Researchers Assume White Americans Are More Representative Of Humankind Than Other Groups, According To Analysis Of Psychology Paper Titles

By Matthew Warren It’s well-known that psychology has a problem with generalisability. Studies overwhelmingly involve “WEIRD” participants: those who are western and educated, from industrialised, rich and democratic societies. And while there is increasing recognition that other populations need better representation in research, many psychologists still often draw sweeping conclusions about humanity based on results from a narrow portion of the world’s population. A new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that this problem may have had another, more insidious effect. The authors argue that because of psychology’s traditionally narrow focus, we’ve ended up implicitly assuming that results of studies on WEIRD groups — particularly white Americans — are somehow more universally generalisable than those from other populations. The study, led by Bobby Cheon at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, looked at the way in which participant samples were described in the titles of psychology papers. Their logic was simple: article titles are written to get across the most important bits of information about a study, which includes highlighting key features of the sample that might constrain how applicable the results are. For instance, if a study is conducted on children, this will probably be mentioned in the title, so that the reader immediately knows that the results may not apply to adults. Similarly, some study title...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Cross-cultural Methodological Source Type: blogs