How many times a day do you check Facebook? Please write a numeric answer only (for example, "2").
Difficult to determine; it's always open, like my email and my chat clients.
more than 5, could be as many as 25+ in total across a day (e.g. many quick "peeks")
Not answerable; it is open all day and I periodically check it, sorry, but my numeric answer would be a complete fabrication
10 times a day, mostly to use the chat function and read news
My phone updates in realtime...so I guess constantly

Other - Text
we have a program specifc FB page, keep in touch and celebrate achievements
watch people discuss on-going controversies (get the popcorn)
I like reading about ongoing controversies or those discussions in psychMap but no way am i posting there
Read about on-going controversies so I know who to avoid talking to and what to avoid talking about with others
Ask questions about methods, stats, and lit reviews and get great helpful answers from friends?
I do not participate in the discussions on FB methods groups, but I often read through comments sections when controversial things are posted.
Read about on-going controversies (I prefer to remain silent, at least thus far)
Get a pulse on important controversies (I wouldn't call this gossip, though it sometimes coincides)
Learn about researchers' opinions on on-going controversies
ask research-related questions of facbook friends who are also soc/pers psych
keep up generally with academic social network (e.g. grad school friends, conference buddies, etc.)
Gain information about personalities of people in the field, attend to likes and responses to gauge trends and shifts in thinking in the field (i.e. it is a source of meta-scientific data itself)
Read about issues related to method and statistics
I read about on-going controversies but do not interact.
I ocassionally read OTHERS' posts about methods/stats/social psych
see what colleagues are up to, share what i'm up to
listen to these opportunities and discussions
Read about (but don't often discuss/contribute) to issues and controversies related to methods and stats (aka lurking)
Read but not participate in those above discussions
I don't actively discuss the on-going controversies much, but I follow them sometimes
I don't have cable, which means I don't have access to the Jerry Springer show. So I occasionally look at the Psychological Methods Discussion Group and Psych MAP for my daily dose of ridiculous, unnecessary drama.
Read about methods and ongoing controversies
I am a passive consumer. Do't post anything but read
Not applicable. I don not use Facebook for this purpose.
Read about on-going controversies with larger and open Facebook groups
I read about methods, statistics, and ongoing controversies but I typically do not post/discuss.
Communicate scientific findings to my students
express utter frustration with sexist/racist/homophobic content on personality/social psychology listservs/fb groups with smaller groups of friends
Reviewer 2 Must be Stopped (great group on peer review and publishing) and Mediation and Moderation Group (great group for all things stats)
Discuss how toxic academia is .... discuss the need to make it less toxic
post relevant stories on the psychology community page for my institution
Rather than Discuss, I would read about some issues and controversies
Read about on-going controversies but not posting.
Learn what the hot topics are in my field

Other - Text
SPSP, Women of HBES, HBES, Women Thinking Freely
Statistical Mediation and Moderation Analysis; Moral Psychology
Program and Student FB Groups at my university
evolutionary psychology, the brain cafe, HSU Academic Research,
Social Neuroendocrinology, Social and Affective Neuroscience
I left Psych Methods at the urging of a colleague
I don't remember which ones specifically, I am no longer engaged with these
Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Politics, Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society
Social and Affective Neuroscience Society
we have a local FB group where these issues sometimes - but very rarely - come up
Society for the Teaching of Psychology; SPSP group
Nonverbal Communication Network, Bayesian Inference in Psychology
SPSP graduate student group and WPA grad student group
Social Media Research, Different Organisational Groups
Bayesian Inference in Psych, ISSI, Nonverbal
STP, SRA, SRCD, APS, PsychCentral, SPN, NITOP, ISSBD, SRIF, Science of Relationships, ASA,
International Society of Self and Identity
Scientists against Solitary Confinement, Social and Affective Neuroscience Society
Bayesian Inference in Psychology, Psychologická věda (Czech local group), Statistika, metodologie, psychometrika (Czech local group)
left psych methods group - negative space
Reviewer 2 Must be Stopped (Psych Methods is awful...I had to leave it as I was thinking of leaving the field because of the awful negative tone)
Reducing Liberal Bias is Psychological Science
Statistical Mediation and Moderation Analysis
OpenCOMM, SANS, ASPO, Bayesian Inference, Science of Psychology Writers, Nonverbal Communication Network, Moral Psychology, In-Mind Magazine

Weeks:
Since it started, not sure how long, sorry

Months:
Sorry, can't remember. Since its inception to 2 weeks ago

Other - Text
I don't think a FB is really an appropriate place to discuss methods. The discussion is not peer-reviewed. Additionally, everyone in the group seems in favor of changes that I'm not sure I support. Everyone seems to agree.
Discussion dominated by older men; little room for young and/or underrepresented group members
fear of drawing certain negative voices my way
conversations are narrow, always the same 1-2 topics (mainly replication), dominated by a few individuals...so why bother?
I had concerns that the ensuing heated discussions would consume my time and cause my well-being to deteriorate
I can't keep up with the highly intense people who critique all things; so the sunk costs of time required per comment management isn't worth it to me. Also, there are too many people who seem to go there to assert an unwavering opinion rather than open-mindedly debate. i get enough of that in my normal academic life, why endure it here, too?
Responding to shit storms takes too much time
Concerns about being a target if I participate. Concerns about being perceived as part of one camp or another; concerns about future grant and job prospects
You have to be part of the clique if you want to be taken seriously.
i only comment if my voice might have value
It makes me angry and I feel like I am feeding a terrible beast
I just don't feel knowledgable enough to participate in discussions, as I'm still an undergrad student with much to learn
I was truly not competent enough about the issue
The ideology and character of both PsychMAP and some PsychMAP posters (excessive agreeableness--tolerance of terrible ideas for the sake of politeness; genuinely stupid and/or ignorant responses are often treated seriously and with excessive respect) as well as the consistently low level of discussion on a number of topics (a lack of basic philosphical/logical and mathematical/statistical competence) often fills me with despair about the future of the field, and on these days I just think engaging isn't even worth the bother.
I'm more interested in passively witnessing conversations at this point and don't want to prematurely commit to a position by publicly stating it, which would in turn make me motivated to defend it
The constant moderating is annoying (it feels like censorship)
Sometimes topics were too controversial. I didn't want to get involved.
Commenting often opens one to attack on these issues - it's easier to stay quiet and not put a target on your head.
I didn't have the technical expertise or relevant professional experience to make a productive contribution
I often feel that I don't understand the issues being discussed fully enough to have well-developed views of my own
I don't feel qualified/knowledgeable enough to share my opinion
Very hard for a graduate student to discuss controversial topics especially when they dont know how it might affect their advisor's reputation as well
I generally don't post opinions on social media
I tend to prefer to be a social media "lurker" unless I feel there is something that needs to be said that no one else is saying.
I am afraid to criticize the current movements toward bettering science (even though I agree with a lot of them)
I'm usually not certain that my thoughts or input will be useful or relevant.
I rarely post anything at all on Facebook or Twitter -- I just lurk and learn.
I generally don't refrain from commenting when I have something to say.
A combination of the selected options: I didnt have enough time to spend composing thoughts or replies in a way that I felt would be clear and well-sourced.
I see comments about ethics of research in particular from people who I have met and know did not follow the principles they espouse publicly. I don't have much stomach for that. Seems like a lot of impression management and putting a facade of big changes in the field, while that is not the reality. One is still not going to get a decent job without a lot of publications. This emphasis on quantity (and Psych Science-like sensationalism) is perpetuating unethical behavior, no matter what tenured social psychologists at renowned institutions say in public forums. I observe the discussions, get references occasionally, but don't think there is a lot of honesty or examining of institutional and social conditions that got social psychology in this place to begin with (I am saying social psychology because I think personality psychology is much less susceptible to problems inherent in running 5 studies with N=20 where one 'works' and then publishing that one in a package of 5).
I'd expect social psychologists to be more professional in constructing questionnaires. Like, not presupposing that the respondent refrains from commenting (the classic "when did you stop beating your wife"). The next question is a classic for my res. methods class
^ha, junior women in the field - the last four reasons are partially why I haven't responded to some posts (especially the sexist ones)
it's obvious you'll have to deal with a million replies the majority of which are moralistic in tone and no thank you
As a senior Ph.D. student, I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to comment on most of the issues. I have been in the group mainly to learn different perspectives and recommendations.
I don't feel like I'm knowledgable enough/qualified to make meaningful contributions to the discussions
People post too frequently that I cannot keep up with the comments. Then there are repeat comments by fairly senior people in the field, so it's just too hard to keep up.

Other - Text
when I think I have some to offer that hasn't already been said or I feel like the tone of the conversation is remaining civil
I feel I have a unique and valuable contribution to make to the conversation
This is a truly bizarre set of response options for this question. Why do I comment--what about out of interest? These superordinate motivations seem really disconnected from why people participate in these groups...
To balance the representation of view points there
To provide information that is missing from the discussion
I disagree with presented opinions, and think they are harming our field
Because I have something to say! D'uh https://myscholarlygoop.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/how-i-feel-as-a-woman-in-academia/
To learn the state of opinions and character among those (on social media) in the field. Insofar as this group is public, the values and behaviours displayed here reflect on the field, and help me figure out just how seriously I should take it, and just how much longer I should consider investing my time into it.
I care about some particular thing so much that I can't help myself
I felt that a particular position/perspective wasn't being presented
To offer an opinion or perspective that has been ignored or not yet addressed
To try to balance out the conversation when only one side of a debate is being expressed
to ask questions about tough methodological dilemmas
To give my opinion about what seemed like an important issue
When something I have done research-wise is of particular relevance to the conversation
To contribute something to a conversation
To help people with their methodological problems
to defend those who may not want to speak up.
I don't. I only read, most of the comments are WAY too hostile and frankly unscientific to participate. Although reading them sometimes makes me feel that I know what's going on, I don't want to participate in discussions with such childish hostility though.

Other - Text
fear of drawing certain people's attention my way
People are, in my opinion unfairly, stigmatizing this group and its leader.
I was not actually competent enough about the issue
As much as I hate the pathological agreeableness of PsychMAP, I sometimes also really do not like the excessive disagreeableness of Psych Methods.
Worried my contribution might inadvertently serve to validate the generally very low quality of methodological discussion or that I might be seen as endorsing arguments to which I do not respond
Same as before: I often don't feel that I understand the topics well enough to have a strong opinion that I am motivated to share
People on FB groups are too opiniated and answers seldomly follow academic conventions.
the tone on this site is completely inappropriate and does not promote positive, useful discourse
PLEASE NOTE - ANSWERS FOR THIS FB GROUP ARE THE SAME AS PSYCHMAP
People are horribly rude on psych methods. I don't want to be attacked or associated with that
I usually don't feel compelled to post anything because the original posts are often not relevant.
A combination of the selected options: I didnt have enough time to spend composing thoughts or replies in a way that I felt would be clear and well-sourced. Additionally, I often feel that the Psych Methods group carries a stigma diene to its harshness in the past, and I would not necessarily want to associate my name with it.
The climate at Psych Methods is not conducive to respectful discussion or to hearing a diversity of viewpoints
Fear of being penalized by powerful non-members.
I am scared of the atmosphere of this group; it is not very constructive from time to time.
Sometimes I actually don't know enough about the topic.

Other - Text
I feel that I have a unique and valuable contribution to make to the discussion
Again, a very weird set of responses for assessing motivations for posting...
As before. However in this group you also can see less censored opinions of the state of the field. Since I am in favour of American-style free speech, I often simply prefer to post on or read Psych Methods.
To check on my intrepretation of what seems like work of low methodological or statistical quality
To ask a question that this group is uniquely qualified to answer
I rarely participate in discussions there.

Other - Text
since psychmap emerged, iscon is no longer relevant
I don't have time. I'm lucky if I get a chance to read it.
Many posts are announcements that don't require a reply (e.g. a job ad)
Same as before: don't know enough about many topics to have well-formed opinions to share
A lot of negative things happened to colleagues who commented
Not many posts to reply to now that other groups have formed
I didn't even think it was active anymore
Fear of being penalized by powerful others.
discussion seems to have largely moved to psychmap
so much moralizing, so much white straight male privilege, no time to explain those things to those who exert it

Other - Text
Same as before. People say things that I think are harming our field
Since the methods discussions moved to the other Groups, I rarely check ISCON.

Other - Text
Content of the specific post is not relevant to me
It is slowly turning into esoterical pseudoscience.
I had privacy concerns: my private and professional lives are too mixed on FB so I keep a low profile.
Fear of being penalized by powerful others.
Nothing to add; group is somewhat outside my area of expertise

Other - Text
To present what I think is an important perspective that is not being represented in the conversation (but isn't necessarily representative of my identity)
For fun and for connection with my peers
Because somebody is wrong in the Internet.
To make sure others are getting accurate information
To discuss how to make academia a more hospitable place
have a natural interest in the topics of social psych. Don't all of us?
This is a pretty specific group, used if you have a problem or are looking for an answer. I could answer all of these questions about PsychMAP, but they're less relevant for this group.

How many times a day do you check Twitter? Please write a numeric answer only (for example, "2").
could be anywhere from 5 to 50+ (depends on the day, and I do many little "peeks")

Other - Text
learn about blog postings and opinion pieces
politics and comedy, haven't used it for psychology
see what negative impressions of our field were posted today
As before, to assess the state of the field, and the character of the people in it. A fields representation on (public) social media imperfectly reflects the state and values of the field, and this is essential information.
again, I follow the discussion but do not participate much
Read about on-going controversies with larger groups
Read about methods, stats, and ongoing debates but not discuss/post
I do not use Twitter for this purpose; the following questions are not specific to social science on Twitter so I will answer them although they refer to other content only
Read about on-going controversies but not usually tweeting

We are interested in understanding what factors might increase contribution on social media among our members who do not participate. Please provide any recommendations you may have
Increasing participation is not a great way to think about our goal. Increasing the quality of participation is much more important. Social media will be a good home for some people and topics and a bad one for others, but the quality of contribution should be high for whoever chooses to engage.
Restricting the group posts so that only members can see on facebook. I don't post in groups that are open, but post in closed and secret groups more often.
- I would love a separate group for graduate students/post-docs. I am not super confident in asking questions when I know that senior researchers get a Facebook notification about it! I do love watching the conversations happen, but it does seem like mostly the same people post over and over again, so it does feel challenging to chime in, especially so early in my career.
Like I mentioned, the conversations seem to revolve around mainly one issue (replication), dominated by a few men who have very strong opinions. As someone who studies health research, <5% of what i see on PsychMap is really relevant to what I do, and I think it's disappointing because I wonder how many people believe that is 'psychology' right now, when really it's just those few people. There are so many other interesting things that could be discussed or that would be helpful to be discussed, but those views are not represented at all because of the loud voices of a few.
There are inherent limitations to having in-depth and complex scientific discussions through social media. I do not think it is an appropriate outlet to have these discussions because the format is optimized for sound bites and headlines, rather than critical consideration. In addition, the audience can be quite varied in terms of background knowledge and understanding of the topics. It makes it difficult to evaluate the credibility of discussion members. I have no recommendations for increasing contribution, because I do not think social media (as it currently exists) is an appropriate place for these conversations.
I wish I had ideas. There are so many reasons to avoid it.
I think as it becomes more the norm, you will see more people using it gradually. I think it's mostly a cohort difference. So I don't think there is much need to increase contributions on social media.
Personal attacks on others, especially woman and minority members, is discouraging and makes me worry about participating and the state of our field.
Social media is dangerous and those who do not participate should not be persuaded to do so. Even the email exchanges get too testy for my taste.
If we could somehow guarantee that people would be thoughtful in their responses and carefully read the comments. But this is seems unobtainable.
Please don't try to encourage more participation! let's aim for less...
I tend to use social media to educate the general reader about research that illuminates issues of the day. Most of my friends on FB are not psychologists and about 1/4 are social workers (former students, colleagues)... the rest are lay people... some are conservative and need scientific information to counteract the crazy things they read and here on "news" shows on terrible outlets. I don't really use FB to interact with colleagues... sometimes it happens, which is fine, but not the reason I go there. I talk to colleagues about research, methods, etc at work, when working on manuscripts or at conferences.
I think social media is usually used for complaining, and so I think people avoid it to avoid the negative feelings associated. I think there needs to be a more structured outlet.
Moderated communities like PsychMap help. But the nastiness and overall tone of the conversation would need to improve a LOT for me to feel comfortable. It feels too much like there's an assumption of bias and lack of competence regarding nearly everyone.
I like moderated groups like PsychMAP. I think the mods there have done a good job of maintaining an environment that is constructive and stepping in when one person is dominating the conversation too much. That said, the job of moderator has to be a lot of work, so I sympathize with the mods -- they are doing a huge service for the field!
I wasn't aware of any Facebook/Twitter groups specifically dedicated to engaging in scientific discourse. Perhaps making these groups more well-known (or just making psychologists/scientists aware of their existence) could get more people involved in social media.
I am tenured so no thoughts of leaving but I am cautious now in persuading my students to pursue a graduate career in social psych. I think course correction needed to happen with respect to QRPs but right now I feel like I am witnessing a hostile climate with too much zealotry for purity. I got my degree in the late 90s and I hated seeing research clubs of elite get all the grants and pubs because of their networks. But this swing does not seem to promote inclusivity as opposed to working through dismantling power structures in a hostile way. I prefer the idea that research is iterative and recursive and finding better ways to help everyone become better researchers and not make us all pseudo statisticians. I love social psych (theory and research) and now I feel like I am being asked to become an expert in stats and CS. We should be looking to teach new ways of supporting ethical research without dooming us to what happened with personality psych. We are effectively cannibalizing ourselves into a hyphenated subfield of other branches in psychology who don't have as many oedipal issues.
I do not want to be the subject of someone's blog post. I do not want someone developing a negative impression about me based on something I have said online. From my perspective, the likelihood of gaining respect from engaging in online methodological discussions is slim, but the likelihood of inadvertently saying something foolish is high.
Thanks for doing this survey. We're all in serious trouble if we can't figure out ways to make online forums work better for scientific purposes.
I think social media--Twitter especially--has been awesome for increasing my exposure to brilliant people in our field who are not in the old/established dominant majority. Young scholars, female scholars, racial minority scholars--all people that I largely was unawares of, and through Twitter, they are now part of my regular/daily "science narrative". Moreso than FB (in which, on PsychMAP and PsychMethods, the established scholars still dominate), Twitter is the great academic equalizer.
Additional platforms; more focus on research and theory instead of opinions and controversy; targeted posts with interviews, summaries, questions to the broader audience, interactive discussions and live group participation
For me to participate, it would need to be worth the time and have greater utility. It currently seems like an echo chamber in a moral community that isn't worth the time it takes to participate. I sit in plenty of meetings where white dudes repeat themselves endlessly, talk over people, and profess rigid opinions. Why would I want to voluntarily expose myself to more of that with my limited time.
Less Us versus Them across the various debates - we are social psychologists - we should know how to facilitate good and diverse conversations but we often do the opposite. The main reason I dont really post as much is I never felt heard.
The above questions don't work because this is polarized: If you want to gain status among those who think the field is a bunch of misleading nonsense, social media will help you; if you actually think we learned something in the last 60 years, psych groups in social media will be annoying. For senior scholars this turns into a service responsibility: if you don't speak up, the graduate students will think the hype is real. And quite obviously, some names became known solely through social media and whether that's good for their career development will be interesting to see.
It would be nice to have an online forum specific to psychologists, and not a list-serv or SPSP thing, where one could interact. On facebook, everything gets lost in the multitude of posts. It would need to be a well-monitored forum.
I am for constructive reforms, but the tone of discussions on social media is really discouraging. I really dislike the communication style as it very much "us" versus "them" instead of "we're all in this together". There are too many personal attacks. I feel that the conversations are helping heteronormative white men advance their careers, but women and other minorities will suffer reputation costs for speaking their minds and so they often do not. Not to mention that women and minorities spend more time dealing with crap on their campuses (e.g., increased service responsibilities and childcare, articulating diversity issues within their departments and universities). One suggestion is for SPSP to set up smaller focus groups on social media to foster greater exchange of ideas. For example, separate forums for different career stages -- graduate students/postdocs in one gropu, assistant professors setting up their labs in another, and folks with tenure in the third. Right now, we pretty much only have a folks with tenure group. Alternatively, I am considering setting up smaller Facebook groups amongst just a few colleagues to feel comfortable sharing thoughts on important issues of scientific quality. I don't feel comfortable in open forums like PsychMAP, and I'm not sure I ever will. I think we can do better and should. his is something that may emerge naturally over time since forums like PsychMAP are dominated by just a few people trying to advance their careers with methods reforms. Scholars at the same career stage only, which may encourage more participation from women and minorities. Ano
There is nothing that would convince me to be being engaged on social media or publicly engaged in this discussion. People are awful and have no problem working to bring others down. On top of all the stressors and pressures graduate students and junior factually face, putting themselves out there to be publicly torn down does not seem appealing. Now, imagine what it might be like to be a minority group member who is already facing additional stressors and pressures. There is literally no incentive for engaging in this discussion, aside from improving the field. But at what cost? The sacrifice of of your public reputation because you dared speak against those who think that psychology is in turmoil or that the COS has the final and only word on the subject? I applaud those who are brave enough to venture into this discussion publicly. Anyone who doesn't agree that psychology is in turmoil, all our results are in question, or that the solutions presented by the COS are the best solutions, seemed to be consistently met with derision.
Some people are overly negative, harsh, or aggressive in their responses. It is less about sharing than "being right" to people like that which can discourage others and actually halt productive, engaging conversation.
An official platform, or guidelines for creating a professional account? Even the listservs sometimes blur the lines between professional announcements/discussions and inside conversations or unprofessional arguments.
confusing feedback on methods, snap judgments, uninformed methods that have not been vetted are disseminated constantly. it takes away from science as a serious, peer review endeavor
There is definitely an ingroup vs. outgroup mentality, or even something related to mob behavior (e.g., people are encouraged to make possibly disparaging edits on wikipedia, which they share with others who endorse their behavior and encourage more editing by a certain group of people). I know many people don't want to be involved in twitter because of that.
More awareness of what kind of conversations go on on social media and the potential benefits of using social media. More encouragement from senior scholars of junior scholars' participation. More departmental or institution encouragement and involvement in social media use (e.g., departments setting up twitter accounts to promote individual researchers' tweets and research)
Psych was already undervalued and the "psychology is in crisis" mentality has opened the gates for people to feel that it's OK to attack and undermine the work.
Some of it is the overall tone. If the tone were more educational and if people expressed their views in a way that was tempered by the strength of the support for those views, I might be willing to put myself out there. Some of it is the specific people who dominate these discussions (not group moderators, but group members), who consistently have a negative tone and whose views are more on the extreme/fringe end. I'd be much more comfortable participating in a forum that is not dominated by these people. Especially since some (one?) of them seem to engage in personal attacks outside of the organized platforms.
Opinion polls about how to respond in a particular situation (especially a grey area with respect to best practices in research methods/data ethics)
I like the SPSP email list because it gives you quick access to feedback from others, but doesn't have the off-the-cuff immediacy of Facebook or Twitter. I like to reflect on my thoughts before providing contributions, so these quick-turnover platforms don't really appeal to me much.
I wish we could make it more civil, but I have lost hope that is possible.
Not everyone has to participate. There is room for introverts and extraverts in the field. There only becomes an issue if some louder people take up all the air in the room. But people mostly stop listening to those folks anyway. So the problem fixes itself. I'm far more concerned about reaching people who aren't on social media at all. How do we get them to plug in?
why bother? this is a personal choice they need to make. it is not your job as SPSP to help them find their voices.
It's just that some people do not consider that their responses are in public view, and that they are being judged. There is a false sense of anonymity (ignoring, of course, the use of sock puppets). It's a minority of users who are jerks, but when they start posting, they avalanche.
Increase their confidence. Major readon not to contribute is lack of interest or uncertainty
I think PsychMAP is a step in the right direction, although I am disturbed by the number of objections voiced even there against concern with "tone" and the value of a moderation presence (objections voiced by predominantly by white men who are already loud and frequent commentators). The voices present on social media are not diverse and do not represent our field - they are largely white, largely male, and largely strongly in-favor of a certain view of science (e.g., SIPPS members) that is not necessarily reflective of the field as a whole. Many of those latter issues, especially, are not seen as open to debate or criticism; those who do criticize are often the recipients of vicious personal attacks. Two of the only dissenting voices - Eli Finkel and Chris Crandall - are very well-established well-respected white male members of our field. I don't find that a coincidence. This lack of diversity (of gender, race, sexuality, AND ideas) not only discourages participation and honest discussion, it creates an echo chamber where everyone congratulates each other on how progressive and wonderful they are in critiquing the field, while reacting to dissenting opinions with hostility and insinuation (e.g., that you must have p-hacked all of your work if you don't support mandatory preregistration, etc). This is deeply unwelcoming to any who disagree or do not fit into the mold of current members of the discussion. And I think junior scientists, especially women or minorities, simply cannot risk that in the current environment.
There is too much mansplaining. I might be more engaged if there was less of that.
Creating a culture in which criticism of studies is not constantly mistaken as personal attacks would make junior scholars less afraid of sharing their opinions
I actually tweet a fair bit about research and education-related topics, but never engage in conversations about methods. The reasons why are perfectly encapsulated by the following blog post, and the first 4 reader comments that follow it: http://sometimesimwrong.typepad.com/wrong/2015/03/guest-post-not-nutting-up-or-shutting-up.html A good deal more generosity of spirit and giving benefit of the doubt, and a good deal less schadenfreude (I will be interested to see whether respondents admit that) would help a great deal.
More hours in the day! Being at a more teaching-focussed institution, I do not always have time for regular research activities, let alone keeping up with social media. Especially when one considers not just Facebook, but also Twitter and personal blogs.
big wigs (especially white tenured men) should make space for grad students and minorities to contribute. either by not posting or encouraging their colleagues to join in the conversation
If my opinion as a graduate student was sought out explicitly I might be inclined to participate. Otherwise, I feel more comfortable allowing more senior psychologist (who have more expertise than I do) take the lead.
Guidelines for how to give constructive criticism. To make it clear what personal attacks look like and why they are inappropriate. I hate for there to be "policing" of FB groups, but maybe encourage the wider community to together work to give constructive criticism to the people who post personal attacks. If enough people do that and change the culture, then it might make it harder for personal attacks to happen and will make the space feel safer.
Block clearly unknowing and/or people with an Ax to grind.
This survey needs a skip out in the beginning - I use FB but NOT for discussions about psychology
I think there are barriers in terms of time and knowledge of how to use various social media platforms. Academics are very busy people and some likely don't want to use what time they have on social media. Social media can blend work and non-work, some people may want more separation between the two.
I appreciate that PsychMAP has moderators-- it helps me feel more comfortable (although I still don't comment). I think showing zero tolerance for personal attacks helps people feel more comfortable.
One of the problems I have with it is that you quickly get lost if you do not check it often. You have to spend a lot of time reading and responding, which is fine, but distracting from work needed to publish (especially as a junior member of the field). I also find that many people are respectful, but the conversations can turn ugly quickly. I feel as though if I comment I had better be an expert on what I say because anything I say will be nitpicked. It feels like a place to go to see gossip or criticize others. Conversations feel personal, not about the state of the field.
SPSP should set up a working group to (1) define what constitutes unethical online behavior and (2) put in effect some sort of sanctions for "offenders." This could include having one's name on a "black list", being unable to present at the conference, having a letter sent to one's department chair, etc. SPSP needs to address what often amounts to unscientific, defamatory statements about its members, or their research.
Greater tolerance for saying something that is wrong. If we all agree that we can all make mistakes, we can recognize the value of sharing our ideas and resolve conflicts in discussions.
I have positive experiences on social media, but I also avoid people and places where I think I'll have an unpleasant time. E.g., I find the various facebook groups to be unpleasant (including those groups designed to be moderated and civil) and so I avoid them. This substantially raises by level of enjoyment of social media to discuss psychology. Similarly, for most of the questions above about helping careers for various groups I was amending the question with "...assuming they aren't assholes." In short, avoiding being a bad person and avoiding places you don't like will substantially increase your enjoyment of social media. Selective exposure works people.
I think having scholarly organizations or connecting students interested in certain research topics would be so helpful. The issue of scooping would be something to consider, but sharing information to me has always been at the crux of scholarly inquiry.
There should be rules for mutually respectful discourse and a person who previews messages BEFORE they are posted and can veto ones that don't abide by the rules.
Select for individuals that are more assertive, emotionally stable, intelligent, and/or willing to take risks. Character and personality plays a large part (I suspect) in determining who interacts publicly in social media discussion. If one is concerned that, say, females aren't speaking up as much as they ought to be (and that one values speaking up, in general), one partial solution is to select for females that have the characteristics of those who speak up. If one is concerned that people are afraid to "look dumb", select for people that you know *aren't* dumb. Insofar as these behaviours are malleable, supervisors and professors should encourage students, especially females, to engage in more discussion on social media, and should, in doing this encouragement, address some of the fears (looking incompetent, have people dislike you and etc.) that keep people from posting. This should not be naive - often the right thing to do is not post, and sometimes the fears are legitimate. There are also (ignorant) stereotypes about social media ("Facebook is for people that just want to stroke their own egos" or "I don't need to see updates on my friend's latest bathroom excursion", or "I don't need to read people's pontifications and polemics on their 'blog' ") that nevertheless still drive people away from what are often extraordinary sources of information. It would be good to point out the childishness and lack of generality of some of these stereotypes, as well as the information value of social media. It would also help, I think, to help people realize that writing persuasively or polemically simply does not mean that one can infer that the person writing is overconfident, closed-minded, or has an inflated ego. I used to think this was obvious, but it seems some people are so fragile and lacking in understanding of the complexity of other human beings that they forget that there are different styles and manners of making arguments, and you shouldn't dismiss an ar
I don't participate, and I don't use facebook, etc. I have a facebook account and only check it if something personal is sent/posted regarding me. I have no interest in communicating with others over social media. This is perhaps because I am a bit socially anxious/inhibited. My concern is not social evaluation, I don't think, because I like to have professional webpage.
Honestly I'm not sure I'll ever participate in the sense of making comments. I have so much else to do as a researcher and very little time to do it, and I generally feel that my opinions get voiced by others in one way or another.
if they were members of lists associated with organizations
As a grad student, I find it a bit intimidating to discuss methods/stats amongst the field's leading psychologists, finding a way to equalize everyone would help. Another issue is that marginalized minorities (undocumented, transgender, etc) are rarely represented or figured into conversations that regard gender/race etc, so when that does occur, I make it a point to point out these issues. Social justice needs a bigger space at the table.
Answering these questions was really hard, because context matters. Who, said what, to whom. There are people who I think use social media productively and it has helped them and me, then there are people who are using it and (in my opinion) really hurting their careers and their reputations. As a woman, I tend to not comment on issues unless I feel really strongly about them. Once I read the post and read the comments, I have run out of time to comment. Moreover, I don't check facebook often, so by the time I read something, it is usually not at the top of the feed, and I doubt that anyone would really read or care about what I have to say. The conversations are typically dominated by a few people, who then debate (actively) anyone who disagrees with them or has an opinion that they do not share. I don't have the time nor the energy to engage in this nonsense - especially since I think that the people who are active are not going to change their minds, are not really listening to what I have to say, and in the process (some, not all) are pushy and overbearing. I don't have the time to get into a facebook debate with someone. So, I support the people who I think are doing good, by liking what they have to say. I would rather spend my time enjoying my life than debating with someone else in public.
I'm not keen on actively participating in discussions online, and I will probably only start doing so if it becomes clear that it is absolutely necessary for my career. And when that time comes, I may choose to change fields because I would much rather focus my limited time on developing research projects and guiding students.
The time to worry about nonparticipants has come and gone. If people aren't using social media now, they never will. I would concentrate on improving the quality of participation of those who using social media already.
I think visible, post-tenure people need to take a strong role in setting norms... which they have (more so on PsychMAP obviously). So I applaud them and hope this can continue, and that they will not come to misperceive their role as setting norms about CONTENT (which is where the tenure/power thing would become counterproductive) but only about manner of interaction.
I get the impression that the people who post on social media (twitter, PsychMap, Psych Methods) are people are more prestigious schools, more cultural capital, and more social capital (e.g., better networked). In other words, I get the impression that posting about controversial topics in our field is reserved for those with privilege or for those who aren't concerned about their careers. Journal editors are already biased by who they know (those with social, cultural, and economic capital), the last thing they need is another reason to dislike your submission.
I just got my PhD and I'm now at a teaching institution but I'm still very interested in research. I feel like I got the crappy kind of stats/methods training in grad school. As a result, I often feel like I have little to contribute to discussions in the psych groups on FB but I find it valuable to see what others think and to stay in the loop about developments in the field. But I worry about speaking up because I worry about outing myself as someone who doesn't know as much as they should and that reflecting poorly on me while I'm still on the job market. So, this isn't really a set of recommendations but I hope it provides some insight into why some members don't actively participate. One thing I might add is that, to the extent that these kind of social media groups are becoming more central to the discipline, it's probably a good idea to incorporate some training about how to engage in social media discussions into graduate programs and professional development programs. It's one of those things that people assume they know how to do but some deliberate training could go a really long way. We're psychologists after all and there's plenty of research on computer-mediated communication and the like that could be explicitly informing the way we have discussions on social media. I implicitly use this kind of stuff in my own personal discussion on Facebook anyway.
I've found online groups most useful when they focus on concrete issues (e.g. a recent post about how to minimize the number of tests to decompose a complex interaction) vs. The Fundamental Nature of Good Science.
I'm not sure. Perhaps changing perceptions of social media as a "cesspool for neckbeards yelling about men's rights." Part of changing those perceptions may require the neckbeards to get off of Facebook...but I'm not sure how feasible that is.
I had a very helpful mentoring meeting with a more senior scholar active on social media. This scholar's encouragement was helpful for me in choosing to engage. Perhaps such meetings, formally organized, would be helpful for others.
Moderation. Many participants are immature or vicious.
As a graduate student, I read conversations on Twitter about psychology, research methods and statistics frequently, however I rarely feel comfortable joining these discussions (besides the odd favourite of a Tweet). I think Twitter is a valuable platform for connecting with peers and colleagues and starting discussions (particularly about hot topics like open science, reproducibility and new methods), however at this point in my graduate training I do not feel that it is my place to comment on these issues just yet.
Having better training in statistics, methods, and philosophy of science would make me feel more confident that I have something worthwhile to add to these discussions.
I don't know what advice to give; most of my social media conversations, since they aren't in a place strictly occupied by professionals, are wrought with misunderstandings and frustration from the general public. Not really the social media conversations that I enjoy having, but it's difficult when I see people spreading misinformation to just let it slide. Social media is a great way to spread information to the general public, and there should be some way to do this effectively, though I haven't found it yet.
Honestly, I don't know. A large amount of false consensus occurs where it starts to feel like the view of the whole field is represented by this handful of vocal people. A lot of people are following the debate - just look at the # of people who join and "like" on PsychMAP compared to those who regularly contribute. Even excellent sites (like PsychMAP) are often overtaken by people who are full of snide, schadenfreudian glee over individual failures to replicate. There is a corresponding handful of vocal but wise, reasonable, and future-focused individuals who I appreciate mightily. Many of these are women, as it happens - and not a lot of women among the snide crowd. Following the debate has prompted a great deal of thinking, many private conversations with colleagues, and a total revamp in how I train grad students, my lab procedures, and how I teach the issues. Yet I do not wade into it online. Not because I have nothing to say but because I HAVE NO TIME. Literally. I work all day and much of the night and juggle life with 2 kids and a lot of the duties that fall disproportionately to women. To me, posting online is akin to getting a tattoo - once it's out there, it's out there. That means I would want to take real time to think before I post. I would want what I say to be solid, super well-thought out, and clearly communicated. I'm not interested in tossing out my off-the-cuff comments that I may regret half a day later. And when it comes to cost-benefit, I'd rather put that limited time into doing good science rather than wading into a social media storm that could end up doing me more harm than good. That's a bit selfish I know - I appreciate what these discussions are doing in the name of good science. But anyone who says there isn't a "tone" problem - is part of the "tone" problem. How to open up the field of ideas to those who feel powerless? Maybe a completely anonymous, yet moderated site?
It's a chance to "give psychology away," and to raise awareness of issues, or (often more the case) awareness of our perspective on those issues.
Official pages from scientific organizations, with moderators who are paid.
In my experience, most people who blog or post constantly on social media are narcissistic assholes with an agenda.
I think the main issue with online communications is a lack of anonymity. To some degree I think people would be more willing to ask questions and describe issues they have if others didn't know who they are. The flip side of that is there may be increased bullying behavior, which could be moderated, but will likely never go away. My biggest concern is how some silly facebook comment could ruin my career.
i think it can be helpful to read others views on social media, but i am wary of saying much of my own for fear of negative impact on my career
Having less personal attacks, sarcastic and non-constructive criticism, or witch hunting, and having a mechanism that discourages such comments. But I do not think we NEED to encourage people's participation in social media.
Perhaps starting "beginner-friendly" posts that address issues that are targeted for grad students or junior faculty at small institutions or teaching-focused institutions. Maybe even having a label to identify a post as "beginner-friendly" to highlight inclusive and willingness to be patient with people who may not have the knowledge, expertise, or experience as some of the more frequent posters....a kiddie pool, if you will (oh geez, did I just recommend having a "safe space" on social media?!)
Having ways in which social media would be more affiliated with the person might help. As of now, I do not believe that tweets can be cited in any way, so it seems like a bit of time wasted. It also seems like all risk (of upsetting someone or committing a faux pas) without much reward (no citations, hopefully blind and unbiased reviews).
I use facebook for personal, not business reasons. Outside of that, I find that scientific conversations that occur via Twitter (and other such nonsense) to be superficial and obnoxious. Perhaps if people weren't afraid to talk at or to one another during conferences these conversations could be improved.
Encourage people to ask questions-- including "stupid" ones. Encourage collaborative learning and focus on building each other up-- remember that we are all part of a small group (academics in psychology), and there is more than enough room for everyone's voice to be heard.
If tweets were predominately about sharing new finding, I'd be a lot more involved on Twitter. Ditto if the criticism people offered was helpful or at least mildly thought provoking. It's a shame bc those kind of tweets are probably what most researchers do, but those aren't the researchers taking up 85% of my feed.
I am a member who tends to passively view social media rather than contribute, largely due to me being a graduate student and not yet feeling confident in contributing to large scale conversations. However, I do tend to interact more with fellow graduate students and/or faculty that I personally know (either from my school or previous positions). Outside of these more tight-knit conversations, I do feel that social media posts can foster a platform for "drama"/personal attacks (which in my mind is saying something like "well, why wouldn't you have considered this, that shouldn't have been published" as opposed to something more constructive ("have you thought about analyzing this aspect? I would be really interested to see if it effects your results"). Thus, I tend to just avoid posting in them - as a graduate student I would rather avoid saying anything than have my name become associated with some thread that involves this. I am happy using social media to learn about new things and do participate in polls (e.g. "which webinar would you be most interested in seeing next year").
There seems to be a negative bias by more senior scholars about those who get "NYT" write ups on their pending papers/recently released research. My senior professors/advisors often make negative comments about these things (you know- the often overly simplified articles that summarizes a recent of pending article). These summaries often get passed around Facebook/shared by colleagues (at least among we PhD students), but it seems like some more senior faculty look down on this. My impression is that more junior faculty (if I had to put an age on it - under 42) don't embrace this as may actually view it as pandering or something?
tell like five specific dudes to dial it back a bit
It is just not a platform where I have frequent academic or research related conversations.
Ask simple questions directly, that are open and encouraging of feedback. Like, hey grad students! We'd like to hear what YOU have to say: (question)
1. Encouraging a more diverse (in terms of career stages and demographics) group of people participate; 2. Encourage more people to participate (rather than having a small number of people who seemingly dominate conversations); 3. Alleviating concerns about the negative consequences that engaging in social media might have on one's own career development, reputation, and productivity (e.g., many junior scientists I have talked to conveyed the impression of posting on social media as a "time sink" with great risks and little returns); 4. Underscoring how social media can be an efficient way to keep oneself updated with new developments in statistical tools and research findings—which in turn depends on the quality of information that social media presents (e.g., the extent to which social media offers concrete, substantive knowledge or perspectives vs. polarized opinions and personal attacks)
Academic conventions in answers/questions, no emotions, no names but in the form of references, no personal requests for responses, people actually finding a way to be more polite and less driven by their ideological needs to change/sustain the paradigm...
I don't comment because I am a junior colleague and feel that I am currently in a role of 'learning' in PsychMap. However, speaking to that group specifically, there are two or three senior members who seem to dominate most conversations. They clearly hold strong opinions but it may make it difficult for others to feel as though they can speak up.
I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done. I think that the amount of time it takes to really engage in an informed way with a social media post (read an original article or even a blog that critiques an original article, then read all comments, then stay up to date on comments), combined with a little bit of trepidation about missing something obvious and having someone else point it out (even if nicely), is enough to keep me as a casual consumer but non-regular contributor.
Specifically inviting feedback from those who are minorities, grad students (if you want them), junior scholars, and those who are primarily in teaching institutions/community colleges.
Well, first of all, if you think about Facebook as a map, how central do you think you are located? How close to the "center" of the discussion, the place where "things are really happening"? And by things I mean some important, meaningful initiatives for the field, exchange that makes a change, inspires decisions... So I do not feel that I am any close to the center. I live far from the U.S. and despite having many American (and some of them influential) scholars among my Facebook friends I still don't feel like anything meaningful is happening there on FB. It's a waste of time: gossip, private jokes, private exchange. Furthermore: I joined FB as a student, and treated it as a space for private exchange, with my friends and not colleagues. Now my FB friends are a collection of private life friends, exboyfriends, family, old time best friends, and my colleagues, their ex-wives and ex-husbands, ex-lovers or current lovers. God, please have mercy: I can't imagine having any constructive and easy conversation on FB publicly without unwanted attention from those whom I do not want to engage. Quite the opposite: I know that having kept a low profile on FB whatever I post now will actually bring a hell lot of unwanted attention. Finally, I see no way to keep a hurt exboyfriend away from spying on my own and my friends lives and this alone makes me sick and makes me stay away from FB. To me FB is over - it's a waste of time and sooner or later it wil become a trap for many other people, I am sure. There is simply too little control of one's own privacy on FB and too much unintended exposure and visibility. And I remember people saying this to me years ago when I didn't believe it at all. But now I believe fully. So my question would rather be: why do you want to increase contribution on social media among those who do not participate? Why do you think it's important? These are not peer-reviewed journals. These are extreme time-killers that would take anything and everythi
General guidelines about managing a "professional account"
Very unlikely, see answer to the next questoin.
Time and interest groups related to their research not being readily open or available Older members may not use the younger members sites or think social media is reserved for younger researchers and scientists
The extreme time commitment it takes to follow the discussions/replies and then make thoughtful comments---you could spend entire days on these sites!
I would post more often if groups weren't dominated by a few posters and it was more common to see fellow junior researchers posting. At this time, it seems like you need to have established yourself in the field already to post, though that rule has never been explicitly stated or enforced. Nevertheless, I still refrain because I wonder, "what do I have to contribute?"
I think the field needs to evolve to the point where a combination of PsyArXiv or other preprint services, blogs, and social media (Twitter, etc.) are the life of the field. Certain individuals will emerge as curators. Unlike current editors, these can be grad students or non-scientists. If we need journals, they should be for archiving and peer review of larger works. But I am not convinced journals are useful anymore. I feel much more confident in manuscripts with open data and code that are transparent than something "peer reviewed" in the current gate keeping sense.
Totally anonymous with an avataar. That way, people who are can criticize and comment freely.
I do not know. I primarily am just a retweeter/reader, so "posting" is not something that I do often.
Show them how to use it perhaps through a tutorial or webinar
I make little distinction between social media and being social. Staying off facebook/twitter is socially and professionally isolating yourself. I simply cannot understand that mindset.
I see things occasionally from friends on Facebook. I never post, but sometimes like.
This is not feasible, but a limit to how many times an individual person can post would certainly have a positive impact. It feels like some people spend most of their time engaging in debates on social media, and I get tired of hearing the same voices saying the same things, and I don't feel like I can keep up with the pace of the conversation
If it was recognized as a meaningful contribution for tenure and promotion. If I did not worry that someone would unfairly attack me.
Broader impacts for grants: twist followers count
Two big issues: time investment and difficulty with perceiving and conveying intent. In terms of time, if you post on an active thread, you have to monitor social media closely for responses. If you've said something potentially controversial and go off to teach, sleep, do other work, you could come back and have multiple critical comments about you and your views and no opportunity to have defended yourself/clarified your position. It's like that feeling that you can't turn your back on the ocean. I just don't have the time for this kind of investment. In terms of tone, there is just so much potential for misinterpretation. It's the usual issue with computer mediated communication. How many contentious conversations would have been fine In person, where people could quickly clarify points, adjust their communication if they see people are confused, etc.
More Privacy and control over content. Less potential for negative impact
Ban Uli Schimmack from literally everything.
I haven't really had any negative experiences, I just suffer from a bit of imposter syndrome from being a female graduate student who is in the midst of this whole replication thing.
I am not a big talker even in face-to-face settings, so I don't think the fact that I don't post much is any different. If I have something to add or ask, I do. I use social media to learn about new papers, ideas, etc. and not because I want more attention for myself. I would much rather read what others have to say than to post something myself. So I don't have any recommendations. If people don't feel comfortable posting, that's their choice.
I'm not sure - there is some rhetoric occurring that would make me nervous about posting, but of course that's not the case among the vast majority of posters. I think as a pretty junior person, it's often easier to keep your head down, rather than to post something with the risk that it might come off wrongly to some people.. I have the feeling that the risks might outweigh the benefits, and as somebody who'll be on the job market, it's not in my best interests to take that risk. Perhaps this fear is unjustified.
if there's anything that could be set up so that people could post anonymously - we can create fake twitter profiles and facebook pages to join in the discussions, but I'm sure people are still concerned about the potential backlash for talking about issues such as replicability, questionable research practices, etc.
Change human nature. As social psychologists, we study all of the problems that anonymous, in-group-focused discussions cause for critical thinking and good decision making. Social media by its very nature exacerbates all of these flaws.
Moderated forums like Psych MAP are helpful. Psych Methods has gone crazy due to one person's behavior so I would never post there.
I think the only factor that might increase contribution would be eliminating the feeling that there might be professional backlash from it (although I am not sure how one might do this).
unless personal attacks stop and the discourse is shifted towards how to move forward as opposed to data policing and public shaming, I am not going near social media. This has become a career for some people, and a profitable one in that people have made reputations for themselves. To think that the most vocal and hostile voices out there (who happen to be mostly WHITE MEN!!!) have no self interest in such pursuits is a joke.
I believe if SPSP embraced social media as a means to discuss current and important matters facing the field, norms would be created that would encourage individuals to contribute who may not have otherwise.
Making specific groups for specific research interests. Creating a sort of journal club group on social media would be really cool in my opinion.
Finding a way to decrease or prevent or collectively stand up to personal attacks Finding a way to slow down the pace of the conversation so that people with less time can keep up and participate The people who speak the most should step back more often to create room for others People who feel comfortable speaking up should do more to bring other voices to the table (e.g., by seeking out and sharing other people's opinions, not just their own; by explicitly inviting others to the table; by addressing or echoing or otherwise helping to emphasize the opinions of individuals who may say something only once in a conversation so that their single contribution doesn't get overshadowed by the more frequent contributions of others.
If the online atmosphere were less vicious and argumentative, more agreeable types might feel comfortable sharing their thoughts.
I don't participate much. I'm an introvert. I enjoy reading what others are writing about, but I don't really have the time or interest to participate in online conversations much myself. I don't think there are any factors that would increase my contribution. I consider social media to be a platform for extraverts.
I'm older and use FB, twitter but mostly for my personal consumption. I read a lot, but rarely contribute because I am interested in my own development, not getting into a twitter war with someone who wants to argue something that I don't feel competent to argue. I'm continually amazed at the number of people who weigh in on things they know nothing about. And the personal attacks? Wow! So, I just lurk. That means, I guess, that there isn't anything that would increase my contribution.
Less overwhelming participation by people who talk too much People who are comfortable talking citing their offline conversations with junior colleagues and graduate students as inspiration for their talking More women participating The removal of Uli Shimmack and Brett Buttliere from most conversations
I would say that both sides of any argument must be open to constructive criticism. Even if one feels that they have the best intentions for the field, there are still criticisms. Often times, as I see it, anyone who comes across as slightly critical of changes in the field are relentlessly shouted down or mocked. This may not be the intention of those becoming defensive, but it is how it comes across. Therefore, I fear to get involved.
how do people have so much time? even if i was to engage, i feel every semi-controversial statement releases a "shitstorm". it's hard to keep track. i'm not sure how to resolve this but maybe having a moderated group (moderated by scholars at different stages in their career in order to avoid the "old" power structures of journals).
Maybe if there was more polling on issues--so SPSP could ask an open question and people could vote on answers and then people could discuss it. I bet you'd get hundreds of people replying to the anonymous poll and then the voices who feel most comfortable talking will be able to have a sense of who is more or less representative.
There need to be more safe (constructive, free of attacks) spaces who are interested in learning more about ongoing debates and participating but are not (yet) experts on the issues.
I think, in general, there is fear of retribution and "putting yourself out there". The climate in social psych feels somewhat tenuous and I think it makes people (myself included!) feel like they could be putting their junior careers on the line for someone to attack them, their thoughts, their methods, etc. Social media can be powerful but I think there are a number of "big names" who take to twitter or Facebook to crtiicize others' work--it's terrifying.
I think PsychMap is a good start, and I quite like being a member of that group. That being said, I do believe that there is a silent majority of colleagues who are both very open to improving the field as much as we can, while at the same time being cautious about 'quick fixes'. These colleagues' opinions are not that common on Facebook groups (even PsychMap), let alone on twitter and blogs.
I would rather interact with peers than individuals who might hire me or otherwise evaluate me in the near future
Try it. I've had nothing but positive experiences. It's a lot scarier if you believe the rumors floating around, the reality is much more positive.
I think it's possible that when very senior members of the field use social media to specifically solicit feedback that includes a diversity of views and/or comes from early career stage members, that can be much more welcoming and norm-setting than when a seemingly self-organized group of lesser-known people talk as if they've already known each other and new voices would seem intruding.
It is very difficult to go through all of the information and respond or just simply consume, so tools to narrow the information that is available via social media may be helpful.
Social media platforms are a challenging place to have the kinds of thoughtful, deep discussions we are used to having in academia. Social media can often be like Yelp reviews: only the most outspoken critics (on either side of an issue) will come forth and say things, but little is heard from voices that are more middle-of-the-road, or voices that are a bit more reasonable. This can make it really hard for people to (1) engage at all in social media platforms, and (2) learn how to deal with people's overly critical responses, which are not how we learn to engage in academic conversations. Maybe once social media discussions become more typical and happen more often, this kind of polarizing effect in the way people choose to engage with social media will become less extreme...?
Almost the same as in any blog/comment sphere: - original posts are misinterpreted/misread - response are often not off the scale (i.e., one needs to scream loud to be heard on the internet) - Godwin's Law
Absent anonymity (which we all recognize as a challenge even in "blind" peer review) the risks for participation seem inordinately high.
Find a cure to impostor syndrome? I generally refrain from participating (i.e., I read posts/comments, but do not post or comment myself) because I'm concerned about looking like an idiot.
If it allows psychologists to be more transparent than they feel they are able to be in journal outlets and in the classroom about the state of psychological knowledge.
As long as social media is dominated by the most vocal researchers who are also least likely to observe norms of decorum and civility both with those they talk to and those they talk about, I'll stay away. It's amazing how many researchers' reputations I see trashed on a daily basis.
This is a great question, but I don't have an answer. I don't think the answer is in formal procedures and rules. Just like in schools, having rules will not create a culture. I think what the field needs is a change in culture. Hearts and minds. As someone who is professionally also interested in culture change, I am not sure how that happens (beyond the fact that major societal changes contribute to it, think fall of communism). In these professional groups, like social media in general, there is a lot of impression management. Young people will be careful not to say something that can jeopardize their chances of getting a job (at least those with more tacit knowledge of how the field works will and those are the people who will become successful). They know what it takes to get a job -- many publications and in high level journals. How to get those? However you can. The older people in the field talk about change, but I wonder what they say to their grad students. Do they tell them to run fewer studies to make sure that they are the best they can be and that they are not administering five measures of a same construct and reporting in a paper on one that 'worked'? My experience is that more senior faculty want to ensure success of their students. That is a great goal to have. But as long as it is not possible to get a tenure track job without several multi-study papers in JPSP or Psych Science, to get to that goal, they will implicitly or explicitly have to communicate to students to cut corners. Wells Fargo did not order employees to open new accounts that customers did not want. It created a system of incentives that indirectly created this reality. I do not see acknowledgment of this among social psychologists. While they usually get lumped together, I think personality psychologists are a very different group. Not from the same population. Required Ns are much bigger and cherry picking much less likely.
Small private communities are where I find the most engagement. Communities like Reddit I find are better for sharing information and discussing it than perhaps Facebook or Twitter is. Due to the nature of Reddit, when you make a post, its to a smaller community that is already engaged in that topic, so it tends to be a positive yet critical atmosphere. Same for smaller Facebook groups, but I've found those are harder to maintain.
Having people from their in-group participating as well.
More moderated discussion; norms around civility
More moderated discussions in which comments don't get posted without approval of a moderator.
You might want to add tenure as a variable in this survey.
Who is looking. My friend who does relationship research gets a lot out of participating on social media because everyone in his field is on there and have a community. I don't think that cultural psychologists do the same.
Senior academics who have engaged in QRPs (questionable research practices) have come forth and admit their wrongdoings. Senior academics who are in positions of power must adopt humility and willingness to reconsider their past faulty ways of doing science. Senior academics must create new spaces and timelines to ensure that accountability measures are undertaken among their own members who have engaged in scientific misconduct. A climate of trust is lacking when senior academics have assumed positions of power based on questionable research practices. They must be willing to submit their works for investigation by newer researchers. Insiders' networks of past researchers who have engaged in scientific misconduct must be dismantled and their collective coercive powers must be removed. Senior academics who have engaged in QRPs must allow outside investigators (including non-psychologists, and private and government) to thoroughly and openly investigate their works and must make the results of these inquiries accessible to the public. Senior academics who have engaged in QRPs and scientific misconduct must be willing to relinquish their academic/private/public positions in the larger interests of science.
Creating more established, organization-led networks on social media platforms.
I kind of have an innate aversion to social media even though I (passively) use it... a lot. I suppose I would be marginally more interested in joining conversations if the level of civility was a bit higher overall, but even then I probably wouldn't. To be honest, I'm just not as interested in the sorts of issues that have sparked the most debate (e.g., meta-science) as I know I should be. And I would have to be pretty interested in something in addition to feeling like I had a well-informed unique opinion to add to ever be driven to share it in that sort of forum. A sentiment I don't necessarily think is a bad thing.
Reduce the impact of sanctimonious folks who criticize without contributing to science. Make the environment nicer. Make the general discussion useful rather than a set of self-righteous ad hominem attacks.
If you are a minority member, woman, or junior person your position in the field is precarious. WHY then would you jeopardize your future for a tweet!
Assurances about the level of security provided
I have a minority (moderate/conservative) perspective, and I would participate more if that were more welcome in the field and I didn't have to be as concerned about the repercussions of voicing those opinions. As an example, I have a colleague who has become a friend who posts regularly on social media, and I thought one of his recent posts was particularly interesting. However, the comments on the post, although I believe well-meaning, were so clearly biased that I couldn't help but comment myself (so I did). However, five minutes later I went back and deleted my comment. I worried that presenting an opinion that differed so clearly from the majority would cause too much backlash, creating potential issues for me and making an awkward situation for my friend.
I lurk to learn about different views but I rarely comment. Discussions would need to be much more civil for me (and presumably others like me) to fully participate. I doubt that attempts to improve climate in this "Wild West" environment will be successful.
If we don't engage our research simply won't matter other than to our few colleagues Unfortunately it's not rewarded but it should be https://theconversation.com/heres-why-academics-should-write-for-the-public-50874
A guide on how to interact positively on social media to contribute to the field. A list of people to follow who emulate best practice
We must be willing to actually stop bullying and exclude repeated offenders from scientific discourse. They exist in psychology and their opinions, however valid in the moment, have a widespread chilling effect with incalculable costs on the majority. Part of the problem of social media is that it rewards constantly opinionated, rapid-posting, voices. Even a wonderfully moderated group, PsychMAP, is slowly being distilled down to the same handful of militant rapid-posters and I am now considering leaving the group. To prevent undue influence, moderated groups could, for instance, have monthly posting limits so they pick their battles and organize their thoughts more carefully.
First, define what platform(s) you want to encourage. My Facebook is for friends, family, and coworkers. A lot of the people I am friends with are not psychologists, so I do not post about psychology on my main feed. I do post about psychology in a Facebook group made up of other people in my cohort. Groups might be a good way to encourage contributions. I don't use Twitter or blog, so I have no recommendations there.
Some mechanism for grad students and postdocs to be able to post without attaching their names. Of course this presents a challenge, in that anonymity could also increase the personal attacks and trolling that tend to discourage participation.
Give them some suggestions to get started (e.g., unwritten rules of the platform, interesting academics to follow)
I'm not sure of the specific goals or design of this survey for everyone, but asking the reasons why people left a group, similar to the questions that were asked for a group we currently belong too, may have been helpful. I was part of PsychMap for about three months. My goal in joining was to learn about better open science research practices for my lab (I'm a early career psychologist). I learned a couple of things about preregistration, but that's not much for 3 months. The most notable thing I learned from this group, for me, was about how professional psychologists can treat each other quite poorly at times (e.g., be rude, bully others, justify their critical behavior in blogs, exhibit schadenfreude (e.g., make comments about how pleased they are that some other psychologist made a certain "mistake" in their comment), justify how it's ok to "go after" successful others (because of media attention, good jobs, grants, etc), make rapid-fire critical comments, make sassy remarks about people's careers, I could go on, but I'll stop here. I don't know what the moderators were keeping out of these discussions (most of these negative interactions were embedded in the comments of others), but I felt that I saw multiple comments like this everyday, which to me, is frequent. I also learned that this is not a case of some "bad" individuals intent on harming others (although some are certainly repeat offenders). Some of the worst offenders also make very useful contributions to open science in other ways. I'm not sure, but think many of the problems were due to a focus on replication results and commentaries on those results by the original authors, replicators, and those with strong opinions on these topics. Overall, this was intimidating, and not something that seemed like a productive activity for online forums (based on what I saw, in it's current version). Perhaps a way of downvoting comments would help? (only being able to like them seems especially problematic, I
If blogs and posts could be peer-reviewed, as published papers are, that would be a positive step, though probably not a realistic goal.
Prominent examples of people who disagree with one another still engaging in appreciative discussion
I can only see social media participation benefiting senior people because they get the pros (e.g., a speaking platform; visibility; networking; speaking invitations; etc) without the cons (e.g., because their jobs are secure, they are not vulnerable to the consequences of others in the field forming negative evaluations of them). I am a post doc and any benefits of potentially raising my profile in the field through social media participation or (dare to dream) helping to shape the direction of our field is outweighed by the looming specter of saying something on social media that rubs someone the wrong way who will be sitting on my hiring committee. I would much rather let my publication output shape my scientific reputation than my social media comments. On that point, simply staying up to date on all of the ongoing conversations on facebook, blogs, etc is incredibly time consuming. If I actively participated in them as well, putting thought and care into each of my posts, I simply would not be as productive a researcher. As it stands now, the incentive structure of our field prioritizes quantity and, increasingly(?), quality of scientific output. I can manage that. However, I absolutely dread the possibility that I may soon be sitting in front of a hiring committee who also expects me to have a vibrant social media presence. I get that social media can be a tool for rapid engagement with the scientific community, and communication with society at large -- and I see value in both of those pursuits. But, for the reasons I have laid out above, I think that this is a domain for the tenured.
Personal attacks, too high need for closure (before all evidence are collected).
Using social media visibility as an alternative criterion in the hiring process.
Facebook groups create so much false consensus. Especially the people on psychMap seem to have a ridiculously skewed image of how much agreement there is with their hostile, unprofessional and uncourteous behavior. And yet, I find it fascinating to observe those discussions. I do not want to be associated with that kind of behavior though. And the hostile way in which they react to even the most neutral comments does not make me feel like one could post there without being dragged into that. This translates into a general apathy about participating in social media too, I thought twice about completing this survey, because I don't want to be recognized and get a hate storm of comments for being critical. That would not be worth it.

Is there anything else you would like to say about the social media climate in social/personality psychology?
This survey is clearly geared toward the uproar over the Fiske editorial. I just wanted to mention that social media can be super helpful apart from the replication crisis. I haven't used it to criticize others but it is amazing to be able to tweet a met
"How often do you check PsychMAP?" I don't. I just see it in my feed. This question has validity issues. This survey was too long.
I worry that some of the important points in Fiske's article will be lost because of it's tone. Social media has made me feel less comfortable in the field, less like I want to be a part of academia, and less like prominent members of the field are open t
At this point, I would never recommend any of the facebook groups to graduate students. I think they are narrow in their focus and not conducive to actually furthering any ideas outside of the very small view point of a few people.
Is all of this really only about 4 or 5 people? I fear so.
The culture and norms of the group matter. I have seen posts in the psy methods type groups and chose not to become a member, because to the extent that FB time is both personal and professional time, I opted out of the stress. In the STP group, though, p
Too often social media posts are thinly veiled attempts to discredit others' reputations, and they do not reflect the preferences and beliefs of many in the field. Thing is, younger scholars and those at schools without a big number of s/p psychologists d
It's ridiculous that scientists use Facebook for scholarly discussion. Facebook is a business. Its interests are Facebook, its interests are not the public interest, and it's very difficult to keep personal and professional profiles separate on Facebook.
I am interested in these conversations happening, but oh man, sometimes you read comments from people and it's absolutely mind-boggling that these are the leaders in the field or even that these are adults who know their comments will be read. It's a real
I wouldn't go near it. I only use social media for personal relationships, not professional one.
Social media seems to be a digital megaphone that makes it easier for people to be heard. Most use it constructively. But there are naturally some folks who are assholes about it. Social media turns them into loud assholes.
One of the series of questions forced us to pick that aspects of social media would either positively or negatively affect reputation, etc. I think it has the equal potential to have positive and negative effects so I chose "uncertain/neither" but I am no
it seems to me to be a very small group of people, either those who are most not mainstream social psychology (e.g., personality psychologists) or those who jump on every trendy bandwagon, who make a lot of noise on social media. They come across as if th
I support nearly everything that Fiske said in her APS piece. Sure she could have worded it better. But seeing her be attacked for speaking up made me want to leave the field.
this is a highly unfortunate reproduction of intergroup conflict dynamics within our field. I've learned a lot from following this debate, but it is now stagnating on less important issues. I am interested in (1) learning about new methods & findings and
Some people are too delicate. Some people are too defensive. Some people are too harsh. In a perfect world, we would be able to take criticism non-defensively, and we would always offer criticism in respectful, content-oriented ways. But one of these
More civility or less significance should be attached to exchanges conduced via social media vs. peer reviewed methods
I want the social media climate to be positive, and I recognize that, as a white man, I might perceive the climate differently from people who do not share my identities. That said, I also sympathize with Tal Yarkoni's points that, from a strictly scient
It's wrecking the field, because unjustified petty self-serving posts are given the same (seeming) credence as scientifically supported posts
I believe it hurts our field, as does the emphasis on publicizing our results. So much misinformation in social media and mass media, simplifying of complex phenomena, etc.
Social media have been a boon to many areas of life, but have helped to make the current climate in personality and social psychology toxic.
Before you say or post anything, wait a few minutes. Be nice to one another. Consider direct, polite communication with someone over publicly shaming them.
With the exception of psychMAP, the climate is awful - negative and terrifying. As a scientist, I love debate and disagreement (a large % of my articles are of the response-rejoinder format), and yet I have tried to stay away from online forums as much as
I learn from blogs by highly skilled individuals like Simonsohn, Gelman, and Yarkoni, but think that they should acknowledge their lack of expertise in fields other than theor own. I am really grossed out by the level of discussion on facebook and twitter
Claims of behaving badly on social media have been made by folks, targeting folks, in both methodological camps. And the truth is this: both camps have a minority of members who have behaved *very* badly, but the majority of folks in both camps have being
Social media can be perceived as more popular science or media focused instead of academic. Work would have to be done on the part of the facilitators to guide discussions on social media into academic realms while still making it appropriate to the platf
I worry about it's consequences for diversity as it's hugely over-represented in its use by young white men who do not well represent our field.
Dominated by a few loud voices - some I agree with others I dont. Diversity in demographics or opinions does not seem to be encouraged.
It has all the characteristics of intergroup conflict.
I think the worries about "climate" are pretty overblown. Tal Yarkoni's recent blog post said it better than I could have. When people are pointing out problems with our research the point is whether there is actually a problem, not whether they said it "
It's the future. We need to get used to it ;-)
I would love to see our organizations (SPSP, SESP, APS, etc.) come up with a statement distinguishing "personal attacks" from "valid scientific criticisms." People throw around the "personal attack" (sometimes phrased as ad hominem attack, or personal i
see above. I think the reforms are excellent but the tone is awful. Social media is not going anywhere, but perhaps SPSP can take a more active role in fostering more constructive exchange of ideas. I am particularly disappointed because I don't think jun
For the most part, it's a self-congratulatory echo chamber for those who failed to build up their own research programs, so now they can be well known for tearing other research programs down.
I think it's much too easy to respond quickly, without thought, which leads people to write things that they would not in other media.
I wish I knew more about these platforms.
Although the posts I read on PsychMAP and Psych Methods are interesting and informative (particularly the latter), I feel constantly overwhelmed and outclassed with respect to my own abilities. I fully support rigorous attention to detail and the value of
My feeling is that many of the negative experiences that people have on social media are driven by a small number of people that I could name on one hand. I left the Facebook groups typically due to the poisoning of discussion by one or two people. I have
See the Psychological Research Methods group on Facebook.
I want to clarify that when I was asked about how women/men and majority/minority members benefit from social media platforms, I was basing my response for women and minority group members on the idea of using social media as a space to convey career frus
horrendous!! there is bullying, destruction of people's careers, and shameless self-promotion by people who should be achieving a reputation by their scholarly contributions to the discipline rather than by blogging and publishing their latest little met
Often it seems as if psychologists use Twitter for impression management more than anything. The era of the old, cocky, obstinate psychologist is coming to an end. Thanks to social media, we are entering the era of the young, cocky, obstinate psychologi
In general I think that the climate is very positive, particularly on PsychMap and similar moderated groups. Occasionally, however, I see negative discussions on twitter. Often these involve discussions about other researchers' retractions, failures to re
People should do a cost benefit analysis and see if it really is a useful use of their time. I suspect it really is not.
Although exposure to these discussions on social media has lead me to change some of my own personal research practices (a good step), it has done much more to disenchant me with the field.
It's intimidating to participate in - at this stage I feel more comfortable as a reader
For people early in their careers, there is a risk to becoming too involved. I typically opt to stay uninvolved in these conversations to minimize risk. I also find it difficult to keep up with the speed of these conversations and don't need immediate res
It is an intergroup conflict between two moralized groups of individuals and it is polarizing and crowding out people in the middle. It reminds me a lot of American politics, quite frankly.
Some of the questions about social media seemed general, some seemed specific to psychology. I believe that one set of instructions even said that the following questions would be more general, so I don't think that my tendency to answer them about genera
I wish we didn't have to spend so much time talking about tone. Let's get on with it already.
conflict is necessary to affect change. conflict on social media scares people, particularly those averse to conflict;
Too many jerks. Skewed young, white, male. Jerks almost 100% male. I cannot think of a single female jerk post.
Your questions about whether participating has positive or negative impacts on paper reviews, grant reviews, etc. were impossible to answer. I would have liked separate scales for positive and negative. I ended up choosing the middle, but that response co
I think it's atrocious. Susan Fiske's words may have been poorly chosen, but much of what she said resonated with me; and if she, as a senior scientist in our field took so much flak for it, how could I as a junior scientist possibly risk saying the same
It's quite fascinating. It's open and truly diverse.
Your initial question about any facebook groups I belong to was misleading. I listed three groups I belong to, you clearly wanted me to choose one but gave me no criteria with which to do so. Your questions about whether it's helpful or "hurtful" (I thin
I can't speak to FB, as I don't use it professionally. Twitter is a place where there is a lot of interesting dialogue going on (about politics, inequality, diversity) and yet when it comes to methods, combines the truly thoughtful and considered reformer
I hope that you or other researchers are pulling objective data as well (e.g. looking on posts and comments on PsycMap for constructive/destructive content; examining demographic variables such as gender, minority status, seniority associated with these,
the situation is obviously more nuanced than just good vs bad, generation 1 vs generation 2 etc. yes, the climate can be hostile and young scholars do indeed want to leave the field because of it. if professors continue to ignore this or think this is a n
I have been generally heartened by reading honest discussions on social media (especially PsychMAP and Simine Vazire's blog). I usually find these discussions hopeful. For instance, when established researchers acknowledge their own shortcomings (e.g., in
"Technology is not positive. Technology is not negative. Technology is not neutral" - Kranzberg's first law of technology
There is also the issue of junior people. I'm a PhD student and am less comfortable posting just because I don't want to get embroiled in a debate or controversy that would hurt me on the job market. I also feel less confident in general posting just by d
Civil, respectful, and critical feedback is needed. Too often critical but non-thoughtful feedback is what I see.
Takes much more time away from science and academic pursuits themselves.
I have definitely seen personal attacks on social media and sometimes they make me reluctant to engage (e.g., retweet or tweet about something). I'm usually pretty cautious regarding what I tweet about and try not to get involved in the debates. I like to
I think we are moving in the right direction but could be a lot friendlier
I think it is a problem that not all the people discussed on facebook are on the platform, they don't necessarily have a chance to respond to the critiques. And social media is great for getting a lot of people the chance to weigh in, but there is not an
Our field has a public relations problem because there is a consistent stream of misleading media reports and opinions about reproducibility, data falsification, poor methods etc. Some people behind the "replication movement" gladly feed into those miscon
No, but I would like to add some words about the climate of professional organizations that have not responded as self-critical as they could have to the replication crisis in psychology. Without social media we would not be as far as we are now in terms
Social media is ruining the transmission of information (just look at the US election and how news from alt-right sources reach more people than carefully studied stories from journalists). In the context of academia, the emphasis on using social media is
I am a retired professor, not thinking about an alternative career.
It can be tense, and sometimes overly critical, but also really positive and affirming. I think that the way that it levels the playing field for younger researchers, in terms of being able to add their voices, is invaluable, and probably makes up for any
I think it's unfortunate with the explosion of tedxtalks that a study's results outpace the rigor and huge sample sizes without an understanding of what these results actually mean need to be looked at. I think a critical review of articles would be an ex
It feels like only senior faculty/tenured professors are safe to post their perspectives and opinions on social media.
It is often respectful, but there are times when it seems to degenerate in an instant into adversarial combat or a "trash fest" free for all.
I think my opinions should be clear at this point.
My sense is that there is a quiet, thoughtful majority taking it all in that gets much from the online conversations without actively participating - which means that a) the more extreme or extroverted voices get heard because they disproportionately are
just like anywhere else: respect others; but specifically about social media: be aware of space limitations and other factors that reduce cooperation in this sort of communicative context, which may at times make respectful information exchange difficult;
As a grad student, I can see how others might be offended by the "tone" of conversations online (or disillusioned with the field). However, as someone who grew up poor and in actual conflict, I find these conversations petty. The goal and focus should be
Personally, I agree with Fiske - we have a tone problem. I also agree that we can do better as a science and need to make our data public, preregister our studies, and work on replication, transparency, methodology, and stats. However, this is hard to acc
Social media is providing yet another means for science to make progress in building consensus on topics, methods, and findings.
I don't worry as much about it as others seem to, even though I do not have tenure. Maybe that is naive :)
I wasn't sure how to answer the question above: "The ways in which individuals interact on social media platforms has made me consider alternative careers to becoming an academic." First, I already am an academic, so not becoming an academic isn't really
It may be good to have "open" conversations, but everything is unfiltered, not properly categorized, and just feels like "para-rambling" at times. There is practiclaly no way to have an official record of things that were agreed upon and that were not agr
Social media are excellent for distributing new ideas and opinions. Often, those ideas and opinions are wrong and the lack of independent review presumably leads to a fourth-tier literature that is currently filled with as much nonsense as the other three
In general, I'm huge fan of using social media to facilitate discussions about psychology and other issues. I do it with my personal Facebook network about social issues and current events and I think there are a lot of advantages to having discussions ab
I think Susan Fiske's commentary hit the mark re: the all-too-frequent nasty tone seen in critiques presented on social media.
It's tiring when the default response seems to be that people who see things otherwise are idiots and/or Everything That's Wrong With The Field.
Social media is a venue that merely reflects what people are already thinking. If there's something ugly about psychology's social media community, it probably mirrors some of the ugly realities of our field at present.
The timing questions are a bit confusing--I wasn't sure if I should have put 90 minutes or 1 hour 30 minutes. Also, when I said that social media has discouraged me, that's because it's exposed me to unpleasant realities about how research is conducted i
We live in challenging times for this field. Many things are changing, many still need to change. Although I do not like Fiske's use of the term 'methodological terrorists', I understand where she is coming from. There is a group of purists who are dema
Even if I had received excellent training in these areas, I personally do not have a lot of interest participating in social media discussions myself; I am happy to remain a mere observer and learn what I can from these discussions. I think this puts me i
I'm hopeful that after a period of snark and witchuntery the *normative* social media behaviour is more civil. Not always but better. But it's volatile and offputting for women, members of under-represented groups, and anyone who feels even subjectively i
A lot of it (attacks in the methods group) is appalling. I'm afraid to use it because I strongly fear retaliation or harm to my career as an early career/ junior scientist. I am REALLY TIRED of social psychology being on the radar for being awful to one
I'm shocked that the online social psychologists aren't able to apply the knowledge that their very field has generated regarding what leads to progress, change, positive collective action, positive shared goals, healthy culture, creativity, psychological
I primarily read and participate in conversations about methods, and I feel like that is really beneficial to many researchers. Particularly those without large cohorts of other researchers around, like students and faculty at smaller universities. I feel
I think some blogs (e.g., Data Colada) are much more useful than some other blogs that are filled with hurtful/negative posts (e.g., Andrew Gelman). I am worried that younger scholars/students will pay more attention to the negative blogs and learn that b
I honestly have no idea because this is a common issue in online groups - Michael Britt posted an interesting podcast in which he interviews an "online activity consultant" who applies self-determination theory to increasing activity within online groups.
I think that this survey omits a pretty important area of social media, message boards. As a very junior member of the field (grad student) I have nearly zero desire or qualification to have a blog or twitter account. I do, however, anonymously discuss re
I am saddened that our science is trying to improve its appearance on 'social media'.
Snark in academia has always existed, but social media exposes it more. It does nobody any favors, and makes our entire field look petty.
No one has 5-10 ideas worth tweeting about every damned day. Stop it. Also, I expect research to be over sold when it's being communicated to a grant committee or the puplic-- not when it's being tweeted to network of your academic peers. Just stop it.
I think social media has INCREASED the dissemination of our research and that's incredibly important. Getting people fired up, regardless of the side, just propels the field forward. So I see this as a good thing. But i mostly read other things academics
Three things: 1) The vast majority of social media exchanges are positive and mostly consist of people complimenting each other on academic achievements. In fact, I would say most social media exchanges among academics consist of self-promotion or other
It'd be helpful to have Facebook groups dedicated to people who are interested in pursuing psychology as a career (a group for undergraduates; a group for individuals who are in the awkward middle between undergrad and grad--research assistants, lab manag
I feel there is a huge range--social media can be very productive but it also allows for some very awkward moments. Additionally, I think it is important to stay away from over-posting media accounts of studies without evaluating how the media is presenti
It seems to be embraced by the younger faculty - those still trying to make a name for themselves perhaps? More senior faculty don't seem to embrace it (some actually seem to view it negatively).
climate and tone have seemed to me quite good, very constructive even if heated, especially on PsycMAP
The whole thing is aversive to me because it seems like a few white men dominate the conversation and attack each other with massive blog posts tearing each others' work apart. I don't even want to get involved for fear of being attacked the way they atta
I think it's a double-edged sword. On one hand I think it's necessary that science is questioned by other scientists, and conclusions drawn from studies be tempered by the realities of replication. This is something that needed to happen. But like anythin
Social media discussions have made me scared of actually publishing and I am an Early Career Researcher who should be publishing... I have become so demystified of science I am reaching extreme levels of starting to consider every single paper ever writte
I think that it is easy for individuals to focus on a select few who use social media to be aggressive or demeaning towards others. I am hopeful that as a society, like any human social group, we can bond together and reinforce norms of appropriate behavi
I am surprised to see so many people on really opposite sides of this issue! I have had conversations with those who think there is no problem, and others who think it is more problematic than not (I hope you sample both ends with this study - and thanks
Researchers who use social media should be mindful of behaving and expressing themselves in a professional way.
I think the twitter vs. facebook distinction is big for me. I see more attacks on facebook and less discussion.
I perceive most conversations to get biased at some point (sometimes earlier, somtimes later). Moreover, most conversations about controversial topics (in particular related to replications and the like) get personal at some point as well - lead to a dero
I like that SPSP dedicates time to post about recent research and findings. I think more could be done on this front overall.
It is very difficult to accurately report the amount of time spent on these platforms. Also--the ability for using these platforms is dependent on the time and thoughtful effort put into posts. If one (in any stage of career) shoots of half baked though
I primarily read FB posts and tweets that are emailed to me by the system and look to be of interest. I rarely log in to twitter or FB just to see what's there.
We have reached a point in time where being critical of theories of research or ideas is instantly equated as being a personal attack on the individual(s) who may have conducted that which is being criticized. This is a sad state. Perhaps we psychologists
It would be nice to see platforms used to spread information (new papers, job postings, calls for grants/awards applications), but currently facebook is dominated by the "replicability crisis".
I know that this isn't the topic of this survey, but the SPSP listerv needs an overhaul. Way too many people reply all and the extraneous info (e.g., buttons and text) that is added to emails sent to the list is confusing and distracting. Simply having a
I could care less about tone personally, but have talked to some more junior scholars who seem put off by it. My concern is junior people get pushed out of the field because of louder and more antagonistic voices. Also, like most people I don't like see o
It can be daunting to enter the fray if your comments are not consistent with the prevailing view held by frequent posters. For a group of people who study group dynamics we seem extremely susceptible to In-group/out-group, us vs them scenarios. Frankly,
I believe that it is something that is both extremely demonized and praised by the field. Posting would do nothing but create negative reactions from the field, and thus hurt the one's career, but yet the expectation is that one posts, so that the lack of
My generation doesn't do social media, and I count us lucky to have escaped it.
It accentuates the extremes. There is a silent majority. I hear them every time I visit departments or conferences. They exist at all stages and they are for reform but against retroactive persecution.
It feels to me like there is a social media club that is not super inclusive of people they don't personally know.
It's terrible and as a new assistant professor is making me really discouraged about the state of our field and the people in it.
I left PyschMAP because reading the comments made me want to leave the field. All the self righteous shouting.
The attacks I mention haven't come from social/personality psychologists. They have come from human biodiversity enthusiasts who post under pseudonyms.
The social media discussions only serve to highlight a microcosm of what appears to be resoundingly true on a much larger scale: in today's climate, you can either be a methodological/replication proselytizer who believes that science is broken, research
I hate seeing posts that attempt to shame or take-down researchers' work. The psych methods discussion group is valuable for lots of reasons, but there are some self-righteous individuals who create a negative tone. I'd like to think people wouldn't speak
I don't know what percent of the time things have turned negative, but there certainly have been cases.
I think people overestimate how rude people are. There are only one or two bad actors and everyone knows who they are, and generally we avoid those people and groups.
in the age of the internet, i think it's inevitable that people are going to want to talk about the state of the field and research practices in real time. all of us care a lot about this, so of course things are going to get heated. it does make me pessi
I side with Tal Yarkoni on this. I don't think there's a problem. I tell my students that if you don't like negative feedback, don't go into academia. Criticism is part of the deal - you will get more papers rejected than accepted, hear more from studen
I found it very difficult to answer many of these questions, because I think most people are positive on social media and have positively influenced me. But there are a few loud voices who are very combative, and so answering these questions about social
Blogs may have a place since they involve long-form discussion, but the capacity for trolls to disrupt with personal attacks comment boards and Facebook and Twitter feeds, along with the tendency for all of these platforms to close off discussion from non
As a very young researcher who follows a lot of psychologists on Twitter as well as some of the Facebook groups, I think heavy social media users need to get over Susan Fiske's "methodological terrorism" comment. I disagree with some of the substantive po
I do not personally comment in these arenas for a variety of reasons - instead, I typically only follow the discussions of others and use the information posted (mainly findings of research) to disseminate to others. I HAVE seen ignorance in both original
I do not participate in social media (Twitter, Facebook) at all (neither in personal nor professional life). I do not think it is a constructive forum. I think it is fosters personal attacks and misinterpretation. Trolling is also a huge problem, especial
I just wish it stopped. Not necessarily the constructive discussion (which should happen more in the scientific journals in my view, not on Facebook), but the policing part. We all admit we have made mistakes but let's move forward with the lessons we hav
The majority of the conversations and posts I have seen are positive. I have learned and been exposed to new methods and critiques that I otherwise would not have been exposed to using social media. For these reasons alone, I believe it has a place and is
In my experience, I haven't been exposed to much social media about social/personality psychology, but I do think this could be a productive platform for discussion.
I find media to be constraining in terms of the dialogues that are possible (compared to face-t-face or telephonic interactions).
I think social media are here to stay, and I think we have to find ways to improve the climate within them, because right now it feels unwelcoming to many people.
I learned a whole lot just by following intetesting discussions, and I think that people are generally very respectful
As everywhere on the internet, posts and comments can become quite unprofessional, personal, or disrespectful. But I think it's not all bad and the general tone of the conversation is mostly constructive. However, improvement must happen.
I've learned a lot from reading various posts on twitter and facebook. There are, of course, a few strange posters out there who say crazy things, but I usually just skip ahead to the ideas expressed by more level-headed thinkers.
I have trouble believing that it could impact anyone's career or that a promotion and tenure committee would even look at it, but I guess maybe? Those questions surprised me.
As a silent member of many of these groups I'd like to anonymously say that Susan Fiske was on to something with her post. Unfortunately, she's been totally silenced by a vocal minority. Honestly, the online climate can be terrifying. I think we can turn
I mentioned on the other page some times I was attacked and criticized. I personally don't care, much, if people attack me or my research. Yes, it hurts my feelings, but it is their right to do it. It just helps me decide who I want to have a pint with at
i think the problems in the field won't be solved by social media. Rather we need new norms. most likely, this will happen from the top down. the current incentives: publish as much as possible in the best journals (impossible without "cheating). if hirin
The biggest problems I have with the current status quo are that (1) it makes people nervous or even fearful about the potential for their careers to be tarnished if they say the wrong thing, (2) there are not enough moderate voices, (3) it's too easy for
I think the culture in social psych IN GENERAL is not great. It feels like discourse is contentious and an "us vs. them" attitude such that who you worked with, or who you trained with, can really impact how you're perceived. "What school did you work at?
Yes. There seems to be a tendency to view "the critics" are relatively junior, untenured, etc., and to view the recipients of methodological criticism as established, tenured, senior faculty. So, there would be "more at stake" for the young critical colle
I do think that social media outlets (blogs in particular) are vital to the improvement of our methods, identifying mistakes in prior work, and outlining valid, justifiable critiques of any aspect of published (or unpublished) research. To say that those
I do not think the climate is good, but I think it's important that the discussions continue. I disagree strongly with Susan Fiske's assertion that discussions should only be peer reviewed.
There is a large gender split regarding how expert posts are received, particularly on Twitter. Women experts face a much more uphill battle for perceived credibility than men do.
I am disappointed that there is so much attention being paid to the potential problem of social media. I think we have much more pressing problems in our field, including how well we support graduate students, training opportunities, supporting researche
I think twitter and facebook have made me a better researcher by showing me material I wouldn't otherwise seek out (or know to seek out).
It is unclear what is and isn't appropriate to discussion when it comes to social/personality psychology research, methods, theory, practice, etc. on social media platforms
I am really worried about all the people who are afraid to speak up. I hope they complete the questionnaire. Some items may show bimodal responses.
TO be perfectly clear, I think discussions of S/P psychology on social media are one of the best things that have happened in our field.
There is a lot of contstructive and interesting discussion going on when it comes to methods, best practiices, and policies. And there are fantastic blogs which I enjoy to read a lot. This very positive aspect is overshadowed by "ad personam" attacks, in
I have found the PsychMAP platform to be the most balanced and well-moderated in terms of professionalism and tone. I believe valuable ideas are discussed there, but I also believe there are risks associated with public forums such as this, not the least
Social media is probably more valuable for teaching good science practices to those junior scientists who aren't already constantly surrounded by that discussion. Personally, my department is flooded with talk about open science, good research practices,
Sometimes people are jerks, sure. Generally, however, I find the discourse on social media to be extremely productive and collegial.
It seems that there are more posts that are critical of Psychological theories and research than there are that are commendatory. However, I don't judge this as negative since there are more things that are problematic about how Psychology is currently pr
It's awful and discouraging. I can't believe any of these people would talk like this in person, or say the things to each others' faces that they're all too comfortable saying (in public) online.
The loudest, most opinionated, mostly male researchers confidently spew those opinions, and then pat each other on the back for having done so. It's an informal academic country club that distracts from real research and gives psychologists a nice excuse
I think a change in climate will be visible when people from less prestigious institutions participate more and dare to be more critical.
It is a giant shit show. People are afraid to post and voices that don't conform are shouted down. it is not helpful and not reflective of the field. At the same time, it is not going anywhere. Thanks for asking!
I follow some people on Twitter who I think have crossed the line into bad climate behavior. I feel like I want to say to them "if we were sitting next to each other at a conference (and did not know each other) would you make that comment to me in that
Social media outlets are excellent means for those with lesser institutional powers to make their voices heard. Huge obstacles to the proper utilization of these outlets is presented by sernior academics and researchers of the past who use coercive powers
Social media has gradually contributed to my general disillusionment with psychology. I entered graduate school inspired by big, interesting questions, and it feels like now all that matters is minute details about methodology and attacking colleagues. I
There is a "grab the pitchfork and torches" mentality out there. For example, I cited postural feedback in a recent review and was told by reviewers that since Cuddy's work is a fraud to take out the cites. This is probably an unfair assessment of her bo
Only that you asked about majority / minority in a variety of ways but never the one that has been such an important topic in the field in the last few years and unfortunately in my life throughout my time in the field: ideology. Do I think it could hurt
I find the climate on these sites to be stifling. Much of the language is couched in categorical terms: "the old guard think X but the new guard think Y." Ppl often assume bad intentions on the part of those holding different views. Comments often are hos
To me, the climate is toxic mainly because researchers, who collect primary data, are in a lopsided position in social media because they lose no matter how they respond; they lose *because* they feel pushed to respond and thus reinforce the most salaciou
I generally do not use social media as part of my academic life because I see how quickly things can blow up. I don't want to take the chance that I may accidentally piss someone off, or say something that is misunderstood due to the lack of tone, etc. It
I think it is relatively easy to say anything (good or bad) when you can do it "behind" your computer screen. It's easy to click like. It's easy to click the mad face or sad face. But it's also easy to go off on a rant and to be mean to someone because th
I guess from one perspective, social media discussion groups are not the sole reason for psychologists treating each other disrespectfully. If these were around 30 years ago, I imagine there would be some individuals who would also be willing to engage in
The climate is toxic and discouraging. I don't think you can change it. Incentives for accuracy and fairness are absent and would be hard to put into place. To the contrary, bloggers on social media have strong incentives to provoke and attack to stay rel
It is rare to see generous non-defensiveness.
I applaud the efforts of the moderators on PsychMap. In contrast, I find Uli Schimmack and Psychological Methods Discussion Group to be a disgrace to our field. There are no professional ethics or boundaries guiding his behavior and as the sole moderator
Thank you for conducting this great and intersting survey.
I did not feel that this survey grasped my feelings about social media. I do feel that a lot of "new stuff" happens in these groups worth reading. But I find the tone and degree of false consensus interpreted from silence more negative and disconcerting t

hodological or statistical question (or one looking for a particular research citation) and be able to get an almost instantaneous answer from a slew of experts.
o hearing from dissenting voices. I would also like to say that social media features many white male voices--often in positions of relative power and security--and this can be a negative experience for people from underrepresented groups.
eople are generally very supportive, on task, thoughtful, and so on. I find it a wonderful community to be a part of.
on't know that and their views could well be shaped by those posts. I see very little good and a whole lot of bad happening on social media, to the ill of the entire discipline.
It also waters down the field's reputation when psychologists post on goofball sites like Facebook. I'm fine with platforms like LinkedIn or scienceblogs.com, which are web platforms for grownups -- yet psychology is nearly absent on them.
t uncertain nor do I think it is neither. It is both.
ey are experts, but really are just self-appointed leaders of this whatever-it-is. I have no idea how they have time for anything else. I haven't unsubscribed to PsychMap yet, but I am very tempted to. I'm just afraid of missing something "important" (a
(2) improving the state of our science, but these goals are increasingly overshadowed by pointless bickering (from all "sides" of various issues). it is frustrating.
requires the other. Defensive and counter-attacks to criticism stimulate stronger and more personal attacks. Strong and personal attacks stimulate defensiveness and angry responses. That's where we are right now, in many (not all) cases.
ific standpoint, the tone of a critique is irrelevant to its content, and social media platforms have certainly done a good job of making criticisms easier to air. I don't agree entirely with Tal -- if the climate systematically and differentially affect
possible - especially unmoderated forums.
. Most of all, I recognize some level of born-again-christian hypocrisy in the Psych Methods forum (i.e., I was once a sinner, now I have seen the light), and pure witch-hunting on PsychMAP. Wish there was a forum where people will stop being so ad-homin
communicating adequately. Broad claims of methodological terrorism are just as mistaken (and unhelpful) as are broad claims of fraud and deceit, and the vast majority of psychologists partaking in these discussions are innocent of the charge of using per
nsult) as an accusation leveled against all sorts of criticism, some of which strikes me as valid scientific criticism. In some cases, the "personal attack" is leveled by the person accusing someone else of engaging in a personal attack, rather than in t
ior scholars and minorities will ever feel comfortable participating in forums like PsychMAP.
replication, but the conversation generally makes me terrified that I will make an unintentional mistake than eventually leads to the status as a pariah in the field. Again, increased scrutiny of results and their interpretation is absolutely necessary a
not noticed that it is related to a "side" in any debate. Moderation does not seem to me to help matters much, because it is very difficult to moderate, for instance, passive aggressive behaviour, inconsistent, ad hoc arguments that make one want to gi
trations or to share perspectives that are under-discussed in the field, and being able to reach out and connect with likeminded people. I put higher numbers for men and majority members to convey that women and minority members might face more scrutiny
hod or manifesto online. We don't need this.
plicate, or methodological flaws. The tone of these tweets is often celebratory or mocking towards the researchers and rarely involves the researchers directly in the discussion. In these cases, researchers or their work are mocked or derided on twitter,
l social media use was a mistake. I rarely talk about psychology on social media, and when I do, it is only with a small group of friends. I don't believe that social media is well-suited for scientific conversations, but I also don't believe that it does
nceals my true feeling. It will have a positive effect on people who agree with me and a negative effect on people who don't. Same goes for questions about whether posting is helpful or harmful to careers. It is both, depending on who is doing the evaluat
thing? That only someone of her standing can is itself indicative of a problem. I also find it curious that an overwhelmingly male presence on social media so often dogpiles onto women who do well in the field (esp considering that the senior established
k you mean harmful, because hurtful implies it hurts people's feelings) for others' career development failed to specify whether the question is about MY COMMENTS being helpful or harmful for others' career development, or whether what you're really askin
with a bunch of people who feel the need to constantly assert their technological and moral superiority over the average social/personality psychologist (and ideally, over a "big name"). Reading twitter threads about replication, stats, etc. sometimes fe
etc.). Thank you for doing this research!
on-issue, then they should re-evaluate their perspectives. there are not enough jobs in academia, and students are discouraged from going into industry. every small thing right now can potentially make someone want to leave the field because academia suck
methods) and how they handled them, it helps me feel like I'm doing OK and gives me a model to emulate for addressing weaknesses in my own work.
int of being a PhD student too. I am curious about the state of the field and feel a part of it, but don't feel like I have as much experience yet to contribute to big discussions (I'm a 4th year PhD student). If there were more student-centric groups, I
keep neutral on many online debates (psychology-related or not), because I know what's up there is permanent. Social media has helped me to develop connections with people I might not have connected with otherwise. It has helped me learn new methods and
effective archive (posts are saved, but not easily searchable), it can be hard to keep up with the conversation or to reference the conversations outside of the platform.
ceptions. SPSP should have some mechanism in place to address this misinformation, e.g., have a press officer that takes it up with the media, or with people behind inflammatory blogs. Nobody in their right mind will stand up to the bullies, data detect
of change. You like to take credit for the positive changes in psychology in the past years when most of these changes occurred because social media made it possible to by-pass a slow, ineffective, and biased peer-review process.
turning academics into marketing people trying to spread the word. Why don't we just try and keep track of what's going on in the field via journals directly as we always have? I'm guessing that tweeting and posting our work online increases citation cou
cellent practice. Or a Debunking famous studies or 'learn from my mistakes' type articles because one result in social media can shoot all the way up to mainstream media and news outlets and carry forth misleading information.
the ones participating in forums but that b) the resulting discussion is still stimulating and valuable, even if not representative of psychological scientists' beliefs and attitudes on the whole.
the science. If many point out issues in your science, then take a step back and reassess. If the critiques are unfounded, reply back and begin an online dialogue (I find blog to blog conversations much more accessible than waiting 6 months for a reply in
omplish when there are clearly people who are appear like they are out get other people, who insult other people, and who publicly shame other people. We all make mistakes and guess what - theories are evolve, change, are wrong, or are abandoned - it hap
an option. Second and more importantly, these conversations haven't made me reconsider my choice to be an academic, but they do cause me to disengage from psychology. I've considered becoming more strongly affiliated with other disciplines related to my s
eed upon. There is no form. There is just comment after comment, string after strong, thread after thread ... That may be of interest to stay ahead of the game, get the latest gossip, etc. -- but it does not contribute to cumulative knowledge. Such knowle
tiers. However, at some point, parts of this ecosystem will become subject to peer review and the result will outclass and eclipse the print literature within one or two years. In my opinion, junior academics would be wise to prepare for the print litera
out psychology on social media. I really hope that the field keeps this up and keeps improving the way we have this kind of discourse. And while I feel like I learn a lot from the people who post and comment in the groups, it's clear that there are some
n my field--not because I felt the engagement with media was bad per se.
nding that everything be perfect now! There is zero tolerance for any deviation from the new rules, and many of us feel intimidated to present our research that we feel has been conducted with rigor and care, but that may be imperfect on some dimension.
n the category of "most psychologists" - I will follow the norms of the field as they shift but I am not trying to be one of the "movers and shakers" of the field initiating and participating actively in these discussions. Maybe that makes me a bad psycho
n a position of low power. Sometimes I think there is a real problem with equating "famous" with "probably garbage." It smacks of jealousy (and I'm *not* one of the famous ones!). A lot of the people who have gotten "famous" have wonderful, creative, ins
safety, ability to attract members of underrepresented groups to the field, and so on. I feel quite hopeless about both the field and my own personal situation. Ten years ago, coming out of grad school, I couldn't have imagined this nightmare. It's toxic
like my role as a statistical consultant online is part of my identity and it's something I really enjoy doing.
ehavior, legitimize those stances, and practice them thinking that they are the norm. I do not participate in social media for research purposes (aside from sometimes glancing over useful Data Colada tips, and being referred to explosive comments/posts),
It was fascinating but made me realize that the anxiety surrounding why I want to post in PsychMAP but don't is common (and not one unique to psychology stats/methods groups). I'm a junior faculty member at a smaller private university. I try to read as
search on message boards (e.g., reddit) and provide both criticisms and defenses for authors that I often do not know personally. Many times, these exchanges happen with members of the general population with zero training in the field and they may blindl
I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for some researchers since following their accounts bc they do things like the above. It's a shame, bc twitter could be an amazing tool for academic communication.
share and then share things to my lay network, so my goal and use is largely dissemination.
-promotion. 2) There will always be excessive individuals who use social media to vent their anger. These individuals were around before social media existed and will continue to be around. There is nothing we can realistically do to silence these indi
ers, etc.; a group for grad students...)
ng it (I've seen a lot of this recently in some graduate student groups and while it can be more 'exciting' we should be advocating for more careful interpretation of research rather than promoting pop psychology articles that may be mis-presenting someon
g born from online forums, it can become dominated by outspoken disgruntled "trolls," and attacks become personal or opinions transmute into gossip. It's a combination of this hostile atmosphere (which hurts established adademics) and an increasing aware
or. I believe that if we take steps to call out bad behavior directly in a manner that is consistent with our values (i.e. polite and respectful) we can move forward; but not if we address bad behavior with bad behavior in kind (i.e. sniping and insulting
for doing it.) Although it might not be a widespread problem, I do know of some people (granted I know this indirectly) who have had their work 'targeted' - which even in the service of coming to the right answer and doing good science, having to respond
gation of others, name calling or other very personal and in my eyes antiscientific comments. This is threatening. In particular, I perceive the comments from "methods-people" (sorry for the stereoytpe) very often (not always!) as intimidating, focusing o
ts, they run the risk of harming their reputation or offending someone. However, if one makes very thoughtful and respectful responses, they may make a good impression. I picked the unsure middle response option for many of the questions about help or har
have grown hyper-inflated egos that makes us think that we are infallible and don't make mistakes and can't be wrong. It's beyond me. As I've often told people, "get over yourself."
normal listserv would be much preferred.
ver the top attacks (e.g., comparing researcher to Lance Armstrong when I know directly this is untrue). That said, I think we needed the antagonistic voices to get the field back on track. As it stand, I don't know social psych should be razed or remode
it's frightening to look at someone some of the viscious exchanges in the Psychology Methods Group. However, groups like PsychMAP give me hope for respectful online dialogue.
practices are deficient, and nobody is to be trusted, OR you could be a substantive researcher who believes that the field is primarily populated by good people who are doing their best but who are subject to periodic sniping, accusation of fraud, and oth
so harshly IRL, but I've seen some snotty characters at conferences, too.
mistic, but only because it make me directly confront many of the real hard issues facing our field
ts who are unhappy with your course than like it, etc. I am surprised at how sensitive some people are being. I think if there had been no Smeesters, Sanna, etc. who lost jobs, then maybe people would see the feedback for what it is intended -- improvem
-like-minded individuals present a real danger to open dialogue and critical thought.
ints that she made, but the over-reaction to her wording is damaging the reputations of those researchers in my eyes.
posts and the way in which others in the field respond to those posts (such as the latest e-mail thread about pronouns) as well as backlash from voicing opinions that are radically different from the majority in the field (such as social psychologists ge
ly for minorities. It services those who have a particular agenda and I have opted out because I have seen it create exclusion as well as 'thug mentalities' rather than allowing for constructive, critical discourse. In social psychology in particular, rec
e learned. I believe once the auditing and social shaming aspect of this crisis is over, we'll emerge as a better science. I agree with some, if not, all of the best practice recommendations. Nevertheless, overall, we are becoming a better science for sur
to our own research about majority and minority influence to fix this problem.
conferences. I welcome criticisms. The one thing that bothers me the most is that people think that what is said on social media is true of the field, generally speaking. For example, discussions around certain failed replications or specific fields of
g committees and journal editors set different/more possible norms and incentives, the field and the research will change automatically. after all, we WANT do good work. if good work will give us have a chance to get a job, great.
people to say things they wouldn't normally say to a person's face or in a more formal setting. The benefit of social media is that ideas spread quickly to those participating, but I worry that we're moving away from more formal forms of academic discou
Oh, you do realize that XXXX is fighting a losing battle, right?"
agues. This is only half of the story. I know of several examples where a PhD student or postdoc gets criticized by tenured colleagues. Many of the more vocal critics are relatively established, tenured (and, indeed, male) faculty members, and a sizeable
issues should only be raised/discussed in print, and only after rigorous peer review, is utter nonsense. Some form of peer review is necessary for published work despite its deep flaws, but to prevent people from raising criticisms without peer approval i
rs at non-R1 institutions, making journals accessible to more people, etc. I would rather see SPSP devoting time and resources to tackling those issues rather than social media, which I don't think is a pressing problem. Of course I could be wrong, but
sinuations, innuendos, and open insults (typical example: Ought to: "The method employed in the paper has problems because ... and could be improved by the following..." Is: "This is a bad paper and the authos is a lying idiot". This happens probably in l
of which are the personal attacks I've seen directed at others. I am, frankly, disappointed in those in my field who perpetuate bullying and incivility in the name of "academic discourse." We need to consider not only how this affects our profession inter
replications, etc, so I don't get much value from it being on my Facebook wall as well. Sometimes you need to get away from it, and get some balance.
acticed than there are that are positive. Pointing out problematic research practices is not an "attack" on a researcher's career if the practices are, in fact, problematic. (Obviously dialogue should be logically rigorous and not commit ad hominem, and o
not to do their real job. And Fiske was right--the opinions expressed on social media mean nothing, because they have not undergone any form of peer review.
setting? If not, why would you post it on Twitter?" Honestly I think some of this climate issue is poor social skills.
to threaten, bully and penalize newer well-meaning researchers who seek to implement honest scientific practices. These obstacles must be removed immediately for the full effectiveness of social media to bear fruit. Without accountability for fradulent s
t makes me feel like we've lost the heart of social psychology. I have a strong CV for a grad student, but am also eyeing industry jobs. Recognizing this disillusionment, my adviser reccomended I unfollow all psychology methods groups, advice I took, and
dy of work. BUT perceptions are fueled by the snarky comments flying around on social media. This is wrong! What happened to science? Testosterone results could be wrong and the rest is right. Why are we heuristically processing a person's career?? I am
the career of someone in the political / ideological minority to post in social media? Unfortunately, yes. One other brief note about the survey: In the FB part, you asked only about posting within groups. I'm a member of a group but never post there and
tile and nasty. My career is well-established but I really worry about the effect of such exchanges on young people in the field.
s and persistent social media actors. Some of these online posters express beliefs it is a scientific right to receive time and attention from original authors to address their questions and concerns. If it is indeed a right, it needs to be paid for. If i
would require much more care put into social media than I want to bother with. To me, as a senior grad student, the potential costs seem to outweigh the benefits. I may feel differently once my career is more established.
ere is that sense that you are removed. The climate in soc/pers psych reflects the larger climate where (e.g.) Trump can rant on Twitter early in the morning easily. I think the same can happen in our field which is why I have steered clear...
hostile discussions with others. I think there is some value for some topics to be discussed more openly among the community. I think the current norm and style of doing so online gets a failing grade. We actually know much about computer mediated intera
evant and popular. Some are building or burnishing their careers on finding new things to distrust in our field. I have witnessed troubling actions even from people considered to be highly respected scientists and bloggers. They accuse first and check
of his group, I find it troubling that there is no second administrator or authority to reign him in when he himself is the one constantly violating his own Group Rules. I only maintain my membership to make sure my adviser and members of my lab aren't fu
han I could voice with the answer choices in this survey.

lthough I'm not sure what that would be). I resent the fact that I have to check social media to read about psychology; feels like a huge time suck. also there is no way to verify the accuracy of these posts, and who has time to read through these threads
s some groups more than others, it is inhibiting fully open criticism -- but I also think that the end goal has to be to promote an open discipline rather than the protection of the feelings of individual scientists.
em. Just talk merits and weaknesses of work, new directions ideas, and so forth.
sonal attacks to advance personal/scientific-political agendas. Also, Twitter has been my *entire* education the last 2 years--especially statistically/methodologically. I've basically stopped trying to keep up with journals/skim through them to find in
he initial criticism which may not have been personal at all! Sometimes, this looks like a form of crybullying to me (if you do not know the term, you can look it up on Urban Dictionary). One central problem is that papers have authors, so it is impo
nd certainly beneficial given the state of the field in general, but the anxiety it can arouse among junior scholars in particular can be paralyzing.
ve up the discussion, and refusal to answer/engage with critique. I find blogs and Twitter to be preferred platforms; Facebook tends to encourage "in between" sized comments that offer too little information yet give the illusion of productive discussion.
or be more negatively judged. However, I also don't know that the spaces provided by social media are as needed for groups with more social power.
potentially without their awareness, which could hurt their reputations. For example, I saw a discussion a few months ago where some researchers on twitter were critiquing the methods of a recent paper in Psych Science. These researchers implied that the
membership of our field is, statistically, be mostly male) and villifies them - Simone Schnall, Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy. As a woman and a junior member of the field, I find that chilling.
g is how much I feel like a special snowflake who's different from other people. At first I though you meant the former, but eventually I realized you probably meant the latter. It was unclear.
els a bit like reading the responses to questions on stackoverflow (i.e., here's my answer, but let me make sure you feel as stupid as possible while I give it to you). Complaints or drawing attention to the chilly climate leads to protestations that it i
would likely post MUCH more and be more confident amongst my peers in expressing my opinions and giving feedback on comments or posts.
learn about the latest research. It has helped me learn about alternative career paths and the challenges that academics face, but aren't always willing to discuss in person. Overall, I view the social media climate to be tumultuous, but positive. There a
ives, and methodological terrorists. SPSP needs to urgently look out for its members. Otherwise we'll go down in history as the field that self-imploded and voluntarily handed the faculty lines, grants, grad students etc. to neuroscientists and economists
nt, but you never know where the information will head and how people may start to misrepresent it.
a journal, plus, the comments are usually filled with peer thoughts that help me conceptualize the issue better). If they are founded, say "my bad", learn from it, and move forward.
pens all the time. This is how science works, but rather than focusing on how to move forward, there are a few vocal individuals who think that they need to tear down others in the process. Their behavior is shameful and it hurts the field.
cholarship. Although I've heard people say that social media make it possible for more people to have a voice, I find that this privileges only some groups of scholars. For example, in my experience, the folks who are most active on social media work with
ture's expected demise and preferentially publish in new media.
voices that are louder than others and I often find myself wondering how representative their views. "Likes" and comments are kind of a proxy for representativeness but I have a hunch that the group members self-select into somewhat like-minded groups fro
I also feel that the obsession with replication has put all of the focus on methods and not on the actual importance of the research. I would like to see us tackling real social issues like the situation in Syria, and if someone collected data there I wo
logist but at the end of the day I am simply not motivated to spend my own free time talking about psychology on social media.
ightful and CURIOUS minds. Over a long career they have almost certainly have produced false positives - but they have been about discovery. And they talk to the public - but shouldn't we all? Especially those of us who are publicly funded should find way
partly because I think there are more negative posts with personal attacks or sarcastic comments about mistrust, than there are more scientifically helpful posts. Also, while I think that the narrative of establishment vs. non establishment scholars is no
much as I can but already feel behind-the-times and lacking in resources compared to when I was a grad student from a well-known S/P program. For example, this week, I wanted to attempt my first pre-registration and I was unsure of who to ask for advice.
y accept or reject the findings if members of the field were not willing to engage in public discussion.
viduals. Writing editorials about online abuse or snarky responses to their attacks on social media will do nothing to dissuade these individuals. Individuals who attack other without providing supporting evidence simply need to be ignored; not goaded o
ness of the systemic unfairness in academia, which hurts junior scholars (e.g. postdocs - usually adults in their thirties - don't have rights other employees have), that has made me seriously consider a career outside academia.
to multiple, iterative critiques and cumbersome requests to re-analyze data is very time consuming, and I worry that these critiques are not distributed to all scientists equally, and have become an avenue for some implicit bias to show its head. I also
n people (not only on findings or other content specific point). Although I would not use the term (because it is also biased), I can understand that sometimes this is perceived as methodological terrorism, or better terrifying posts by methods people. Bt
m because it could go either way and it may not always be clear to someone who their post will be interpreted.
led. I read a 2013 paper today in Psych Science where the results were clearly p-hacked (n=50; interaction; d close to 1). There are dozens/100s of these studies out there. I don't know what is real.
er forms of victimization at the hands of a frothing mob of "bullies." Either way – no matter which group describes you personally – it seems that the only rational response to the field of social psychology in 2016 is to throw up one's hands and say,
ent. The field can't continue on the old path and hope to survive. There also are cultural differences that people aren't appreciating. PsycMAP, for example, is trying to make everyone Canadian. Canadians hate open disagreement (I have to assign the r
tting presentations or manuscripts denied that would typically have been accepted because of having a socially conservative public blog).
ent 'debates' about open science have been particularly damaging. They haven't been debates at all. People who question or want to raise any concerns are vilified. This shouldn't be happening. Science should be about discussing and developing ideas, knowl
studies have led people to conclude those areas or effects untrue, even though there are 1000s of other cases that they haven't looked into. Some seem to be using this as their review of an entire literature. I've seen reviewers call for rejection, regar
rse (e.g., commentary pieces in journals) that allow for careful, deliberate, thoughtful critique and response.
portion of those who sometimes feel attacked or uncertain about criticism are junior colleagues.
s a bizarre form of censorship, serves only to harm more junior members in the field and slow the field's overall progress. That said, if/when someone levies a personal attack, makes unfounded accusations, or raises an invalid critique, we should be as qu
without directly comparing people's attitudes about social media to their attitudes about other potential problems, this survey won't be able to address my concern. If you asked people to compare how worried they are about social media vs. other problems
ess than 10% of the cases (and only in comments); I have no personal history of such attacks, but it often keeps me from posting.
nally, but also how it affects the public perception of our field and whether we can truly be inclusive.
ther, informal argument fallacies). It may have a negative effect on a researcher's career, but isn't that what should happen if the researcher is engaging in incorrect, or inferior, types of inductive reasoning and statistical inference? Depending on ho
cientific conduct by past senior academics, newer researchers will not feel comfortable.
surely needed. I have stayed on twitter though. I like twitter because I can learn about new research findings (great), but I stopped following the methodologist because those debates are just tiring.
a junior, female, minority. You will NOT get me to speak my mind on social media until the discourse becomes less of a witch hunt. I don't want anyone heuristically processing me, and ending my career. All I ever wanted to be is a research psychologist. T
rarely look at it. However, my friends and I post on our profiles, and that's a much more active space. Maybe something to consider in the future? Thanks for putting together this survey to look into this interesting issue!
t is not paid for, then it is not a norm our field can endorse or support. We all have very limited time for research and social media actors have advocated a norm that anyone who is skeptical enough can and should have access to an original author's tim
ctions and how people can respond poorly in this deprived-environment for all sorts of reasons. As psychologists, I think we could probably design a pretty good online environment, or at least one better than it currently is. Facebook is convenient, but t
their work later. And they don't want to be shown that they are wrong, or admit it in front of all their loyal online fans. We need to understand these incentives and keep them in mind when thinking about how to improve the online discourse. Thank
rther slandered and I support any legal action taken against him. He and his ilk are the small but fundamentalist minority that are contributing to a chilled scientific discourse and all my negative associations with the use of social media in social/pers

teresting articles. Instead, I wait for stuff to appear in my twitter feed, which is always and inevitably provides the most exciting and cutting edge methodological papers out there. I am an infinitely better methodologist in the two years since I have s
ssible to say "there is something wrong with paper X" without citing paper X -- and as soon as one does that, the authors of X may feel personally attacked. If you folks do another survey like this, it would be invaluable to get folks' opinions about w
Blogs offer a longer format with support of graphs, code, etc. Twitter, on the other hand, is so limited that no one *pretends* that it is a great place for full-blown scientific discussion per se. Twitter is therefore great for seeding discussions, find
authors of the paper engaged in p-hacking or questionable research practices to achieve their results, without any evidence for support other than the critics' own skepticism of the authors' findings. The authors were not involved in the discussion and ma
sn't intended, and that everyone's views are welcome and we just have to insert ourselves in the conversation. I've pretty much unfollowed all these people, because the drama in the conversations isn't going to improve my work, my view of the field, or my
re trolls and sometimes people might respond too quickly to posts, but I think that people genuinely want to help each other out and become better scientists.
populations that are easy-ish to recruit. I do not see people who work with transgender folks, incarcerated folks, undocumented immigrants, etc. being active in these spaces. As a result, it becomes easy to think that everyone should do their research in
m the outset, biasing those data. And a final point, as an early career psychologist, I get frustrated knowing that social media and blogs are having what seems like such an impact on the development of the field and it seems to be helping solidify the r
uld be forgiving of methodological problems in favor of real-world relevance!
s to translate our knowledge - and we need to acknowledge how hard it can be to do this responsibly and accurately while still recognizing that contributing our best, though "flawed" insights to public discourse might well be preferable to the completely
t completely untrue, there is legitimate differences in people who understand the theoretical context of social psychology and laboratory methods (probably more proportionately high with "Establishment), to people who strip away those contexts make attack
I know it's been brought up in PsychMAP before but I couldn't find the post (and didn't want to embarrass myself by reposting).
r attacked. 3) We want to make sure we do not end up applying an inconsistent double-standard when it comes to "regulating" discourse on social media. Specifically, we need to remember that for every academic psychologist who is unfairly attacked on soc
strongly disagree with the sentiment that doing good science doesn't require us to watch our tone. Being good humans requires us to watch our tone. There are very few critiques that cannot be delivered in a kind, instructive and collaborative way that ass
w, I do not think that this is specific to this population or to the current controversies. Maybe it is due to the limited space (twitter) or the distant converstation in general or sometimes also to the time (nights), when people write posts. Taken toget
"fuck this noise." Why anyone at all would, knowingly and willingly, continue to actively pursue a career in this miserable shit storm of a discipline is beyond me.
ole of contrarian to a different grad student in my seminar classes just so we can have some discussion; otherwise, it is "you are right" and "I agree" and I fall asleep), but disagreement is good. Debate is a great way to learn.
edge, and guidelines together without immediately brandishing some as right or wrong, or creating cultures of distrust (which is what I see happening). It does make me concerned for my career and for voicing any questions/concerns that go against those of
dless of the strength of my evidence because they think the entire area of research is faulty. Not updating one's priors in the face of new evidence is also anti-scientific. This all leads to a negative cycle.
ick to denounce those as we are to accept the valid critiques, or there will be a sense that the discourse is lopsided (even if those instances are rare). More than anything, I am sick of hearing fraud and bad statistical practices so frequently brought
in our field, I would find that information much more valuable. The data you're collecting here seem like they will be quite hard to interpret.
w egregious the mistakes are, the researcher may have the opportunity to admit the mistakes and alter their practices. The main point is this: the goal in science is to increase knowledge about the world and not to benefit those that are attempting to inc
his is very frustrating to come up in this time.
e. Is this really a norm we, as a field, accept? Free speech is sacred, but so are societal norms, which have yet to be updated, by our field, in regards to social media. Wonderful, moderated outlets, like PsychMAP, are still defenseless against toxic beh
hat's a lazy answer, and it's not going to work sustainably. I think we can and should do much better. Examining how we're failing, with a focus on how social media can be beneficial, and how to build in much better safeguards to prevent the victimization
you for conducting this survey. I hope it will result in something that raises the level of responsible discourse.

tarted following methods-y and stats-y people on Twitter, and joining in their discourse.
hat constitutes an unjustified personal attack and what constitutes appropriate scientific criticism.
ing discussions in other places, and discovering new work.
y not have even been aware that it was going on. The authors were also early career researchers whose reputations could have been damaged by such insinuations. These kinds of discussions on social media are in my opinion unproductive for the field and are
a particular way and that of course everyone in the field agrees with this. It is already hard enough to work with populations that are under-represented in psychology research without being told that this research should simply not exist if it can't inc
eputations of well-established psychologists but I, having little reputation, still have to rely on the slower, more traditional methods of getting my name out there in a way that will help get me jobs and tenure. I know that's an oversimplification but I
useless insights provided by pundits and no-evidence self-help types. We need to re-adjust our incentives for sure, but let's not crush the joy of curiosity, discovery and awe about the possibility of understanding the impossibly complex and fascinating s
s about findings that don't replicate or attack researchers or assume fraudulent behavior based on some methodologically sound reasons.
ial media we also have plenty of academic psychologists who receive (and greatly benefit from) over-hyped praise for very "delicate" findings that are being marketed as solid fact. If we are going to crack down on undeserved attacks, then we also need to
umes knowledge, competence, and good intentions on the parts of all people involved.
her, because I do not want to become a target of any shitstorm - which is very likely, if you do not fully and blindly support any new idea regarding replications etc. - it is very unlikely that I will engage in any discussion in future. I know that I am
up together. They might be related to the same perverse incentives, but discussing them together is what leads to an undercurrent of suspicion of the original researcher's ethics whenever a study fails to replicate. Not just the discourse, but the mindset
rease the knowledge. Assessments of science should be more concerned with accurate representations of reality and less with the self-interests of researchers.
avior because 20th century scientific norms are expected within 21st century communications. Having said that, I love Michael Inzlicht; he is a hero and he "gets it", regarding norms. I believe it is wise to consider field-level discussion of social med

one potential reason why scholars might avoid or criticize using social media to discuss research.
lude studies that have the same power as MTurk studies (an actual thing that I heard from several people with strong social media presences). The current social media climate also further marginalizes under-represented scholars. Very, very few URMs are pa
ets of human behaviours we seek to study. One more pet peeve - how one-sided every discussion is about non-replicated studies. Everything about the original study is critiqued and everything about the replication is accepted without question. I sometime
thereby reinforcing the problems I just stated, but in my eyes blogs and posts do not (and should not!) replace common scientifc discourse in journals or on conferences, which is most of the times more content-focused, less personal. Therefore, I do not
ia norms. I would prefer we, as a society, create and live by a norm that journals are the only areas in which original authors should be "expected" to respond. Right now, they are being betrayed by their own sense of duty to social norms that don't fit m

rticipating in psychology social media, and it would be useful for those who are active in these spaces to think about why that might be and whether they want to continue creating spaces that are not inviting to Black and brown folks.
s feel like the ONLY person who reads the replication report in detail is the author who wasn't replicated - everyone else just heard about it second hand. Seriously - this would be good to know - who actually reads these reports? Even if all of those non
expect any tremendous gain from such an involvement, but fear tremendous harm and sleepless nights like other colleagues are having because of how they are treated by some on some social media platforms.
odern conditions. Online social media should be regarded as an area where people are free to express anything they want. In turn, original authors should be advised that "Science" does not obligate them to respond in that format. Critics should be subject

-rep studies really are garbage (which we need to seriously assess - sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes no - or at least not the underlying theory), little attention is given to the fact that replications ar
to peer review before scientific norms call for a response. I bet you get a lot of comments here. Hah! Best wishes.

Other - Text
Jewish (sorry, I am pretty sure most folks consider Jews to be White, but Jews originated in Asia; and the Europeans pretty much hated us)
Please learn the difference between ethnicity and American style race
White/Hispanic (by the US census categories)

Other - Text
I'm a postdoc. I'm just using this text input field to comment on your gender question. My gender is female, period. I am trans, but I consider that to be a medical condition with no bearing on my gender. It is not a different way of being female, it is an intersecting stigmatized identity. I refuse to mark "transgender female" in response to a question ostensibly about gender. I would happily mark that I am transgender in response to a separate question about whether or not I am trans, given the opportunity to mark "female" as my gender in exactly the same way that any other woman would mark "female."
former assoc prof with tenure; now in industry

Other - Text
Mid-size university (research but also heavier teaching)
Doctoral-granting private university/not quite a research institution but also not a teaching college
liberal arts university- teacher and scholar
Teaching college with lots of graduate programs
Public university in Germany (no real distinction between focus on teaching/research here)
Regional Campus of Major Research University
Teaching University with Doctoral and Masters programs
Liberal arts college with research expectations

Please enter any additional thoughts
Facebook, as a reasonable medium for discussion, is out of the question. Twitter is OK because it can embed links to published articles.
I'm not convinced that becoming more involved on social media is a worthwhile way of spending my time. I pop in here and there because it's important to keep up-to-date on these methods discussions, but if I had an extra few hours a day I think they'd be better spent on traditional research activities.
you omitted the option I would have preferred for gender: male.
Thanks for doing this, Tessa, and thanks for your important yet often thankless service to our field!
I really think lots of people have no idea what "cismale" or "cisfemale" mean. At least define if you're going to use jargon.
I would prefer to be able to check "female" or woman rather than cisfemale. I mean. I have an uncomplicated gender identity and don't really like people to try to complicate it for me.
I think Facebook is very different from Twitter regarding sharing scientific research. Twitter is probably better for people's careers tan Facebook.
I think the questions were leading. Please discard my data ASAP!
I really appreciate this survey. Thanks to SPSP for doing this!
I am angry about that fact that a few, self-appointed meta-science experts are making decisions that influence our journals and how we conduct our science without a broader effort to include EVERYONE in social and personality psychology in this decision-making process. Why are journals changing their policies without the input of the broader membership? I do not think that all recommendations that the COS puts forward are the right way forward, and myself and others should have the opportunity to share their concerns in a way that has just has much impact as these few who are having significant impact. Where is the democracy? Why can't I vote on what journal changes should be implemented? Why can't I vote on what is considered the ethnical conduct on research? Or fraudulent conduct of research? Why all of a sudden are those who have been engaged in sketchy research practices for years the ones in charge of re-defining what fraud and unethical research practices are? Why are the ones who have made successful careers out of possibly doing what is wrong the ones wielding power over these decisions?
I'm concerned that if psychologists focus too much on their negative reactions to online criticism, it makes us as a group appear thin-skinned and not as interested as we should be in the potential benefits of a more active and comprehensive online discourse.
Thanks for doing this survey. I can't wait to see the results.
psychologists make very poor survey respondent
I hope that this survey is distributed broadly. One concern I have is that surveys (such as this one) about the state of our field that are distributed via social media disproportionately attract a certain segment of our population that is not necessarily representative of the field as a whole. In addition to being shared on PsychMAP, I hope that this survey will go out to (and reach) all members of SPSP.
There is definite value to social media. We know from research that communicating by text is more likely to result in miscommunication. I have seen people make an effort to reduce miscommunication when discussing issues, like methods. I like that we're able to discuss issues more quickly than if we waited for an annual conference and I like that more voices/perspectives can be heard. Social media is a good way for people to have their voices heard and have a chance to participate when they might not otherwise.
Thanks for doing this! I think it is much needed! I don't comment or belong to methodological groups, but I read them frequently and I think a larger conversation about them is needed.
Thank you for doing this survey! It's much needed.
I would like to see a similar survey about the organization, peer-review process, content of journals, and norms of scientific integrity and research practices.
Overall I think there needs to be less sensationalization of science and a return to the importance of rigor and methodological practice. I have seen technology outpace theory building and it is making the field of social psychology suffer.
It felt good to be able to say these thoughts anonymously. I might comment on facebook if it was anonymous, so I could say my piece and then decide if I want to bother defending my viewpoint to others. Often, I just want to say something and be done with it.
I would not say that I teach at a "teaching college" -- I teach at a small liberal arts college that puts a lot of emphasis on scholarship, so this wording is... not right but obviously is the closest option.
I appreciate that you are conducting this survey. There is a bit of ambiguity behind what is or is not acceptable. I do think that self-reports may be a bit more positive than behaviors in this area though. It is very easy for people to say that social media activity is not harmful to careers and to still deny an applicant who "personally attacked" or criticized a close friend.
I believe that the invention of OSF (and other websites like it) will further our field much more than our visibility on social media. I feel like social media may make us look trivial, and depending on who is typing potentially like buffoons.
Social media does a good job at destroying the current paradigm but an exteemely bad job at substituting it with anything remotely meaningful...
I worry that people's assessment of conduct on social media is so wildly partisan that it can't count for much. I.e. people count conduct from their opponents or critics as harassment and abuse which they celebrate when it is done by their allies and vice versa.
Please recommend some FB groups that you feel are not a pure waste of time. And share them via SPSP Open Forum, please. Maybe I have never heard about them and hence the negative opinion about the usefulness of FB for dissemination of profession-relevant information.
I am glad that psychologists are investigating the role of social media in professional development, and how this may differentially impact people at different stages of their career and with different identities.
I worked for SPSP for six months doing the social media management
We need to embrace the change. This is especially true of senior people like myself. Social media is a democratizing force. It will be rough but once it is normalized it should get less so.
It appeared to not take into account what I believe to be the majority of people who do not use social media for one's career.
The questions about social media were vague.
Thank you for doing this. I look forward to seeing the results.
Some of the questions asking whether contributing to social media discussions could positively or negatively affect things like paper/grant peer review, reputation etc were difficult to answer because it simply depends. My answer would be that I think contributing on social media could have a considerable effect on how you are evaluated by peers, but it's not clear that this is always positive or negative. Some people I see on social media, I have come to deeply respect because of their thoughtful, respectful and valuable contributions to the community. Others I have grown to dislike because of their combative and rude behaviour. So, in my opinion the effect social media contributions have on your reputation are all about how you present those contributions.
I like PsychMAP a lot. I left Psychological Methods because there are a couple of bad actors in there. ISCON was fine but I didn't connect with anyone there so I left. Nothing against them at all!
Social media has been a great addition to the field. I learn more in 30 minutes on Twitter about preprints and in press research and new methods and ideas than I have gained at any conference. The way I am teaching my 3rd year stats course this year is something I could not have even imagined 4 years ago when I last taught it. That's how much things have changed, and my education has come largely through postings and readings I found via social media especially Twitter.
Thank you so much for conducting this survey.
thank you for a great survey. I look forward to hearing about the results!
Thank you for your inclusive gender descriptors.
I was not able to answer many survey questions or they did not represent my behavior well. For instance, many questions asked whether activity on social media hurts or benefits my other people's standing/reputation. Well, it doesn't affect it (which was not an option) because I am choosing not to engage after seeing how people engage. This is not because people are actively disrespectful, it is because I think only 'correct' opinions of the successful tenure-track professors are represented. Whether engagement is hurtful or helpful will depend on the extent to which people engage repeating the common opinions. Being more critical can be hurtful, being semi-critical might not be. The questions were only about engagement or no engagement and not about content of engagement. It might have been helpful to learn from people who study behavior on social media in preparing the survey. The way of engagement and content of it matter. Part of my discomfort in participating in these forums is the perception that is only talks about and for people in tenured positions at high ranking institutions. This was in part corroborated by the demographic questions at the end where there was no option to describe one's position as research-only. There is an increasing number of research faculty in academia. This is not the first survey on the state of the field I have completed and the others do not acknowledge these kinds of positions either. Part of tenure-centeredness.
Thanks for looking into this. I wish I was more hopeful.
Concern about over-reliance on social media. People make much harsher and extreme statements beciase of anonymity.
Social media use is good otherwise nobody will know about academics at all really
I simply think that social media platforms are a nice playground for exchanging thoughts but to me it is nothing more than that. I currently do not feel that it is could really have an impact on my career. Also, I am not the type of person who has a strong urge to advertise his research and ideas in every possible way.

Did you have any difficulties or issues with the survey?
Nope, interesting and thought provoking.
Yes-- sometimes the midpoint meant neutral, sometimes ambivalent. Unidimensional scale issues and the ambiguity of the midpoint. See Converse.
In addition to my comments above, I struggled with the response scales because I felt ambivalent about many questions. As just one example, I think that social media is an incredibly important source of community and mentorship for women, people of color, other minority group members, and junior scholars. Academia can be isolating, and this provides a means to connect with others who are or have been in similar situations. However, I am also concerned that if any of this connection or discussion of minority-specific issues, especially those in conflict with the status quo, happens in a public forum, it could negatively impact their academic standing/job options/evaluations by colleagues and superiors and so on. I have seen this happen to a graduate student whose post was seen by a department chair. So, I did not feel I could adequately answer questions like this with only one scale ranging from positive to negative.
I wish it would have asked if people have had their own views of a target changed by what third parties say about a target who may or may not be a part of the online conversation. That's where I think the biggest negative effects are that are not captured in this survey.
Yes I did have difficulty. The questionnaire asked about web platforms and then said, "i.e. Facebook or Twitter." It should have said "e.g." and it turns out this matters. Actually reasonable sites like LinkedIn and ScienceBlogs seem to be invisible to whoever drafted this questionnaire.
Only a minor one: I'm retired and there was no specific item to check off for that, so I became an "other." :)
It was unclear whether the last half of the study was talking about posting on specific social / personality pages / groups or just social media in general
some questions assume that the respondent engages in conversations over social media. Many are passive observers.
Oh, I put this in another place. The likert answers about whether participating in social media affects things positive or negatively (with midpoint of uncertain/neither) was actually a place that I wanted to answer "it has the potential for both negative and positive elements" so I chose the midpoint on that series of questions.
I think the questions were very abstract or irrelevant to me, so I had a hard time answering a lot of the questions.
- Should have a 'not applicable' option for the attitude questions. For example, if someone selects 'never' in response to the the question "Have you ever received constructive criticism in response to your posts?", 'never' can be interpreted as either: (a) nobody is providing constructive criticism because they are mean, (b) nobody is providing constructive criticism because the comments one made doesn't really require any feedback (ex. Someone could just comment "Thanks" a lot), or (c) one doesn't make any comments at all, so obviously they would never receive feedback of any sort.
I am a male. Not a cismale. That is your term, not mine.
A number of questions are constructed such that they can be interpreted multiple ways, making responses potentially ambiguous. For example, using social media can be positive or negative for one's career depending on what the career motivations are - to be popular or to just do good science. Similarly, I think utilizing social media can benefit some individuals careers, but for (what I would argue are) the wrong reasons. This nuance is lost in many of the questions, but is something that I experience people talking about frequently.
Some of the wording was unclear. Does "engaging" in online conversations include merely reading them?
Your questions about motives for commenting (as i indicated) were really confusing/nonsensical, and did not at all capture any of the reasons why I comment in these online forums. But otherwise this is a great survey and direly needed amidst all this discussion of whether....this discussion...is helpful/hurtful/terrorism...
At points i didn't understand if the questions were about academic social media or general social media----i go to FB for friends, family, cute kid and pet pictures. Those are rewarding and fun-----our field, not so much as it's often an online shit show starring young white dudes who talk but don't listen.
some of your "neithers" were for me--it goes both ways--that is, it can hurt and help people, so I put a 4, not because I think it has no effect (maybe you should have asked separate questions for that section for help and hurt)
When it used "social platform" I assumed it meant both facebook and twitter, but then the wording also said "posts," which described facebook and not twitter.
I think people should be allowed to call themselves by whatever they prefer. I know of very few non-LGBT people who identify as "cis" anything. Because there was no gender category in this survey with which I would self-label, I left it blank.
Some of the questions about social media required me to pick up context cues about whether I was responding about social media in general or social media that had to do specifically with psych discussions. I feel as though errors of that sort that I made were as much on me as on the wording, but it's something to consider if fielded again.
The gender question is getting ridiculous. What is "cis" whatever - if there are going to be so many options, please provide explanations.
Pluralistic ignorance effects would be interesting.
I would have mentioned them here if I had known this question would be at the end, but instead I entered my comments into other text fields earlier in the survey.
Those options for type of institution are not great - wish you had done carnegie classes instead.
there were times that I wanted to answer (this isn't important) when you ask rating questions, but there was no space to comment.
It's hard to figure out the total time per day of something that is done many many times (e.g., check a FB group)
I wanted to say that jerkiness and bad behavior is a sometime thing. Most people proceed normally and well. But when the fangs come out, they can ruin the setting for people. The sense of moral purity, the sense of being on the vanguard of a new truth, can lead to genuinely bad behavior. And it's nearly 100% male who cause the trouble. Even so, most men are good members, productive and helpful to discussion. But it is AMAZING what a few a**holes can do.
The meaning of some questions was ambiguous, but I don't remember which.
Your questions about whether participating has positive or negative impacts on paper reviews, grant reviews, etc. were impossible to answer. I would have liked separate scales for positive and negative. I ended up choosing the middle, but that response conceals my true feeling. It will have a positive effect on people who agree with me and a negative effect on people who don't. Same goes for questions about whether posting is helpful or harmful to careers. It is both, depending on who is doing the evaluating.
In a couple of places the font changed mid sentence
Sorry, I said this earlier because I wasn't sure I would have another opportunity. Here it is again: Your initial question about any facebook groups I belong to was misleading. I listed three groups I belong to, you clearly wanted me to choose one but gave me no criteria with which to do so. Your questions about whether it's helpful or "hurtful" (I think you mean harmful, because hurtful implies it hurts people's feelings) for others' career development failed to specify whether the question is about MY COMMENTS being helpful or harmful for others' career development, or whether what you're really asking is how much I feel like a special snowflake who's different from other people. At first I though you meant the former, but eventually I realized you probably meant the latter. It was unclear.
I think the questions are very difficult to answer, as they ask about the social media sites in general, not specific to social/personality psych or to sub-discussions within the field (which vary a great deal in their civility). So I ended up responding at the midpoint, though my feelings are actually at one endpoint for some topics and at the other for other topics.
not sure how to fill in the minutes, hours...
Not many. There was one question in which the font was inconsistent within the question. I also wasn't always sure when 'social media' referred to social media in general, or psychological avenues in particular. All the best!
lack of a skip out so that I was expected to answer irrelevant questions
It's hard to know what you mean by "others" - lay people? Other researchers?
I don't know what the various gender categories were intended to mean (sorry for being so non-up-to-date).
I would prefer both the options "Male" and "Female" either in addition to the options "Cismale" and "Cisfemale". These are still fairly obscure terms that are extremely ideological, and that (most?) rational people can and do disagree strongly with. I am not "cismale" nor do I identify as such: I identify as "Male". I know that many trans people resent the cis- and trans- labels as well, and also would prefer to self-identify as simply male or female. It is one thing to add additional options to the standard gender categories, but it is quite another entirely to remove the standard, largely non-ideological labels that the vast, vast majority of people identify with. This alone is enough to make me question the trustworthiness and impartiality of the people running this survey. But to help your data analysis, I have answered "cismale" anyway.
i had to google to figure out what gender term applies to me. i also answered some questions early that did not apply to me because I thought they would be required (as is often the case for studies on qualtrics). Then I tried to not answer an irrelevant question (i.e., one asking about my use of social media for psychology), and it worked, so I skipped the other irrelevant questions. For the irrelevant questions I did answer, I believe I put a "not at all" response
It wasn't clear to me what you meant by "engagement" with social media - does passively (but regularly) reading PsychMAP count?
Minor: I am fully aware about the sensitivity around gender identity and how this is captured in surveys - but some people may be a bit behind ... maybe add explanations next time.
I made a mistake in that I was thinking psych methods rather than psych map. I left psych methods because the tone and the content, to me, was not something I want to support. I am an active member of psychmap - I read it once a day, but don't comment due to time constraints.
as pointed out in one of the boxes earlier, I would have liked to answer N/A at certain points.
Yes. There was a series of questions about "How often do you check" Facebook groups (PsychMAP, etc.) ... I felt this was not great wording because I don't think active "checking" is the way that people see content from those groups. Typically it just shows up in your newsfeed -- more over time if you engage (even minimally by clicking to see comments), less over time if you don't engage. So I wasn't sure what to infer about what the question meant. I answered it as if you asked "how often do you see"
I had a bit of trouble with the questions about how frequently I check FB pages (especially ISCON). I see things in my feed, and then read them, rather than going specifically to the pages of those groups to check. Also, ISCON is rarely used, so I suppose I "check" it when something happens because i see that's something has happened, but the frequency isn't a very telling number in this case.
Yes very hard to answer how other people feel
Yes there were plenty of questions that were unclear and I have left them blank
Sometimes I think a post can affect people both positively and negatively, but I was forced to choose between one or the other.
you asked a lot about twitter - almost all my comments are more about facebook (PsychMAP and to a lesser extent Uli's page which I eventually gave up on).
I don't feel that I was able to report on attacks that are not responses to posts. Many, many of the attacks I see (certainly in my case) are not responses to anything I have posted. They are unrelated to my engagement on social media.
Didn't understand the gender categories. What is cisfemale and cismale?
So we I didnt know whether I was answering in General or with regards to psychology social media
There were some times when the font was not the same throughout the whole question.
i think it can be helpful for one's career to read social media - i found it especially helpful on the job market however i think the utility of reading it is quite different from the utility of participating. i don't participate much due to fear of negative impact on my career, so some of the questions about the impact of participating were difficult for me to answer. i wasn't sure if passive lurking/reviewing counted as participating or not and i think there is a differential impact of passive participation and active participation.
I think there's some ambiguity in some of the questions about career development. Does career development mean learning and growing as a scholar or achieving more senior status in the academic field? Some of my answers would be different depending on the interpretation of this. For instance, I think engaging in methods discussions could be helpful for knowledge as a scholar, but might be harmful when it comes to the job market because of the polarized nature of the academic field
I am a male - didn't see that as a gender option...seems odd. Maybe one of the overly fancy/PC terms you included is supposed to include that? Why overcomplicate things? People are "male" or "female" or "other"....should I be offended that I didn't see something that clearly and unambiguously articulates how I identify? Maybe I should protest or file a grievance? I'd probably be labelled "unenlightended" for not knowing what new, made up word is supposed to now encompass me....but why should I have to conform? I want to be called "male" so include that - or are my feelings not important? I have nothing against those who want to be labelled something else, but it seems like you've complicated a pretty simple question. I'm sure someone has got a dissertation and publications out of creating new terms though...so good for them! Pardon my sarcasm...hopefully this pointless diatribe got a chuckle and didn't anger you---not my intent at all! Hope the data helps!
I found the questions about whether posts influence one's career difficult to answer .. It all depends on the content/nature of the posts. If one is positive and helpful in her posts, then the answer is different than if one is negative and harmful in her posts. Many of the questions were difficult to answer because it would depend on the type of post -- I generally view sharing new information/new research in a positive way but view criticisms in a negative way. Good luck with the survey. I am curious to know the results.
On mobile, demographic buttons looked mismatched.
I entered two Facebook groups in the "other" column that were subsequently merged in the survey questions as a single group. The responses I provided were for the Bayesian Inferences in Psychology group, not the Nonverbal Communication Network.
I am curious why Facebook and Twitter were the only social media platforms covered considering the widespread use of Instagram, for example.
I mentioned those in a former open ended question.
When I post on Facebook or Twitter, I often do so to promote my work (come hear my talk/see my poster). This survey seemed to focus on using Facebook and Twitter to engage in group discussions, of which I read but never post in. I'm not sure the hours I reported and my experiences with posting are relevant.
Why did you ask about disability? Another vague question, by the way. Glad to see the numerous categories for gender.
The demographic questions render one pretty identifiable. They also mention a "post-bachelorette" status but few of us have been on the Dating Game.
some questions are a little hard to respond to, bc a very low option (all the way to the left) sometimes implied two possible things. and it was unclear which one. so i sometimes didnt answer in order not to mislead. im rushing and writing quickly. so maybe that didnt make sense - and i cant think of an example off the top of my head
I agree with what is being said online that the demographics probably aren't relevant. Also, the questions about other groups was triple/quadruple barreled because I listed most of the other FB groups to which I belong and those memberships didn't all occur at the same time. Also, it won't matter in the aggregate, but I am despondent about the field not because I participate in social media but because it opens my eyes to more and more issues. That is, people's behavior on social media isn't depressing me; it is learning about more and more problems (failed replications, misunderstood stats, etc.) that saddens me. But I'd rather learn about it than bury my head in the sand.
Had to google the meaning of cismale/cisfemale.
I did not understand why you had to collect the biographic information. My sexual orientation and gender does not seem to be relevant to the research question.
"To what extent do you think engaging in conversations on social media platforms is or could be HURTFUL for your own career development?" Of course it COULD - but is it likely? If I respect some simple rules: No. This is a strange, very hypothetical question, and I think there's not much we can learn from the answers. COULD the sun explode tomorrow? Yes, of course. But it's not likely. "To what extent do you think engaging in conversations on social media platforms is HELPFUL for majority members' (ethnic, gender, race, sexual orientation) career development?" Come on. This *slightly* depends on HOW they engage, right?
I mentioned this earlier, but I found lots of the items were about tone in general, but I find that tone varies so widely that it was difficult to answer clearly.
Your consent page states "I am 18" years old (rather than at least). One of the options for current position was post-bachelorette (presumably supposed to be post-baccalaureate?). There is a whole section on social media use for which it's unclear if the questions refer specifically to social media use related to psychology or just use in general (the questions about positive versus negative responses to one's own posts, constructive criticism, etc.).
Some of the questions are hard to answer if you aren't a person who comments...
Many of the questions were difficult to answer considering my participation is passive and not active.
Not sure why the survey asked about sexual orientation. I also had to Google what Cismale means.
I found it hard to disentangle whether I was supposed to think about actively participating in social media groups (e.g., via commenting), or only consuming the content of the posts and comments of others. Because I don't actively contribute, I answered all questions with a passive participation in mind. The questions could have been a little clearer about active vs. passive participation. For example, I did not answer the affect-items because I felt that they only apply to active participation the way the question was worded even though I definitely do experience affective states while passively participating. In general, I think the differentiation between active and passive participation is key to understand people's reactions to this kind of exchange, so I was a little disappointed that the wording of the items did not always clearly reflect this.
I indicated that I don't engage in social media conversation about psychology, but still was asked many questions about this conversation. I found many questions hard to answer, because it depends: engaging in respectful dicourse on social media might be helpul for one's career, but disrespectful one have the opposite effect. Not impressed with the questionnaire in general, sorry to say.
Some of the questions didn't apply to me as much because I don't post on the sites mentioned in regard to methods and statistics or psychology, in general. I'm more of a watcher than a poster.
It was hard to answer questions since there was not an NA option.
Many of the item anchors didn't seem quite appropriate to the question (e.g. "very much" to a question about frequency).
I refuse to answer any gender question where I have to label myself "cis-" anything. I am supportive of our trans colleagues and friends, but I do not identify with the idea of being "cis-gendered."
I am not very active on social media related to psychology
I participate in the social media by expressing my support (e.g., "liking") for posts. I don't think there was a way to differentiate how one participate's in this way in the current survey.
I had trouble Likert-ing appropriately. A lot of these issues, especially with regard to career advancement, feel very context-dependent. When people post, I do think their gender, ethnicity, and status play a role, but it also matters what, exactly, they're posting about.
Yes - it's weird because I'm not in psychology and I wasn't sure if I should answer.
I had a difficulty reporting with validity how many times I check social media or when I joined/left different groups. Asking for specific numbers will give an impression of precision, but it is a false one. Lots of research out there by personality psychologists on what people are able to report.
Yeah, I wish there was a "I don't know" option, items that had you ranking if your media use would be positively or negatively impacting career were hard to answer.
The survey format could be improved. Many of the questions are repetitive and likely to elicit robotic responses. The survey neglects to properly elicit views of newer researchers who may have different concerns than senior ones.
Just had trouble answering some of the questions since I don't follow the social media discussion in our field very closely and virtually never participate (and might have thus put "not applicable" for a lot of them had that been an option).
I'd heard that this study used "cisgender male/female" and accessed it just to see if it was true. As person who is not trans, I find that term offensive, unscientific, prescriptive, and ideological jargon. It perpetuates gender stereotypes and essentialist & binary notions of gender. Think it through...the only way the term makes sense is if gender is essential and binary.
Not very user friendly on a phone. Annoying to have likert scale go horizontal and vertical, annoying to have reverse coded items. Neither shouldn't be in a middle of the response options but a separate response. Some items were unclear
I am not sure whether I incidentily answered the question about whether I use social media to discuss psychology wrong. Just to make it clear: I don't use it. If I clicked this box correctly, I struggle with receiving all the specific questions about it.
some of the items would have been helpful to have a n/a option but otherwise it was pretty straightforward
It was mostly good. But yes, some questions needed a N/A response, and also for some questions I wanted to answer positive and negative, or it depends - in particular, questions that were based on previous questions (e.g., it may depend on how positive or negative the social media commenting, or interaction was).
Yes - wasn't sure if I should consider myself as "participating" in social media because mostly what I do is read posts and follow links. I rarely if ever comment or join the discussion, but I learn so much from the posts and the comments. Also, I have no idea how long I have been/was a member of various FB groups! And I have no idea how social media affect people's careers, especially how this breaks down among different demographics. I can think of several examples where people with great things to say have had a platform to say them - had there not been social media, maybe they would not have had a visible a pulpit. However, I also think that a big part of how much social media help someone's career is what that person writes - if the person writes brilliant things, it will more likely help; if the person writes less brilliant things, it will likely not help as much.
It was very long but very important and interesting. Thanks Jay!

An attack on the person's character group identity, or anything else unrelated to the substance of the argument. Note that even when something seems related to the argument, it can still be an ad hominem and therefore not actually relevant: "An ad hominem attack is not quite as weak as mere name-calling. It might actually carry some weight. For example, if a senator wrote an article saying senators' salaries should be increased, one could respond: 'Of course he would say that. He's a senator.' This wouldn't refute the author's argument, but it may at least be relevant to the case. It's still a very weak form of disagreement, though. If there's something wrong with the senator's argument, you should say what it is; and if there isn't, what difference does it make that he's a senator? Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem."
The questions this page aren't specifically about psychology or methods. I think that's what you wanted here, and I have no stories about that.
I think that attack includes any kind of specific reference to a person--and not a person's work. For example, saying THIS PERSON rather than THIS PERSON'S PAPER/FINDINGS/DATA is an attack, even if it is not very harsh. Attacks also include more subtle kinds of posts. One post I saw earlier this year--retweeted by several prominent members of SPSP--was a fake crossword puzzle with the names of a couple researchers--this was ad hominem and I felt very scared after that on social media because was endorsed by so many SPSP members. I think the fact that it was retweeted by many was because twitter and other social media platforms can sometimes feel more private than they are--people think they are just joking around with their friends, but this is public and it makes the field of social and personality psychology less fun to be a part of.
I am editor of an APA journal and had my integrity attacked by several individuals because I did not immediately publish a failed replication. I explained to those involved that the paper needed revisions and ultimately an exchange between the original authors and those of the failed replications appeared. However, that process needed to be handled through peer review and in a thoughtful manner. I was rather annoyed because some folks on twitter questioned the integrity of myself and the journal because we were moving in a slower, more deliberate manner.
i have never posted in any of these groups
when a general statement about the field turns ad hominem. Happens all the time. Posting individual p-curves, e.g.
N/A. Have only been personally attacked through other outlets (i.e., anonymous peer review).
Personal attack = attacking intelligence, morality, integrity, or ability of the poster
One researcher used an unreviewed "gotcha" bias test to imply I am a dishonest researcher. Another researcher once downloaded one of my freely available datasets, ran different statistics (including some obvious p-hacking) and wrote a blog post about how I'm wrong and don't understand statistics. When I reached out to said researcher (very senior at an Ivy League school), (s)he took that as an invitation to barrage me with several dozen emails.
I don't personally post on social media, so I don't get feedback of any kind
I haven't personally received an attack. But I think personal attack includes situtations where the "attacker" is imputing motives or negative personal attributes to someone else either when they have explicitly stated they did not have those motives, did not comment on their motives at all, and/or when the person is not there to defend themselves.
I don't engage enough on social media to be attacked.
It's never happened to me, even though I have a blog and twitter once in a while. I guess I'm lucky. But I do try not to be overly provocative. A personal attack would be to, by name, call someone incompetent or unethical. Again, this has not happened to me but of course I've seen it happen to others.
I don't comment but I see others getting personally attacked so I do not engage. There are some scientists who choose to discuss issues in a prosecutorial way and I just shut down when I see that. I admire those who continue to engage and ask people to think in nuance.
People have called me names (feminazi, idiot, etc.) both publicly and privately on Twitter after I respond to another Twitter user, thus making my tweet far more visible. I've had less personal attacks on Facebook because my personal FB is more secure than my Twitter page.
People online have suggested that I might be resistant to "best practice" change x, y, or z because I want to keep publishing lots of papers. Such a statement assumes a nonscientific motive underlying my scientific arguments (thus, "personal"). This person is more senior than me.
A response the insinuates a lack of competence/understanding
In one case a comment read as threatening violence against me (from a pro-replication/reformer person). In another case, I found out that a thread on FB had emerged in which a number of more senior people (who were anti-replication/status-quo'ers) were suggesting they out to exert influence on SPSP to ban me from a year. These are, however, rather extreme examples--but they do exist, and were perpetuated by folks on both sides of the proverbial isle.
Personal attack = questioning motives, assuming ill-intent, attacking character, being ridiculed in a way irrelevant to the topic
When directed at me personally - I would /do feel attacked when individuals either assume -without evidence -my research motives or likely behaviors, attack the validity of my research /field without having a direct discussion/debate, or insinuate differences in opinion indicate a lack in my ability or morality (righteousness).
Just the "usual" rage of the Schimmack types.
Personal attacks have only happened when I have accidentally encountered socio-political-historical ignorance on social media. This is a result of the current political climate, not psychology. Well, ONE TIME on the SPSP network, there was a heated discussion about the liberal bias of social psychology, and I posted something along the lines of the RWA scale does in fact demonstrate liberal bias. And someone strongly objected to my point of view ;-)
I have been told by an acquaintance that they took child psychology and development classes in undergrad, so they know about X topic, with the implication that I didn't know or understand research. That certainly felt like a personal slight (maybe not an attack). Or there's the flat out "you're wrong" antagonism.
Not a response to this question, but I began responding to this page of items about social media in general (not necessarily with respect to posting about psych/methods). Not sure this was the intent of the questions.
The "attacks" I'm thinking of typically take the form of expressions that something I wrote was "ignorant" or the like, but they refused to engage/read and were generally nasty in their expression of dislike, providing no evidence for their position.
When posting about a political topic, ad hominem attacks (If I believe something or support a candidate, there must be something wrong with me, or whatever I say can't be trusted because there is something wrong with me). The attacks are not based on specific knowledge of me, just general attempts to criticize what I've said or put forward.
Calling people out, by name, with non constructive, derogating, or insulting posts, or using sarcasm in a demeaning way.
I was insulted with racial and xenophobic slurs about a post of mine. People said my work was ridiculous and not worth being funded, a scam. A colleague of mine in another country was attacked and when I came to her defense I received death threats from people from my colleagues' country, including government officials.
comments that questioned my own competence
I was accused of p-hacking my data in a particular paper as well as across my career, I've been compared to a gun nut and George W. Bush (on different occasions), I've had my automated email message used as evidence that I engage in fraudulent data analysis practices, I've been insulted by numerous people on numerous forums (Twitter and Facebook), and I've been stalked by a Libertarian with mental health issues (he literally showed up at a departmental event to accuse me and others of political bias in our research). I've had to blocked people who kept tagging me in posts to insult me and my work. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Knowing that I am trans, an acquaintance publicly posted an assertion that trans people are just temporarily mentally ill, and when I commented on the post challenging its claim, she accused me of silencing dissent. This was not within the psychology community.
Someone interpreted something I said as saying that someone else was lying. But this was not my intent. It felt personal at first, but later I reflected and felt fine.
i've seen a certain someone who is very negative about replication personally attack replication scientists by calling them names or discounting anything they say as wrong
This has not happened to me directly, but the community on Psych Methods is extremely toxic. Personal attacks include accusations of fraud and incompetence.
I have had my private correspondence posted, been told I am careless, that I am using my prestige to bully junior people, that I am out of touch.
Reference to bad research I published. Directly linked with Diederik Stapel (even though there is no real relation)
My own research ethics and the quality of my research were challenged
I've been called stupid, an idiot, close minded, and other things like that.
Implied I am a poor psychologist because of my connection to certain others in the field. Indirectly - have often seen researchers I am connected with openly called names and ridiculed (the people, not the work) on social media (esp Psych Methods and certain twitter accounts) by people who disagree with them on other unrelated issues. Although those comments are not directed at me, they sure keep me out of the discussion - I have no desire to wade into that, and do not feel that my presence would be welcome. Example: Person A disagrees with Person B on the state of the field. Person B responds by calling Person A an incompetent fraud on twitter/PsychMAP etc.
I have been personally attacked for my views but not by a social or personality psychologist (even though I have been criticized by personality/social psychologists, just not really attacked). This question is too vague -- I can't tell which you're asking about. In any case, I discuss controversial identity politics issues all the time. People are bound to get upset sometimes.
No attack happened. I would define it, though, as an attack on someone's character that was totally unrelated to the topic of research, i.e., calling someone "fat" would count as a personal attack but calling someone a "bad scientist" because they have a history of publishing poor work would not count as a personal attack.
I haven't been attacked, possibly because I actively avoid posting anything that I think will draw critique from individuals who seem to have appointed themselves the moral arbiters of social psych.
A paper I published was discussed on Psychological Methods Discussion with very harsh tones that was cherry-picking certain points I made in the paper.
Never came from other psychologists but from the general public.
A personal attack is when feedback is framed in a way that is demeaning or insulting - that I am ignorant or stupid or a poor, problematic researcher. Often this is either more vehement (direct aggression) or can be flippant / "humorous" but belittling (passive aggression). I haven't received much of this since I post more rarely, but I have seen the above plenty of times as interactions between other researchers on Twitter and in some FB groups. More so on FB for some reason compared to Twitter. The most disturbing things are sometimes on blogs (linked to in Twitter or FB groups) which directly target a researcher and seek to dismantle and repudiate their life's work. THAT freaks me out.
I have been called a bad scientist. I have been called a moron. I have been told I need to learn basic statistics. I have been told that I only do research to satisfy my ego. I have been told that that I am motivated to become a big shot rather than to find the truth.
Live tweeted at a conference and someone (who I don't think was at the conference) singled me out and replied only to my tweets. The person tweets appeared to be disparaging and somewhat incoherent. I didn't reply back to any of them or acknowledge them. When I think of a personal attack, I think of it as singling a person out and repeatedly tweeting unhelpful, negative comments directed at the person that put that person down.
Usually the "attack" is minor and easily dismissed.
Personal attack is an attack on the person and not the substance of the argument. It is important to note that I selected never, but I felt Susan Fiske's column in the Observer was a personal attack.
A personal attack would be naming something dispositional about the person posting. For example, if Mr. X wrote a post and Mr. Y commented to say, "You're an idiot Mr. X, you obviously lack the training or insight to discuss this issue."
I haven't received a personal attack about my research but I have received personal attacks via twitter ranging from extremely vulgar attacks about being a woman to being an idiot and a bitch.
A "personal attack" is such (i.e. is only a valid phrase or idea) only if it is an actual physical threat or attack, or something that could actually be clearly construed as libel, or, perhaps in some cases, clearly persistent and disproportionate harassment (which would, also, have to be more than mere criticism or empty insults, but involve, again, actual libel or real-world physical interactions or consequences beyond subjective feelings being hurt). I don't see ad hominem insults ("You are an idiot if you believe this") as a personal attack, nor do I see being subject to targeted criticism as a "personal attack". In fact, I think this phrase "personal attack" is largely rhetorical and devoid of real, useful objective meaning. When people say "I feel attacked" they are really saying "I feel scared / uncomfortable and cannot handle it". This at least can be true, even though we need not necessarily care: feelings can be disproportionate, unjustified, or activated advantageously. "I feel attacked" is dishonest and manipulative language.
if someone disagrees and is somewhat aggressive towards me or what I have posted
Attack? It's still just words. Ad hominem is not okay but we should not make it bigger.
I have answered never on this page and "somewhat" on the previous one. instead they should all be N/A. Not sure how to uncheck.
So, I interpreted the wording of this page as being about posting in general, not specifically about professionally relevant posting. I hope that was correct -- it seemed like the best interpretation of "general questions about how you feel when you post." I was recently attacked by a stranger (who thought I was being condescending to her in my response to her previous Facebook post) for pointing out that Donald Trump's language described something that is illegal (sexual assault) in many states. That's the only recent example I can think of.
Any negative comments about my person or my motivations that is irrelevant to the substance of the conversation.
I do not post on the sites so I do not have any negative experiences. However, I would define this is any instance in which a person focuses another's character and abilities rather than discussing his or her work.
While I haven't been the target of a personal attack because I usually just lurk and read others' comments in the psych groups, I can say that I would consider a personal attack something that was a negative statement about the kind of person I am. I wouldn't consider negative statements about my work personal attacks unless there was a clear implication that the quality of my work reflected the kind of person I am (e.g. "only an idiot would analyze data that way").
I no longer have a blog with Psychology Today, but I used to, and although I mostly had a positive experience, one of the commentators on a particular post made a personal attack on me (questioned my academic reputation, training, expertise as a scientist). He was shut down by another commentator (a respected fellow scientist), but it was painful and it did continue for awhile. When it happened again (public comments about another post), I simply stopped posting.
With regards to political diversity: I have been told more than once that as a graduate student, I shouldn't post anything that might be seen as 'conservative' because people won't hire me if I do this.
Using names. Speaking in a derogatory or sarcastic tone. Providing non-germane criticisms and ad-hominem attacks.
I can't think of any specific instances.
making subjective generalizations about my intentions and traits from objective observations about my arguments or findings. Attacking work because of a motivation other than good science (e.g., driven by competitiveness, antipathy towards me or my work)
not from colleagues and not about S/P, but from strangers when I tweet about political issues
I was told my ideas were b.s., poorly reasoned, and my motives were (incorrectly) impugned. Maybe it's coming later but what is more relevant for a lot of people is following but not entering the conversation because they don't want to risk becoming a target. It can be a massive time-suck to defend your position or wade into a debate even if it gets nasty or pointless, but once you're in you kind of have to stay in.
Attacking an entire body of work because of a single failed replication. Attaching character or non-work related characteristics of an individual
A persona attack involves making hostile and critical statements, attributions, inferred motives, or assumptions about an individual researcher. The content deviates from focus on the research to focus on the researcher. I would say that these attacks are even worse when the attacker has never even met the target of the attack. Personal attacks also include click-bait headlines suggesting that an entire area of research has "been debunked" or "is false" and poorly, quickly written articles that get the facts wrong. [PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THE FOLLOWING.] I may be an outlier. I have been attacked on Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs, and regular media -- and not in response to my social media posts. I've been attacked about my research and professional life, in the nastiest ways. One particular blogger writes about me many times a week (we do track it) and his "criticisms" are extremely personal and vicious. HIs followers then pile on in the comments sections. In the last year, his blog (including comments) includes more than a hundred mentions of me, of which about 98% are extremely negative. He does not know me, has never reached out to me, regularly misrepresents my opinions AND findings, has accused me of fraud, has talked about my family members, has attacked the people I work with, has encouraged his followers to pursue me... And his blogs are posted to social media, in spite of our new petition on civilized discourse, on a regular basis by members of the social psychology community. Attributions for my research conclusions are personal -- often attributed to status- or fame-seeking, greed, or even stupidity. I have been the target of literally more than a thousand personal attack posts (e.g., tweets, comments, blogs, etc.) It has nearly ruined my life. I refuse to engage in the negativity on social media. I still believe in peer review, despite the very long wait time. My non-responses are then interpreted by the attackers in some negative way. Or, if I do resp
Ad hominem attacks, such as "You don't know what you're talking about," that don't address the content of the message, but rather focus on the messenger.
Once a a former high school classmate told me no one liked me in high school. This was in the context of a political discussion.
I don't believe I've been personally attacked through feedback on social media.
I don't post about the kinds of things likely to solicit the kind of attack or criticism that has been observed recently.
I have been attacked for being a junior scientist (still a grad student), as if I couldn't possibly have anything of value to say.
Questioning the competence of the person rather than the idea; using words the imply less competence from someone who isn't a "recognized contributor" in the group
I have not experienced a personal attack on social media. I would view direct references to my (while stating my name) abilities, competence, or integrity as attacks on me as a person. Mentioning that my research or methodology were lacking without mentioning them as traits of me would not be viewed as an attack.
Was told that it wasn't my place to comment (i.e., that I wasn't qualified to have an opinion) because of my standing (as a former graduate student who had to leave a program).
I belong to a group called Darwinian Gender Studies. I know there are other academics on it. It also lay people. There are regular lay people who, in my perception, seem to think the group is an open forum for sexism. While I realize ev psych and feminist psych can often be perceived as opposites, that doesn't mean ev psych is a sexism forum.
Never had an experience with something that I felt was even remotely close to a personal attack
I have never received a personal attack. I would define this as someone attacking my character personally. Any and all comments about my scientific work are, for me, fair game, even highly critical ones. The line is only crossed when insults are directed at my character, which has yet to happen to me.
Critique of the method we used in the paper--stated we were over claiming.
I have rarely ended up in an extreme position on one or the other side of most issues so I don't recall too many vehement or personal attacks.
attacking personal views or opinions with no evidence or basis for the other side of the conversation Unfriended or unfollowed along with angry comments name calling
Inferring intentions that were somehow malicious and condescending replies to other comments mostly. I actively do not post because of the tenor of most of the discussions.
I have never experienced a personal attack.
My Tweets was exposed outside the social media context. (i.e. My Tweets were printed and posted up at the academic lab.)
I have never been subjected to a personal attack, but I would define one in general as when someone acts to discredit or undermine me and my contributions to the field without merit because they have come to dislike me as a person apart from my research.
Amazon.com is one of the largest social media sites and I get a reasonable number of critiques that get personal. I get some negative stuff on Twitter. I get some emails about what my work as well. I've never received a death threat and only a few comments focused on gender, age etc.
Someone insinuated that I didn't know what I was doing statistically
While research and papers can be critiqued without restaraint. One should be very careful in deciding how to use authors' names in the criticism. "The paper is ..." is fine. "The author is ..." is not acceptable anywhere.
I have never been personally attacked but I have seen others personally attacked, accused of sabotage, accused of having inferior intellect, etc.
Starting explicitly or implying that someone who conducted a study about which there is a failed replication did something unethical in the original study (e.g., by Being dismissive of of discussions of differences between the studies).
I shared a study that a colleague had done and some individuals (particularly one) who clearly hadn't read it made very nasty comments about the methodology and the study. It makes me reluctant to share other people's studies because this person is quite aggressive and has a lot of people who listen to him and will join in the attack.
It wasn't actually psychologists, it was Gamergate people insinuating personal things about me because I told them something they thought was a big deal wasn't a big deal. Things like saying I'm sucking DiGRA's cock, etc., even though I'm not a member of DiGRA.
methodological terrorism. no just kidding. ive never been attacked.
I have not been the target of personal attacks. I consider a personal attack to be a criticism of someone's motives, character, or intelligence rather than a criticism of their work or arguments. In some cases, repeated and aggressive criticism of a specific researcher's work can come off as a personal attack, even if no explicit comments about the researcher's motives, character, or intelligence are made.
I have not received a personal attack. I do not post personal comments in these arenas.
After writing a blog post that a senior researcher disagreed with, he powergraphed an auto-harvested selection of my pre-2012 papers (including a simulation study) and publicly posted it on Facebook in front of thousands of people, claiming it showed my work was not good science. After a private exchange with another senior researcher in which I politely disagreed with him, he repeatedly posted negative comments about me on his personal Facebook page. These events happen much more rarely than constructive criticism, but they actually feel more frequent/loom larger, psychologically, because they are so extreme.
I have never been singled out in a post or conversation, or received personal attacks in response to my posts. However, my advisor and my advisor's advisor have been called out multiple times, by name, in demeaning ways regarding the intent behind their methodology and some posts have implied that therefore all students of these individuals are also guilty of bad intentions and methodologies. In the instances I am thinking about, there was not constructive criticism but instead nit-picky read-throughs of old papers until something popped out as potentially suspicious, and then that was inflated to seem like a critical part of said research line and used as justification for the personal attacks including name calling and implications of bad intent.
A criticism of my motives that ignored the substance of the argument or (in my opinion) deliberately distorted the substance of my argument.
Although this has not happened to me personally, I would only consider feedback to be a "personal attack" if it directly insulted me personally. Attacks on the credibility of one's research and even questions about the motivations underlying the research question or agenda are not "personal attacks."
Personal attacks occur when one person explicitly challenges another person, rather than just questioning their research or speaking about practices broadly. For instance, I once made a comment about results observed in my lab that went against a failed replication (I actually replicated an effect) and someone said that I was clearly engaging in QRPs--which actually wasn't true even a little bit.
One prominent researcher retweeted a tweet, from another prominent researcher, that stated that a talk at SPSP was "an embarrassment to the field". This talk was presenting my research and was about how replicable a finding of mine was. The retweet also insinuated that it was "not surprising" that this "embarrassment" was from my broader area of study. My research has also been the target of mocking by satirical blogs. My work was also used as an example in a series of Tweets describing "silly" and "unbelievable" and "questionable" research (without evidence).
I don't usually post on Facebook groups, so I haven't had feedback that's good or bad because I haven't posted things.
This survey is very hard to fill out because it's clear that you want us to say we are attacked and that social media but I've seen it go both ways. Some people are attacked, but they are often people who are saying really outrageous things. I've seen people be bullies and I've seen people say wonderfully-inclusive things. It is too bad that the discussion is whether social media is good or bad rather than what kinds of social media uses are good versus bad. I've seen good and bad on facebook, good and bad on blogs, good and bad on twitter, but also good and bad in the formal journals.
I have never been attacked because I do not post. However, I think this is an important question and would like to way in. I would define a personal attack as when comments focus on the individual, rather than the research results/practices and/or when either malicious intent or ignorance on the part of the attacked individual are assumed by the attacker. In addition, posting/blogging in this way about an individual who is not active on social media is especially dangerous as the attacked individual has no way to defend themselves. They may not even know how their names is being dragged through the mud.
a while ago a colleague and I posted a link to a pilot study in which we included a few questionnaires. We posted the link on our own Facebook profiles and within hours we received an incredibly rude and personal remark (in the form of a Facebook comment to our posted link) from a "Social Psychologist-turned-statistician", in which this person basically tore the study apart and asked us that he hoped we had no intention of doing anything with data from a study "so poorly conducted". The person later apologized when we confronted him, but the damage was already done.
My work has been the subject of replication attempts, and even if I wasn't specifically named, the implication can sometimes be there. It's hard not to take that personally. (Worth clarifying: This is not in response to a post of mine, because I very rarely post anything, just reading others' comments about issues of the day.)
I have never felt personally attacked on social media. I have, however, felt personally attacked offline, usually by senior people behind closed doors.
Unsubstantiated comments that are hurtful and perhaps rude, aimed at an individual's character rather than his or her work, and without any factual basis.
I have not received any personal attacks. But I have stopped posting anything like an opinion. A few comments I posted were simply ignored and not acknowledged (so it was not quite possible to answer questions above).
For example, I once posted a blog I had written about a recent study I had published. I received repeated responses from one individual who was questioning the methodology and conclusions. I think it felt a bit like a personal attack because this person was blatantly wrong, but commented publically several times.
Primarily name-calling type of ad hominems or ridicule of the content of my posting. Many times the attacks can be vague and are more attacks against the field of psychology viewed as being "worthless" or "not a real science".
An attack/comment that was meant to be demeaning, with no constructive or positive outcomes sought by the commenter.
A former friend in the field had made disparaging comments about the work of another researcher who I know and respect. I spoke up on that researcher's behalf, and the former friend grew increasingly hostile. The "threat" was largely in the form his tone, which was pretty uncivil. He questioned every statement I made, as though everything I said was suspect. I have heard that since that conversation, this person has made a point of requesting access to data for papers published by people from our circle of (former) friends. I very much suspect that this person would try to find ways to make my research look bad if he could because I expressed disagreement with him a few times.
People calling me stupid, conservative, etc.
I was told that I am what is wrong with social psychology.
Disagreements that are argumentative, not constructive or respectful
Personal attacks were not from other members of the academic community, but non-academics on Twitter who were ideologically opposed to the implications of my findings. The insults were at times vulgar and gendered. It was enough to make me abandon use of my personal account.
Ridiculed as being incompetent. Ganged up on by group of powerful others and berated. Ad-hominem attacks. Ridiculed for being a member of a minority group. Targeted repeatedly for being informative and helpful. Targeted repeatedly. Threatened and bullied. Ostracized and removed from inner groups. Powerful others in academia whose work is questionable have formed inside groups to target and punish those who seek to implement honest scientific work.
The person responding turned the comment into a personal insult rather than simply commenting on the opinion expressed or idea described.
Derision and disrespect about my views and my research.
I stay out of the fray,but I have seen others who are close to me personally attacked. I am junior. This makes me frankly, afraid of the mob mentality that seems to be out there sometimes. I want to know what is going on so i read- but I pray to stay away from the controversies as they are painful and career destroying even when there is not a justified cause for it!
Mostly general public that doesn't like findings of research. Not attacked my academic colleagues
name-calling, mocking, condescension, essentializing - ie that social media comment is "typical"
Nothing even close to attacks on me. I read much more than post; my greatest frustration is not having more impact when I do post, yet am ambivalent about putting in the time and attention I think it would take to have a larger social media presence. More generally, I would view an attack as something that goes beyond 'criticism'. I.e., that is ad hominem, that seems over-zealously targeted at an individual, etc.
I have been accused of having bias because I am a Gay man.
Insulting physical features Bringing family/friends actions into disagreement
I haven't really received this (I was too reluctant to post in PsychMap, in part, for this reason), but I have seen this, that is, what I would define as a personal attack. But instead, I think you're looking for a victim's definition here, which seems valid as well.
I have not only experienced my own work being critiqued but sometime my own competence called into question. In other words, some critiques are about whether the poster, tweeter, or disputes the way the data were collected or analyzed. Other critiques are personal ad hominems. In my experience, bloggers and researchers on social media seem mostly interested in building their own fan base. I don't say this lightly. In response to critiques some of my work received, I started out trying to engage the issue being critiqued directly, posting responses, new data, new analyses, or sending specific corrections to the critic. In other words, I assumed the critique was a good faith effort to engage in scientific dialogue. Not once have my responses changed a critic's posts. Even when showing very clearly that the critique was a misunderstanding or common error, bloggers have rarely if ever corrected their posts. I've come to the conclusion that the critique IS the point. For some critics, it is not really about getting it right. It is about being sufficiently irate and provocative that they build a loyal readership who logs in to see who they'll attack next.
These last 5 questions refer to social media participation in general, right? I have never been personally attacked or criticized in PsychMAP or ISCON, but that is because I rarely post there.
Discussion about failure to replicate and about statistics understanding
I was making a critical comment on child labour in China and was attacked on how I could dare to speak on such a topic since though I have never been in China personally.

In order to understand how our membership defines criticism, please provide details here about the content of the criticism. Please leave OUT names so ensure anonymity in responses.
Disagreement about the choices made within research, or the substance of an argument.
Typically identifying that I'm not considering an important perspective which would qualify the perspective I put forward. Constructive criticism I'd consider it.
i have never posted in any of these groups
generally it's just being wrong about a method, analysis, etc. I can be clueless.
Someone pointed out I failed to cite a highly relevant paper in a study I published. They were correct. I had never heard of the study even though I probably should have!
criticism = analyzing merits of a body of work / post
criticism is pointing out that you may be incorrect with the facts or logic you have presented
Disagreed with the statement but in a polite way.
Criticism is content oriented and is completely acceptable, even praiseworthy. But it needs to address content. This does include summarizing evidence of questionable or fraudulent practices, when it exists. But the criticism in such cases should stick close to the evidence and resist ascribing motives whenever possible. It's very difficult to balance clear and open criticism, which require close attention to particular cases, with keeping a level, civil tone and avoiding casting personal aspersions. The problem is: personal aspersions are, sadly, sometimes justified. But the bar for casting them should be very high. This is an issue our community is struggling with, and I don't see an easy resolution.
People have sometimes disagreed with statements that I have made, but that is the very reason I use social media -- to solicit opinions from people who may or may not agree with me. We as a field have many issues that we need to hash out together. I feel like I would not have been part of this process but for social media.
People have provided feedback on my blogposts that report statistical analyses, questioned the basis of my opinions on methodological topics
I had someone once say that what I had written was wrong, and when I gently provided citations confirming my facts, they said "Well the way you wrote it was confusing." That doesn't tell me WHY it was confusing. Then the admins agreed it was confusing and I still didn't understand why. I even asked; they just said "well write a little more clearly next time," which doesn't help at all because I thought I was being clear when I originally wrote it. The whole exchange was very annoying.
I think there is a difference between critical and criticism but this line is easily crossed in text presentation as opposed to in person conversation. It's easier to feel attacked in writing and some people immediately and reflexively reply with flip comments that feel dismissive. It's a very academic jock style way of discussion.
Criticism includes politely bringing up another perspective that I had not considered, or suggesting further evaluation of a person's motivations for doing something.
People say "I don't agree for reasons x y or z" - that strikes me as normal criticism. People have also said things like "there are problems with his numbers" - which is vague criticism but still counts as criticism, I suppose.
Constructive instances of criticism are much more numerous IMO. In countless instances, folks have disagreed with comments that I have made, in ways that are polite, but firm and well-articulated. These are much more numerous than personal attacks I have seen (and either directly experienced, or witnessed as a third party).
Critique of a viewpoint with a request to consider a different perspective, detailed the other perspective or viewpoint and how it was different from what I had suggested in my post
Criticism is valence-less; it is an on-topic evaluation or question about someone's work (not character)
Criticism come from a place of no assumptions or motives and a open debate that 1) results in suggestions to improve and 2) differences in opinions do not lead to ad hominem assumptions about a persons character or research ethic (i.e. Accusation of p-hacking)
Criticism mostly takes the form of content free stats comments from people who are not familiar with the substantive phenomena. This can sometimes be useful but often misses the boat. One actually needs to think about psychology, not just about numbers.
Critiques/objections to arguments either in comments or in published work
Criticism happens. I cannot clearly recall an instance, but usually it occurs when my logic is not fully developed, or my argument is weak and someone points out holes in it. That's okay, that's what discussion is all about.
I rarely feel criticized, but I do sometimes feel misunderstood, particularly by the general public, and they may feel they are criticizing my research/posting.
Sometimes I'll have academic peers critique research that I share, but it's generally well-informed criticism. and not directed at me for posting or commenting on the research. I love that sort of interaction.
The constructive critiques have typically taken the form of links to papers/blog posts explaining opposing view points, laying out of counterarguments, or a request for clarification.
I haven't received constructive criticism, but I would describe it as someone making a logical argument against something I said or posted, or replying with additional information that updates or refutes what I said (e.g, a link to a news story or scientific article).
Pointing out flaws/drawbacks/errors etc in posts/papers/ideas in either a neutral or constructive fashion. (i.e., no insults, jibes, quips).
People questioning design or analyses is criticism, but that is good if done well.
Critical evaluation of substantive issues
I have political discussions on Facebook all the time. My friends explain their positions and disagree with each other.
Disagreement on a point or pointing out counter evidence to something I posted
Criticism tends to be presented by linking to a blog or a more in-depth consideration of the discussion topic.
Criticism is good, fine, as long as it is based on an argument, rather than innuendo or attack on my status or arguing that I am defending my self-interest.
Point out mistakes, disagreement with my opinion
Same as above and also includes much more harmless disagreements of opinion
I asked a question on PsychMAP about why one wouldn't use pie charts in a presentation (I was genuinely curious - they seemed pretty and useful to me!), and one of the comments I got in response was something like "you'd find the answer to this question with minimal googling" (I can't remember who said it, so I couldn't give you the name even when you wanted). It felt like criticism because it made me think "oh, I should have googled first rather than wasted PsychMAP's time", but I didn't really mind, because a) other people provided more substantial answers (with links), b) the person was right; once I googled I found good answers!, and c) it wasn't personal. Also, I now know why pie charts are often worse than useless.
One example - shortly after posting an accepted paper on twitter, another user responded by requesting the data and claiming they weren't publicly available. The paper included a link to a public repository, and I replied to the user with that link. Over the next few hours, they proceeded to go through my data and syntax, lambasting it as missing key analyses and using the wrong variables. I was unaware of this, until someone else alerted me to it, at which point I got back on twitter, tracked down the parts of the script that they had simply missed, and pointed them at the codebook to identify the variables of interest. No apology (I was correct - the variables were identified in the codebook and the key analyses were present and commented in the script). Instead the user started on a Bayesian analysis, and then announced that they had proved us wrong. I stayed out of it, but watched as a number of Bayesian experts chimed in to say that that didn't look accurate, at which point the original user admitted that they did not know how to run Bayesian analyses and had never done one before. That was certainly criticism, but I can hardly say it was constructive, and certainly lacked goodwill. I am more than happy to share data with people who are legitimately interested, but this event makes me less inclined to post data publicly, where any bored person can abuse it and me; I lost an entire afternoon and evening to dealing with this "critic." Different occassion: one of my studies was the target of a blog critique. While I disagreed with the critique (and did not find it very thoughtful - this person was not acquainted with the subject area and did not appear to have read all of the details of the studies reported), they did notify us and allow us the opportunity to respond, and included a link to our response on the blog. While I did not personally enjoy this interaction, I think it was meant constructively and do not have an issue with it.
Again, I am not sure if I am not if I am supposed to describe criticism from social/personality psychologists only, or from others too. In any case, I can get criticized for being too feminist sometimes or having too racially progressive views. But, sometimes I am also critiqued for not being progressive enough (for instance, when I question if certain behaviors are really cultural appropriation or not).
Criticism is the negative evaluation or assessment of research and is one of the cornerstones of science.
Got feedback from a friend that one of my comments might have been considered mean by some in the field
Criticism is too broad a construct for what is going on in social psych right now. Constructive criticism that engages substantively with issues is part of academia. The personal attacks and accusations of incompetence (at best) and academic dishonesty (at worst) are another thing entirely.
Criticism can be constructive or a personal attack. Constructive criticism politely directs me to other sources on statistics or research that I can evaluate myself and that can help me become a better scientist. Constructive criticism also asks for more information from me, rather than just assuming / jumping to an interpretation of what I said. Personal attack may include sources (a link to a page), but instead uses it to tear apart what I've said piece by piece to vindicate the other person's perspective with little room for me to evaluate. It feels more like a "show" where I'm the scapegoat that this person is using to showcase their complaints and views, rather than to actually help me improve.
Questions of the logic of my arguments have been raised. Questions about the design of my studies have been raised. Questions about my decision in designing studies have been raised.
I think of criticism as thinking skeptically about another's work and voicing that skepticism. Constructive criticism is helpful criticism about something that is improvable.
criticism = thoughtful evaluations and evaluatory comments
comments that pointed out mistakes in my posts.
Criticism is aimed on the substance of the argument/data/whatever, not the person
Criticism occurs when people comment about the ideas (rather than the person). Saying "i think that idea has flaws" would be criticism.
I made a point about some stats related question, arguing against something the author had said, and he/she critiqued the point, and reasserted his/her own point, in furtherance of the argument.
Criticism to me would be someone saying that there are alternative evidence and results or ways to interpret findings.
To criticize is to coherently point out a relevant flaw. One can criticize an argument, a theory, a design, a set of results, and indeed a person. For each of these, one can make logical, empirical, statistical, motivational, and emotional criticisms. If you'd like, any even moderately-coherent disagreement can, in most ways, be seen as criticism. Even ad hominem attacks can, in some cases, be valid criticism when it is relevant (e.g. incompetence, past behaviour suggesting character flaws, untrustworthiness, motivations and conflicts of interests). Criticism is well-formed disagreement.
it relates to having a different opinion- this can lead to productive information exchange
I have answered never on this page and "somewhat" on the previous one. instead they should all be N/A because I don't really engage at all. I read but don't contribute. Not sure how to uncheck.
Criticism is rare; the only times I have received comments about posts or commentary that were "critical" the commenters made the same complaint: that the issue was boring to them or my comments were dated.
I recently was criticized for some posts about the legal status of abortion. The person was wrong, but she did attempt to "correct" me (LOL) in a way that was intended to be civil.
Comments about the substance of the conversation that undermine either the assumptions or the logical validity of an argument.
This would be defined as comments about a person's work which may be negative or which point out flaws.
While I haven't been the target of criticism because I usually just lurk and read others' comments in the psych groups, I can say that I would consider criticism something that pointed out flaws or areas of improvement in my work or my reasoning.
Not sure how to explain - someone can be critical and not express criticism. I'm defining criticism not a disagreement but an negative reaction that is not intellectually or scientifically based (e.g., "You're wrong and this is stupid" as opposed to "I disagree based on the following scientific rationale - the former is criticism, the latter is critical thinking and disagreement based on evidence).
Telling me that I'm a *bad* or *ignorant* person for disagreeing.
Taking issue with my stances and identifying weak points in my argument.
I define criticism as anyone expressing an opinion that a view I've articulated is wrong. This happens all the time.
A guest post I wrote for a blog was posted in a discussion group with very sharp criticism. I felt that the critic had not fully understood or engaged with the ideas I had presented, and was being unduly dismissive of my ideas. I did not feel like I was being singled out due to my identity or personal attributes.
comments from colleagues or strangers about a different interpretation
When people disagree with my position, offer alternative perspectives or evidence, and critique my methods, assumptions, or point out information I have missed. All of which is good and generally constructive.
Point out a methods or stats issue to include why it's inaccurate and how to fix it
Criticism is (1) about the research, not the researchers, (b) is typically addressed to a researcher, via email or peer review, and (3) is civilized in tone and rational in content. In "the olden days," when someone found something that opposed something that my lab had found, they'd reach out to discuss it, which would often lead to collaborations. Anonymous feedback in peer review can be extremely critical, but is usually helpful, although I've also seen this change a bit. Criticism of research is always a bit painful, but that doesn't make it destructive. What we're seeing now is not scientific discourse. It's bullying.
Evaluation (generally negative) of one's viewpoint or manner of expression.
Making an argument that some claim doesn't hold given specific counter arguments /claims.
some asshole disputed the validity of a claim i made in a tweet
I think criticism often bring up considerations or points that you did not mention in your original post, or corrections to something in the original post. I feel like criticisms are specific to the ideas of the posts.
Questioning the idea rather than the person and/or including resources so the poster can learn/benefit rather than just feel embarrassed
I have not really been criticized via social media. I view criticism to be relatively object in views of the work at hand while leaving inferences about the research out. Mentioning flaws or limitations of the research and not mentioning them as traits of the researcher would be criticisms.
On a few occasions I had some very useful feedback or conversions on social media platforms that were informative and helped me think more critically about my own work. Almost always has been helpful.
when someone comments to ask me to clarify a definition that I've used or asks a follow-up or extension question - making it clear that I haven't won them over with my opinion, but they're interested in hearing more.
I have received thoughtful commentary on ideas I have posted on social media, and view it as generally beneficial, even when I disagreed with the criticism.
difference in interpretation of evidentiary value of data/results, best method to use
pointing out articles or more information to add to the conversation
Some people have disagreed with my opinions, but I haven't noticed any harsh talk aimed at me.
Critical of the ideas, not the individual
I have never been subjected to criticism, but I would define it as raising relevant issues with my research, either in how it has been conducted or presented.
See above. Lots of criticism is so bizarre if can come off as an attack. Plenty of people have disagreed online with my opinion, but that is an important part of discussion.
Provided feedback to an analysis of a paper
Any concerns about the quality or rigor of the methods and any concerns about the veracity of the conclusions
can't remember - I sometimes have counterpoints to my posts raised.
The times when someone has disagreed with me in a way that left me feeling like I had learned something. When people take my views seriously and share their own with equal seriousness.
When someone suggests rewording something or improving something, but isn't a jerk about it. Or just disagrees but doesn't use ad hominems or imply you're lesser than for thinking differently or being wrong.
criticisms usually call into question research practices which deserve more scrutiny
error in analyses, sloppy language in statistical issues
Criticism of work: discussing how the research design, method of analysis, or argument contains errors or provides limited support for the original researcher's inferences. Criticism of person: suggesting that a researcher's behavior is driven by bad motives, character flaws, or a lack of intelligence.
I have not received criticism. I do not post personal comments in these arenas.
I provided my thoughts about a blog post, and the writer of this post plus one additional person disagreed with me. We posted a series of exchanges hashing out our views and disagreements.
People have disagreed with or criticized the logic behind my posts or comments. People sometimes challenge and criticize the opinions I express on my blog, either in comments on the blog or on FB.
Criticism includes pointing out arguments, data, theories, or papers that are contradictory to your current arguments, data, theories, or papers. It also includes pointing out potential areas of statistical mistakes or misunderstandings, suggesting "better" statistical or experimental methodologies, and replication attempts that have made an honest attempt to reproduce methods and point out where those methodologies differ from earlier studies. Such criticisms are constructive when they are focused on the *research* at hand, not on the *researcher* who conducted it (which then becomes a personal attack).
Other people had a different perspective on an issue than I did. They were critical of some of the ideas I endorsed. That is, they suggested some ways in which I might be mistaken or some points that I hadn't fully considered. I didn't feel personally attacked, but I'll admit that it doesn't feel great to have a public disagreement with someone who you respect.
Criticisms occur when people disagree with the content of a post, with research conclusions, etc. but do not direct their comments directly at the person, but rather at the research broadly.
My work has been criticized a couple of times on Twitter and elsewhere. In one instance, a person Tweeted that my figures were inappropriate. In another case, a person criticized my decision to run one study over another study. On a blog post, one commentor suggested that my line of reasoning was not sound.
Again, I have never been criticized, but I would define criticism as a simple disagreement- a challenge by one individual to defend (or admit error about) some practice, statement, etc. if the criticism is civil, it will contain substantive reasons for the disagreement and provide the criticized individual a chance to respond.
This is an example about a good friend being criticized on Twitter for her publication in a high-impact journal. The critic in question cherry-picked ONE p-value out of all the analyses and accompanying test statistics, and tweeted about it more than once. People reacting to that tweet obviously also focus on that one value and don't seem to be bothered to actually read the paper and check. This is what worries me about social media criticisms on published work: people seem to immediately believe that the critical information they receive is accurate and/or complete, maybe because social media interaction is somewhat cursory and quick, which makes people rely on heuristic processing more? Confirmation bias plays a role too I guess.
Implicit in many discussions is that a failed replication implies that the original researcher was either careless, incompetent, or unethical. This is evident in the way that if one study fails to replicate, all of that researcher's work (past and present) is now viewed more skeptically. If the discussion and sentiment were really centered on improving the methods and fixing mistakes, the critiques would typically remain focused on just the piece of work where those failures were evident.
I've had some fairly heated but critical discussions of how expertise is perceived on social media. Who becomes identified as experts and should those people have become identified as experts by people that aren't experts. Social media frees you from a lot, but you can also lose institutional authority when discussing results on it. And when everyone is on equal footing with regard to institutional authority, credibility is gained or lost for what can seem like unpredictable reasons. Which then means that there are ethical considerations when amplifying the work of others.
In my experience, the negative experiences I've had - all offline - consist of appeals to status/authority to undermine the validity of my arguments, and sexist remarks directed at me by senior people.
I often get nonverbal disapproval and direct verbal criticism (expressions of disinterest or confusion about why I would participate in online discussions of these types) when I discuss some of the methodological issues of the day with people who aren't in the FB groups. So the criticism is not actually from people interacting online -- it's from people in person who view any interaction with these groups as implying that one is in some sense a traitor to the field or wants to see others fail.
A comment on academic/scientific work that includes scientifically sound inquiry into the methods or statistics used in the original work.
Pointing out things that you might have overlooked in your argument.
See above for content re methodology and conclusions
A rebuttal to an idea, but with a logistical reasoning behind the rebuttal.
People calling out mistakes on my reasoning or my theories.
Pointing out that they thought what I was posting about was incorrect
Criticized for pushing for open and responsible scientific practices. Ridiculed, harrassed, belittled, ostracized. Ad hominem attacks.
Providing feedback that pointed out a potential problem or issue.
Negative comments about the content of posts
Criticism as a scientist should be a good thing. Lately, it seems like falling under criticism is a personal attack on character.
Politely showing why my post was incorrect, providing evidence
comments on the actual content of what someone has written or research they have conducted
I think criticism is 100% acceptable and desirable. Journal reviews often include legitimate criticism. Critics review art they appreciate. Criticism is providing evaluation and/or suggestions for improvement. (I don't think I'd include purely positive evaluation as criticism, but any kind of more balanced review or suggestion for change could be viewed as criticism.)
Negative comment about an ability or skill displayed.
Have been told that I was overstating my findings, when in fact I was not.
Telling another what is wrong or lacking Judgement with intent to make another revise
Same again, I haven't really received it, because of lack of posting.
These last 5 questions refer to social media participation in general, right? I have never been personally attacked or criticized in PsychMAP or ISCON, but that is because I rarely post there.
Just very direct responses but I am not angry, this is the person.
After sharing some research that we did, people refered to some research in their field that seems to indicate the opposite.