The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA\u27s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Source at https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918797607.Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability

Registered replication report: a large multilab cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri, Buckwalter, & Blouw (2015)

According to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge (JTB), a person can only truly know something if they have a belief that is both justified and true (i.e., knowledge is justified true belief). This account was challenged by Gettier (1963), who argued that JTB does not explain knowledge attributions in certain situations, later called Gettier-type cases, wherein a protagonist is justified in believing something to be true, but their belief was only correct due to luck. Lay people may not attribute knowledge to protagonists with justified but only luckily true beliefs. While some research has found evidence for these so-called Gettier intuitions (e.g., Machery et al., 2017a), Turri et al. (2015) found no evidence that participants attributed knowledge in a counterfeit-object Gettier-type case differently than in a matched case of justified true belief. In a large-scale, cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri and colleagues’ (2015) Experiment 1 (N = 4,724) using a within-participants design and three vignettes across 19 geopolitical regions, we did find evidence for Gettier intuitions; participants were 1.86 times more likely to attribute knowledge to protagonists in standard cases of justified true belief than to protagonists in Gettier-type cases. These results suggest that Gettier intuitions may be detectable across different scenarios and cultural contexts. However, the size of the Gettier intuition effect did vary by vignette, and the Turri et al. (2015) vignette produced the smallest effect, which was similar in size to that observed in the original study. Differences across vignettes suggest epistemic intuitions may also depend on contextual factors unrelated to the criteria of knowledge, such as the characteristics of the protagonist being evaluated

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability

Registered Replication Report: A Large Multilab Cross-Cultural Conceptual Replication of Turri, Buckwalter, & Blouw (2015)

According to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge (JTB), a person can only truly know something if they have a belief that is both justified and true (i.e., knowledge is justified true belief). This account was challenged by Gettier (1963), who argued that JTB does not explain knowledge attributions in certain situations, later called Gettier-type cases, wherein a protagonist is justified in believing something to be true but their belief was only correct due to luck. Lay people may not attribute knowledge to protagonists with justified but only luckily true beliefs. While some research has found evidence for these so-called Gettier intuitions (e.g., Machery et al., 2017a), Turri et al. (2015) found that participants attributed knowledge in Gettier-type cases at rates similar to cases of justified true belief. In a large-scale, cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri and colleagues’ (2015) Experiment 1 (N = 4724), we failed to replicate this null result using a within-subjects design and three vignettes across 19 geopolitical regions. Instead, participants demonstrated Gettier intuitions; they were 1.86 times more likely to attribute knowledge to protagonists in standard cases of justified true belief than to protagonists in Gettier-type cases. These results suggest that Gettier intuitions may be common across different scenarios and cultural contexts. When assessing the knowledge of others, lay people may rely on a shared set of epistemic intuitions (i.e., a core folk epistemology) that requires more than simply justification, belief, and truth. However, the size of the Gettier intuition effect did vary by vignette, and the Turri et al. (2015) vignette produced the smallest effect. Thus, epistemic intuitions may also depend on contextual factors unrelated to the criteria of knowledge, such as the characteristics of the protagonist being evaluated