Communicating What We Know and What Isn’t So: Science Communication in Psychology

Abstract

The field of psychology has a long history of encouraging researchers to disseminate their findings to the broader public. This trend has continued in recent decades in part because of professional psychology organizations reissuing calls to “give psychology away.” This recent wave of calls to give psychology away is different because it has been occurring alongside another movement in the field—the credibility revolution in which psychology has been reckoning with metascientific questions about what exactly psychologists know. This creates a dilemma for the modern psychologist: How is one to “give psychology away” if one is unsure about what is known or what one has to give? In the current article, we discuss strategies for navigating this tension by drawing on insights from the interdisciplinary fields of science communication and persuasion and social influence.

Malleability of Statistical Perception: Impact of Validity Presentation on College Admission Test Policy Preferences

“…Our findings have clear implications for how academics communicate their findings-especially their effect sizes-with the public (e.g., media, executives, policymakers) (Lewis & Wai, 2021). As noted by Camara & Shaw (2012), many academics are reluctant to engage with the public on issues about psychometrics and measurement due to the complexity of statistical prediction and psychometric theory and inherent challenges in conveying that complexity in plain language.…”

Communicating Intelligence Research

“…For example, we need mainstream psychology, education, or other departments to hire and support the next generation of intelligence researchers, which comes from adjacent more mainstream fields (e.g., social/personality, developmental, health, educational, quantitative, I/O, cognitive) accepting the current empirical findings from intelligence and not being turned off by the public and academic controversies. In fact, responsible scientific engagement may be more critical than ever for the field of intelligence research as it seeks to maintain its reputation in academia and among the broader public (Lewis and Wai 2020), and this can even be viewed as an important way of teaching about intelligence (Detterman 2014)-students, after all, are simply members of the public who happen to be in college. One might enquire after the best way to communicate intelligence research, given the challenges of reaching other non-intelligence researchers and the public.…”

“…One might enquire after the best way to communicate intelligence research, given the challenges of reaching other non-intelligence researchers and the public. The broad theme of responsible science engagement (Lewis and Wai 2020) is probably the most valuable approach, considering that research within the field, especially when that research can have societal consequences and implications, needs to be communicated with a sensitivity and genuine acknowledgment of social responsibility. The Appendix of Lewis and Wai (2020) provides some resources on getting started communicating about psychology broadly, and the earlier section providing some examples of effective ambassadors for the field may be helpful.…”

“…This article builds on the perspective of Hunt (2009, p. 324), who emphasized that in the intelligence research community "we have a communication problem." The article first provides a framework for thinking about communication of intelligence research in terms of scholarly aspects (e.g., Cohen 2019) but also more broadly (Lewis and Wai 2020;Tseng 2012). This includes communicating research findings with other intelligence researchers, then moves to discussing the communication of intelligence research with other subdisciplines of social science and beyond, and finally discusses the communication of intelligence research with the public, which is defined here as policymakers, practitioners, students, or general readers.…”

“…I will try to encourage intelligence researchers to think about strategies for ensuring the survival of the discipline, by thinking about what we are communicating and how we are communicating with others. At the heart of this consideration is responsible engagement on what gets communicated (Lewis and Wai 2020;Tseng 2012) while simultaneously balancing the historical and enduring need for academic freedom and open inquiry (Haier 2020;University of Chicago 1967;Zimmer 2015). Communication occurs at multiple levels and is not just about intelligence researchers getting others to understand what the current facts or weight of evidence of our field have to offer through getting the message right.…”