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

Abstract

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.

A multivariate analysis of women's mating strategies and sexual selection on men's facial morphology

“…Our study employed a multivariate approach to assessing human mate preferences, which has been successfully undertaken in previous research on men's preferences for female morphology [136,137] and women's preferences for men's morphology [138,139]. Our sample of participants is restricted to people from the USA and we hope this study inspires further replication across other populations, a possibility that can be realized via collaboration through established research networks [140]. For now, our findings provide mixed evidence that individual differences maintain variation in women's mate preferences for masculine secondary sexual facial traits in men.…”

More than smell - COVID-19 is associated with severe impairment of smell, taste, and chemesthesis

“…The questionnaire was implemented in 10 languages as of April 18th, 2020 (the date on which the database was last queried for this report): English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. Our translation protocol was modeled after the process developed by the Psychological Science Accelerator (Moshontz et al, 2018). Briefly, translations of the original English questionnaire involved three steps: i) the original (English) questionnaire was translated to the target language by independent translators, resulting in Translation Version A; ii) Version A was translated back from the target language to English by a separate group of independent translators, resulting in Version B; iii) Versions A and B were discussed among all translators, with the goal of resolving potential discrepancies between the two versions, resulting in the final Version C. All questionnaires in all languages were then implemented in Compusense Cloud, Academic Consortium (Guelph, Ontario), a secure cloud-based data collection platform with multilingual support.…”

Advancing Transparency and Openness in Child Development Research: Opportunities

“…In line with SRCD's objectives and goals on inclusivity, data sharing creates opportunities to connect and collaborate with researchers across the world. Several emerging national and international efforts, such as the Many Labs studies (e.g., Klein et al, 2014), the Many Babies project (Frank et al, 2017), the Psychological Science Accelerator (Moshontz et al, 2018), and the Play and Learning Across a Year Project (https://www.playproject.org), aim to crowdsource psychological science. Such initiatives will result in larger and more diverse datasets than any researcher could collect alone.…”