are not the focus of studies, they are a necessary component for the

professional and public evaluation, discussion, and dissemination of research. Summarizing this

argument, Albert Einstein proposed, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well

enough.” With research quality and applicability in mind, statistical presentations should inform

and educate, stimulating discussion and utilization of psychological research more than is

currently practiced.

Honesty in Conclusions

Perhaps even more than esoteric statistics, the emphasis on results’ significance facilitates

overreaching in regards to the conclusions drawn from any given data set. Statistical

significance is a crucial component of mainstream social science research (Myers, 2013), but it

seems that psychologists often overlook that significance is an artificial construct that is not

unassailable. Null hypothesis significance testing creates a dichotomy of effects and non-effects,

and the red line that separates the two, typically (and traditionally) an alpha level of 0.05, is

completely arbitrary (Loftus, 1996). It has been argued that, “Most people, if pressed, will agree

that there is no essential difference between finding, say, that p = .050 and finding that p = .051.

However, investigators, journal editors, reviewers, and scientific consumers often forget this and

behave as if the .05 cutoff were somehow real rather than arbitrary,” (Loftus, 1996, p. 4). There

are those, like the editors of the Journal of Negative Results, who reject the dominant construct

of significance testing and seek to highlight the contributions of non-significant results.

However, these efforts are a small sideshow in the arena, merely a whisper drowned out by the

shouts of mainstream psychological discourse.

When these considerations are not acknowledged, researchers risk damaging the

perceived validity and reliability of psychological research by reaching conclusions and making

16


claims that are weakly supported or not supported by the data. While fundamental critical

thinking skills might limit this problem, problems arising from the sacrosanct treatment of .05

continue. For example, one study by Aknin, et al. (2013) found that increased happiness in those

who prosocially spend money is a cross-cultural phenomenon. The researchers present

statistically and, in my view, practically significant results in their parallel studies of prosocial

spending in Canada and Africa. These results are impressive and important, yet the authors

decided that evidence of a cross-cultural phenomenon was not satisfactory and extended beyond.

The title of their article is, “Prosocial Spending and Well-Being: Cross-Cultural Evidence for a

Psychological Universal.” The term “psychological universal” is a laden and attention-grabbing

term, and it is a term not substantiated by this research. The researchers did find cross-cultural

evidence of a psychological phenomenon, but taking the next step, saying that a similarity

between two cultures suggests a similarity between all cultures, is inaccurate and certainly

oversimplifies the complexity of world cultures. There are few laws and/or universals in

psychology to date (some would argue that there are none), so suggesting otherwise about money

spending behavior – without appropriate evidence to back up such a claim – is detrimental to the

discipline. As the geneticist Lewontin asserts, in addressing the concerns made about the

importance of the human genome sequencing project, “The fear among many scientists is that by

promising too much, science will destroy its public image and people will become as cynical as,

for example, they became cynical about the war on cancer, not to speak of the war on poverty,”

(1991, p. 52). Claims of universal behaviors are fueled by an uncritical evaluation of what

statistical significance truly means. As a discipline, the conscientious promoting of more

modest, less grandiose overstepping of conclusions is warranted. Geoffrey Loftus states,

“Statistical conclusions about such ‘real effects’ and ‘non-effects’ made in Results sections then

17


somehow get sanctified and transmuted into conclusions that endure into Discussion sections and

beyond, where they insidiously settle in and become part of our discipline’s general knowledge

structure. The mischief thereby stirred up is incalculable,” (1996, p. 4). Maintaining the

informational frameworks, the contexts under which research is conducted, when making

conclusions is critical. This mischief may be incalculable, but it is certainly visible in the culture

of psychological research.

The media outlets that disseminate our knowledge do not only transmit our overstepping,

they emulate and expand it. The numbers of “pop” psychology pieces gone awry are easy to

find. One recent example published by Time Magazine in April will suffice. A few days ago, I

saw that a friend posted an article on Facebook to another friend followed by his succinct

evaluation of the piece: the link was titled, “The Party Drug Molly Can Make You a Racist,” and

my friend’s input was simply, “Questionable.” After clicking the link, I found a few things that

were blaringly wrong with the article. First, the research being described measured the effects of

oxytocin on in-group and out-group valuations, but the findings of in-group preference did not

extend into the social construct of racism (Arrouas, 2014). Second, the study had nothing to do

with “Molly,” better known as MDMA or Ecstasy, but only dealt with a neurochemical active in

the consumption of MDMA, oxytocin. Lastly, and maybe most astonishingly, there was an

addendum to the article that stated the initial misrepresentation of the study as examining

MDMA, yet the only picture attached to the article was of Ecstasy pills! So the editors were

made aware of a blatant mischaracterization of the research, but did not decide to fully deal with

the issue6. From my evaluation of the original study, published by Dreu et al. (2011), this

research was well done by the standards described here. The researchers did not overstep in their

6 One may reasonably assume that this decision was reached with marketing motivations in mind. The problems of this will be addressed in subsequent sections.

18


conclusions. Nevertheless, the culture we have helped create is backfiring on many undeserving

researchers, resulting in the butchering of psychological knowledge, the overstating of findings

in sensationalized marketing terms, and the bolstering of incredulousness towards what

psychologists have to offer society.

Psychology, like other sciences, deals in tentative conclusions. Even when there is

consensus within the discipline – a rare feat, particularly within psychology – there is always

room for further exploration and deepening of knowledge. Instead of fearing the transitory

nature of our contributions, we need to embrace it. What we know about the misinformation

effect and the bystander effect is valuable to society. We cannot claim that these are laws of

human behavior, but that should not stop us in being confident about sharing what we know.

Being honest about what we have found and what we know is a critical part of getting the public

to take our discipline more seriously. Furthermore, we need to take more control over how

psychology is portrayed in the media. As mentioned previously, taking our findings directly to

the public, evading the possible distortions of the ill informed and market-driven media would be

a great way to accomplish this. However, we must also be more prepared, as a discipline and as

individuals, to criticize those who mischaracterize psychological research and seek to correct

and/or redact their mischaracterizations. In our country people have the right to believe they are

right even when they are wrong, but we also have the right, and I believe the duty, to do our best

to elucidate lapses in critical thinking and articulate our truths no matter how temporary or

incomplete they may be.

Privatization of Knowledge: A Structural Impediment to Implementing These Strategies

In Biology as Ideology, Lewontin makes a point to distinguish between agents and causes

of diseases. He uses the example of tuberculosis to illustrate his point. He claims that tubercle

19


bacillus, the bacteria that can manifest as tuberculosis that is present in asbestos fibers and

pesticides, is merely an agent of disease and disability (1991). “It is illusory to suppose that if

we eliminate these particular irritants that the diseases will go away,” Lewontin states, “for other

similar irritants will take their place,” (1991, p. 45). He continues:

So long as efficiency, the maximization of profit from production, or the filling of

centrally planned norms of production without reference to the means remain the

motivating forces of productive enterprises the world over, so long as people are trapped

by economic need or state regulation into production and consumption of certain things,

then one pollutant will replace another. (p. 45)

These agents, then, are but transitory manifestations arising from another source.

Lewontin argues that these sources, these causes, are socially constructed. “Although one may

say that tubercle bacillus causes tuberculosis, we are much closer to the truth when we say that it

was the conditions of unregulated nineteenth-century competitive capitalism… that was the

cause of tuberculosis,” Lewontin asserts (1991, p. 45). While the bacteria is undoubtedly related

to the disease, it is perhaps more accurate to state that exposure to the bacteria due to harsh labor

conditions brought on by prevailing social structures is the real cause of the disease. The agents,

while more easily identifiable, are not the underlying causes of the problems we see.

By analogy, I assert that the current state of the peer-review system, the lack of

parsimony in statistical methodology, and the prevalence of overreaching in research conclusions

are the agents of a social cause that is resulting the diminished standing and relevance of

psychological knowledge in the eyes of the public: the cause is the privatization of knowledge.

To better illustrate why privatization of knowledge is the cause of these issues, it is important to

briefly talk about Aaron Swartz.

20


Aaron Swartz, the computer programmer, writer, and activist, committed suicide on

January 11th, 2013. At the time of his death Swartz was being prosecuted by the Department of

Justice for downloading a huge amount articles from the private Internet database JSTOR under

the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA; Silverglate, 2013). Nobody knows exactly what

Swartz would have done with the five million documents he downloaded, but some feared he

would release the articles to the public (JSTOR Evidence in United States vs. Aaron Swartz,

2013). This is a reasonable assumption, for Swartz had previously hacked, “downloaded and

freed 20% (2.7 million documents) of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER)

database that charges access fees for the United States federal court documents, out of which

about 1,600 had privacy issues,” (Kim, 2013). Swartz was not shy about his stance on open

access to the Internet and to information:

The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign

their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under

terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will

only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their

colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?

Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to

children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable. (Swartz, 2008)

Needless to say, the Department of Justice did not share Swartz’s views on open access,

and they pursued steep penalties – up to 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines – despite

JSTOR announcing that they did not wish to pursue criminal charges against Swartz

(Neurobonkers, 2013). Lawrence Lessig, an author, activist, Harvard professor, and friend and

21


collaborator of Swartz, wrote that, “For 25 years, the CFAA has given federal prosecutors almost

unbridled discretion to bully practically anyone using a computer network in ways the

government doesn't like,” (2013). Lessig articulates his belief that many in the federal

government, including the lead prosecutor in Swartz’s case U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, do not

understand the Internet well enough to effectively regulate it7. They do not differentiate between

digital and physical theft, even though the former method does not result in a loss of property for

any party. These same people, people who may have a very limited understanding of the Internet

and its social and academic capacities, regulate the means by which knowledge is produced and

decide what projects and disciplines are to receive funding dollars. Regardless of their

understanding of the information landscape of our times, federal authorities are supporting the

status quo of privatized knowledge8.

This imposes detrimental social conditions on the ways psychologists produce

knowledge9. This system turns the production of knowledge into the commodification of

7 Anyone familiar with former Senator Ted Stevens’ comments about the Internet, calling it a “series of tubes” while discussing the serious issue of Internet neutrality, is aware of this. 8 One may wonder what other reasons might motivate the government to maintain this system of knowledge production and consumption. One may imagine that the publishing companies exert some type of political force, and this would be a correct assumption. Reed Elsevier, the only publishing company explicitly mentioned in Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto,” has contributed over a million dollars to both Democrats and Republicans through its donations and donations of its subsidiaries according to the website Influence Explorer. Their top recipient is Barack Obama, and their top PAC recipient is the Republican Party of Florida. Reed Elsevier and its subsidiaries are only a few of the players in this political arena. 9 What follows is a brief, incomplete articulation of the economics of knowledge production. In my research, I have found that this topic is too complex to address given my current time and resource constraints. Figuring out the ways that researchers, universities, professional institutions, funding bodies, the media, and the public interact and inform one another deserves a great amount of study, more than can be considered here. Collaboration with economists, political scientists, politicians, philosophers, educators, journalists and others will be required to fully elucidate the mechanisms and implications of this economic model on our ways of creating and consuming knowledge. While my contribution here will be incomplete, I hope that it points out some of the most fundamental dilemmas brought on by this system as it pertains to psychology.

22


knowledge, creating a competitive atmosphere that detracts from our intellectual pursuits. At

Johns Hopkins University, faculty and students – the next generation of researchers – are feeling

pressure to, “spin results to make them more newsworthy and to court journal editors,”

(Rudacille, 2006). Given the skewed results mentioned in the previous section of this paper, this

admission seems indicative of the practices and mindsets of researchers throughout the research

community. Of course, this is not indicative of all researchers, but the social pressures of this

academic environment are difficult to combat. Erika Matunis, an assistant professor at Johns

Hopkins, says that, “funding depends on productivity, and when your grant reviewers check out

your publications, it does matter how many you have and where you’ve been published,”

(Rudacille, 2006). This self-sustaining economic circle – researchers need funding, funding that

requires previous published research to justify funding the present request – holds quantity, not

quality, as its ethic. Additionally, the social and political factors present in Mode 2 knowledge

creation impact what research editors choose to publish (Gibbons et al., 2010). What topic is

hot, or “sexy” as one researcher put it, dictates what is published, even if the research on that hot

topic is subpar compared to research on other, less popular topics; furthermore, the drive to

publish in high-impact journals, despite recognition that specialty journals publish better

research, is turning the pursuit of knowledge into a popularity contest (Rudacille, 2006). This

system inherently blocks access to most of the public, but through its own internal mechanisms

this self-reinforcing cycle of knowledge production also alienates researchers from the truths

they strive to find. Researchers are distorting their own work in order to promote it, not

recognizing the collective effects that each of these attention-oriented distortions has on

psychology as a discipline. Situations have power, and the academic atmosphere caused by the

23


privatization of knowledge is stifling quality production, discussion, and dissemination of

research.

Conclusion: Developing Self-Efficacy in Research and Collective Efficacy through Open

Access to Overcome the Privatization of Knowledge

Albert Bandura has devoted much of his career examining self-efficacy, which he has

defined as, “the exercise of human agency through people’s beliefs in their capacities to produce

desired effects by their actions,” (2002, p. 3). Self-efficacy is important, Bandura explains,

because “People guide their lives by their beliefs of personal efficacy. Perceived self-efficacy

refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to

produce given attainments,” (1997, p. 3). Individual assessment of self-efficacy is specific to

target areas and includes cognitive, health, physical, athletic, and emotional functioning, amongst

other categories. High self-efficacy is based on building and attaining real component skills,

predicting many positive life outcomes, including: higher academic performance, academic

enhancement with proximal and distal goal setting, improved health via self-regulatory efficacy,

physical habits such as smoking cessation, immunocompetence, psychomotor skill acquisition,

and emotional regulation (as cited in Bandura, 1997).

As self-efficacy develops in each area, so does one’s ability to enact the changes he/she

wishes to see (Bandura, 1997, 2002). Mahatma Gandhi elaborates; “Men often become what they

believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it.

But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the

beginning.” These beliefs in oneself, as exemplified by the example of Gandhi and supported by

the research of Bandura and many others, are the sparks of personal and social change. Indeed,

Bandura encourages such striving for personal, and social, development:

24


Considering the pressing worldwide problems that loom ahead, people can ill-afford to

trade efficacious endeavor for public apathy or mutual immobilization. The times call for

social initiatives that build people’s sense of collective efficacy to influence the

conditions that shape their lives and those of future generations. (1997, p. 525)

If a psychologist believes that he can positively impact society, then he will. If a

psychologist strives to produce important research informed by the intellectual humility

necessary to draw appropriate conclusions, then she will. If psychologists, and scientists from

other disciplines, unite and demand that attention be paid to the deleterious effects on research

caused by the privatization of knowledge, then we can remedy these problems and open up our

wells of knowledge to the world.

The idiom “knowledge is power” is incorrect, or at best incomplete; as R.C. Lewontin

states, “the truth is that knowledge further empowers only those who have or can acquire the

power to use it,” (1991, p. 76). Aaron Swartz also understood this, and he understood the

privileged positions that those of us in the academic sphere hold:

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been

given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world

is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for

yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. (Swartz, 2008)

Researchers want their studies to have as big an impact as possible, yet we have been

trained to judge impact by “impact factor” and not by the amount of eyes that look upon and

evaluate our work. Making our research more widely available on the Internet would create

abundant opportunities to be impactful, but this direct method of knowledge dissemination cuts

out the ego-feeding attention that helps drive this system of knowledge production.

25


Comedian Louis C.K. can identify with this current predicament of modern research

psychologists: “I have a lot of beliefs, and I live by none of them. That’s just the way I am.

They’re just my beliefs, I just like believing them, I like that part. They’re my little “belieivies,”

they make me feel good about who I am. But if they get in the way of I thing I want, I fucking

do that,” (C.K., 2011). Psychologists surely live by some of their beliefs, but it is clear that, for

some, the belief in the pursuit of truths through the scientific process is being tossed aside for the

pursuit of recognition and prestige. The current social structures of knowledge production feed

off of this egoism, so looking more deeply into ourselves and our internal drives may provide us

with the answers of how to restructure these institutions.

I believe that realigning our egos with the goals of science – finding methods to critically

think about and act in the world – will improve the state of our discipline and our abilities to

contribute to society (Longbottom & Butler, 1999). This realignment must consist of personal

and collective change. I believe that fostering the development of self-efficacy in psychologists

is crucial for more collective social changes to occur. Moreover, I find the concept of self-

efficacy very similar to the phenomenological idea of the transcendental ego, an analogue that

may further help us shift how we approach our research10. From the phenomenological

perspective, the transcendental ego is, “the entity that can say ‘I’ and takes responsibility for

what is said…the agent of science, the transcendental ego is also the agent of truth in human

conduct, where actions are free and responsible because they are the outcome of intelligent

assessments,” (Sokolowski, 2000, p. 181). “I,” in this construct, is more than just a reference

point; “I” is the embodiment of a developed responsibility to act in the world. It is this kind of I,

this kind of ego, that would better drive our work.

10 An increased input from other disciplines, such as phenomenology, on psychological methods of producing knowledge may help us develop more critical analysis of our methods, thus improving our disciplinary goals.

26


The studies that highlight the profound impacts of self-efficacy are a part of the feast of

knowledge that much of the world is shut out from. We have the empirical knowledge that our

beliefs can shape the world. Are we not faced with, as Swartz suggests, the moral imperative to

share this knowledge with the world? Could holding this back from people who face tyranny

and injustice as a part of their everyday lives be considered maleficence? As a discipline, we

must take part in the open access discussion and provide input about ways that knowledge can be

created and disseminated without neglecting the economic realities of researchers or excluding

the public from our findings. Open access journals are growing faster than many anticipated and

are already “disrupting the dominant subscription-based model of scientific publishing,” (Laakso

and Björk, 2012). Psychology needs to be a bigger part of this revolution. If we believe that all

people deserve intellectual empowerment, then we can make it so. The development of self-

efficacy and collective efficacy are necessary for us to implement these changes. Individuals can

develop self-efficacy through building practices of honest research, and as a collection of self-

efficacious researchers emerges psychology can better contribute to society, as a discipline and a

self-reflective institution within in this highly social and interactive world. Again, I hope that the

words attributed to Mahatma Gandhi guide our discipline, and us, on the journeys ahead:

“Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for

they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your

habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and

embrace your values, for they become your destiny.”

27


References

Aknin, L.B., Dunn, E.W., Helliwell, J.F., Biswas-Diener, R., Nyende, P., Barrington-Leigh,

C.P.,…Norton, M.I. (2013). Prosocial spending and well-being: Cross-cultural evidence

for a psychological universal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4),

635-652. doi: 10.1037/a0031578

Anthony, A. (2014). The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness. The

Guardian. Retrieved from

28


http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/19/mathematics-of-happiness-debunked-

nick-brown

Arrouas, M. (2014). The 'love hormone' can make you hate: Study. Time. Retrieved from

http://time.com/49399/oxytocin-racism-study/

Asaro, P.M. (2013). The labor of surveillance and bureaucratized killing: New subjectivities of

military drone operators. Social Semiotics, 23(2), 196-224.

Asch, S.E. (1951). Effects of group pressure on the modification and distortion of judgments. In

H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, leadership and men, 177–190. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie

Press.

Asch, S. E. (1955). "Opinions and Social Pressure". Scientific American, 193(5), 31–35.

Atwood, R. (2013). What would you do prank with Steve-O. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyUrrAqso-M

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.

Bandura, A. (2002). Selective Moral Disengagement in Exercise of Moral Agency. Journal of

Moral Education. Vol. 31,2, 101-119.

den Bos, K.v., Müller, P.A., van Bussel, A.A.L. (2009). Helping to overcome intervention inertia

in bystander’s dilemmas: Behavioral disinhibition can improve the greater good. Journal

of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 873-838. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.03.014

Brown, N. J. L., Sokal, A. D., & Friedman, H. L. (2013). The complex dynamics of

wishful thinking: The critical positivity ratio. American Psychologist, 68(9), 810-813

doi: 10.1037/a0032850

Celniker, Jared, Everett, B., Gilbert, K., Colicino, C., Jacobsmeyer, A., Butterfield, C., Silva, H.,

29

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyUrrAqso-M


Franco, B., Yoshiura, R., and Kuchenbecker, S. Y. (2014). Bystander Helping and

Trans-Situational Factors: Gender, Affective Empathy and Reminderbands. Poster to be

presented at the 94th Annual Meeting of Western Psychological Association (WPA), April

24-27th, Portland Marriott Downtown, Portland, Oregon.

Celniker, Jared, Everett, B., Gilbert, K., Colicino, C., Jacobsmeyer, A. Butterfield, C., Silva, H.,

Franco, B., Yoshiura, R., and Kuchenbecker, S. Y. (2013). Brief videos and “START

everyday heroes” reminder wristbands facilitate well-being and helping behavior. Poster

presented to the 3rd World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association

(IPPA), Biennial Meeting, June 27-30th, Westin Bonaventure, Los Angeles, CA.

C.K., L. (Producer, Writer, Actor). (2011). Live at the Beacon Theatre [Stand-up special].

United States: Pig Newton.

Dreu, C. K., Greer, L. L., Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. J. (2011). Oxytocin

promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

108(4), 1262-1266.

Dunn, E.W., Aknin, L.B., & Norton, M.I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes

happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688. doi: 10.1126/science.1150952

Enda, J., Jurkowitz, M., Mitchell, A., & Olmstead, K. (2013). How Americans get TV news at

home. Pew Research Journalism Project. Retrieved from

http://www.journalism.org/2013/10/11/ how-americans-get-tv-news-at-home

Fischer, P., Greitemeyer, T., Kastenmüller, A., Krueger, J.I., Vogrincic, C., Frey. D.

Kainbacherm M. (2011). The bystander effect: A meta-analytic review on the bystander

intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies. Psychological Bulletin,

137(4), 517-537.

30


Fredrickson, B.L. (2013). Updated thinking on positivity ratios. American Psychologist, 68(9),

814-122.

Fredrickson, B.L., & Losada, M.F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamic of human

flourishing. American Psychologist, 60(7), 678-686.

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (2010). The

new production of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary

societies. London: SAGE Publications.

Greene, E., Flynn, M.S., & Loftus, E.F. (1982). Inducing resistance to misleading information.

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 21, 207–219.

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Study of prisoners and guards in a

simulated prison. Naval Research Reviews, 9, 1–17.

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated

prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69–97.

Huertas, A. & Kriegsman, R. (2014). Science or spin? Assessing the accuracy of cable news

coverage of climate change. Union of Concerned Scientists. Retreived from

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/Science-or-Spin-report.pdf

Jackson, S. L. (2012). Research methods and statistics: a critical thinking approach (4th ed.)

Singapore: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

JSTOR Evidence in United States vs. Aaron Swartz. (2013). Summary of Events. Retrieved from

http://docs.jstor.org/summary.html

Kenneally, T. (2014). Cable news ratings 2013: Fox tops while CNN slides into second. The

Wrap. Retrieved from http://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-cnn-msnbc-cable-news-ratings

31

http://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-cnn-msnbc-cable-news-ratings

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/Science-or-Spin-report.pdf


Kim, B. (2013). Aaron Swartz and the too-comfortable research libraries. ACRL TechConnect.

Retrieved from http://acrl.ala.org/techconnect/?page_id=78

Kull, S. (2003). Misperceptions, the media and the Iraq war. Program on International Policy

Attitudes. Retrieved from

http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/IraqMedia_Oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt.pdf

Kumar, D. (2006). Media, war, and propaganda: Strategies of information management during

the 2003 Iraq war. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 3(1), 48-69.

Laakso, M., & Björk, B. (2012). Anatomy of open access publishing: A study of longitudinal

development and internal structure. BMC Medicine, 10. doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-124

Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? New

York, NY: Appleton-Century-Croft.

Lessig, L. (2013). Aaron's law: Violating a site's terms of service should not land you in jail.

The Atlantic. Retrieved from

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aarons-law-violating-a-sites-

terms-of-service-should-not-land-you-in-jail/267247/

Lewontin, R.C. (1991). Biology as ideology: The doctrine of DNA. New York, NY: Harper

Perennial.

Loftus, E.F. (1993). The reality of repressed memories. American Psychology, 48, 518–537.

Loftus, E.F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the

malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12, 36-366. doi: 10.1101/lm.94705

Loftus, E.F., Miller, D.G., & Burns, H.J. (1978). Semantic integration of verbal information into

a visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Learning and Memory, 4,

19–31.

32

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aarons-law-violating-a-sites-

http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/IraqMedia_Oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt.pdf


Loftus, E.F. & Pickrell, J.E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25,

720-725.

Loftus, G.R. (1996). Psychology will be a much better science when we change the way we

analyze data. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5(6), 161-171.

Longbottom, J.E., & Butler, P.H. (1999). Why teach science? Setting rational goals for science

education. Science Education, 83(4), 473-492.

Milgram, Stanley (1963). "Behavioral Study of Obedience". Journal of Abnormal and Social

Psychology, 67(4), 371–8.

Myers, David. (2013). Psychology (10th ed). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Neurobonkers. (2013). A tribute to Aaron Swartz, the young hero of freedom for information,

driven to his death on Friday by the US Department for Justice. Big Think. Retrieved

from http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/a-tribute-to-aaron-swartz-the-young-hero-of-

freedom-for-information-driven-to-his-death-on-friday-by-the-us-department-for-justice

Politifact. (2012). Ronald Reagan "raised taxes in 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987." Retrieved

from http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2012/jun/25/gerry-connolly/rep-

gerry-connolly-says-reagan-raised-taxes-during/

Ramsay, C., Kull, S., Lewis, E., & Subias, S. (2010). Misinformation and the 2010 election.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes. Retrieved from

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf

Rudacille, D. (2006). Journal fever: Is the pressure to publish in high-profile journals harming

science? Johns Hopkins Medical. Retrieved from

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/institute_basic_biomedical_sciences/news_events/articl

es_and_stories/employment/200604_journal_fever.html

33

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/institute_basic_biomedical_sciences/news_events/articl

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf

http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2012/jun/25/gerry-connolly/rep-

http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/a-tribute-to-aaron-swartz-the-young-hero-of-


Silvergate, H. (2013). The Swartz suicide and the sick culture of the Justice Dept. Media Nation.

Retrieved from http://dankennedy.net/2013/01/24/the-swartz-suicide-and-the-sick-

culture-of-the-justice-dept/

Sokolowski, R. (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. Cambridge University Press.

Swartz, A. (2008). Guerilla open access manifesto. Internet Archive. Retrieved from

http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt

Uwimana, S. (2011). Fox’s Asman unable to acknowledge that Reagan raised taxes. Media

Matters for America. Retrieved from http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/07/foxs-

asman-unable-to-acknowledge-that-reagan-ra/165319

Zucchino, D., & Cloud, D.S. (2011). US deaths in drone strike due to miscommunication,

report says. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pentagon-drone-

20111014,0,4026563.story

34

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/07/foxs-

http://dankennedy.net/2013/01/24/the-swartz-suicide-and-the-sick-

psychological research and society- exploring routes for bolstering disciplinary impact

Documents

misinformation loftus

fox news

psychological research

cable news industry

factual information

loftus pickrell

bystander effect

public consciousness