Should psychology research should consider issues of diversity in decisions about research topics, methods and reporting of findings? We examine this question by addressing diversity issues regarding underrepresented groups, as well as ideological diversity. We recommend that people consider diversity when it (1) improves credibility, including improving validity and generalizability, (2) improves understanding, including choosing the most important topics for theory and meaning-making, and (3) promotes welfare, including avoiding research that harms more than it helps.

Children ages 7 (N = 51, Mage = 7.14, SD = .54), 9 (N = 53, Mage = 8.98, SD = .62), and 11 (N = 56, Mage = 11.50, SD = .93), and adults (N = 50, Mage = 20.76, SD = .87) judged distributions of different items to boys and girls, when the items distributed varied by type (related or unrelated to gender norms) and equivalency (equivalent or unequal). Distributions were judged to be acceptable most when the items were consistent with gender norms, especially for participants at ages 7 and 9. Items were judged to be more likable when they were gendered, and this judgment predicted more positive evaluations of the distributions, even when controlling for age.

The replication crisis has shown that research in psychology and other fields including biology is not as robust as previously thought. In response, methods have been introduced to address the problem and increase reproducibility, including two methods that are the focus here: (1) preregistration of study hypotheses and methods, and (2) analysis of whether p-hacking may have occurred through patterns of p-values. Each is easy to find, even in short summaries of research, but do consumers of research recognize these indicators as evidence of trustworthiness? In the current study, we examined how professionals (n = 111), researchers (n = 74) and undergraduate students (n = 78) judged the trustworthiness of short descriptions of research in their field, which varied in terms of whether there was a reference to a preregistration or evidence of potential p-hacking. Overall, participants trusted studies less when they were not preregistered. Researchers and professionals, but not students were sensitive to evidence of p-hacking. We suggest that education about questionable research practices like p-hacking and hypothesizing after the results are known needs to be improved.

Stealing is considered to be a typical moral violation, but is stealing immoral when it does not involve harm? To assess the role of harm in reasoning about stealing, 200 undergraduates with a range of political orientations (M = 3.81 on a 7-point scale, SD = 1.49) judged instances of taking resources without permission to benefit a third party. Participants judged vignettes that varied who took the resources (an authority or an individual), the need of the recipient, and the harm to the owner (left with not enough, enough, or more than enough). Labeling acts as stealing was weakly associated with evaluations of acts. Harm was key to judgments of stealing across political orientations: participants judged taking resources without permission as unacceptable when it harmed the owner but as acceptable when it helped others in need. In the absence of harm, stealing was not consistently seen as a moral issue.

Do faculty job advertisements in psychology support the goals of excellence in teaching, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in both their statements and in the essential information that they provide? We examined 596 advertisements from the November 2021 psychology Jobs Wiki in a preregistered study. We found that universities posting academic psychology jobs often included a DEI Statement (78.0%) and commonly stated that they prioritize teaching (49.7%). However, universities rarely included pay information (5.4%) or the expected course load (28.7%). Using the TOST test of equivalence, we found that those who included a statement supporting DEI were not more likely to provide information about salary, other financial support, teaching load, or teaching support. Those who emphasized the importance of teaching were more likely to provide information about course load but not teaching resources. We suggest this information should be added to faculty job advertisements.