Not All Effects Are Indispensable: Psychological Science Requires Verifiable Lines of Reasoning for Whether an Effect Matters
Not All Effects Are Indispensable: Psychological Science Requires Verifiable Lines of Reasoning for Whether an Effect Matters
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DOI：
10.1177/17456916221091565
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发表时间：
2022-08-22
影响因子：
12.6
通讯作者：
Orben, Amy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Anvari, Farid;Kievit, Rogier;Orben, Amy
为了帮助研究人员摆脱启发式地认为“小”影响不重要，最近的文章重新审视了论证为什么心理科学中看似很小的影响很重要。一个论点基于这样一种观点，即由于随着时间的推移积累过程或应用于大量人群，观察到的效应大小在推广到新环境时可能会增加影响力。然而，该领域现在面临着试探性地接受所有影响都具有潜在重要性的危险。我们的目标是鼓励研究人员彻底思考可能放大和抵消观察到的效应大小的重要性的各种机制。研究人员应该利用多种放大和抵消机制，当这种效应被推广到一个新的、可能更动态的环境时，这些机制可能同时适用于该效应。通过这种方式，研究人员应该致力于透明地提供可验证的推理路线，以证明他们关于效果的重要性或不重要性的主张。这种透明度可以帮助心理科学对心理学发现何时对研究人员想要推广的背景产生重要影响进行更严格的评估。
To help move researchers away from heuristically dismissing "small" effects as unimportant, recent articles have revisited arguments to defend why seemingly small effect sizes in psychological science matter. One argument is based on the idea that an observed effect size may increase in impact when generalized to a new context because of processes of accumulation over time or application to large populations. However, the field is now in danger of heuristically accepting all effects as potentially important. We aim to encourage researchers to think thoroughly about the various mechanisms that may both amplify and counteract the importance of an observed effect size. Researchers should draw on the multiple amplifying and counteracting mechanisms that are likely to simultaneously apply to the effect when that effect is being generalized to a new and likely more dynamic context. In this way, researchers should aim to transparently provide verifiable lines of reasoning to justify their claims about an effect's importance or unimportance. This transparency can help move psychological science toward a more rigorous assessment of when psychological findings matter for the contexts that researchers want to generalize to.