
Registered Replication Report – Facial Feedback Hypothesis [pdf] - Jerry2
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/StrackRRR_manuscript_accepted.pdf
======
Jerry2
It you don't have the time to read the whole paper, jump to page 11 and check
out the graph at the bottom of the page. Top confidence interval is from the
original study and the rest are confidence intervals from studies that tried
to replicate it.

~~~
evanpw
The 95% CI for the original study contains zero? How does a study with a non-
significant result which can't be replicated become "seminal"?

~~~
coldtea
The same way people write "citation needed" and then put their brains to
sleep.

It's not as if they will then go to replicate and evaluate those citations (if
they were, they could just as well try to evaluate what the other person told
them directly, or at least try finding those citations for or against it
themselves).

They just need some comforting assurances -- which will then repeat freely,
few (or nobody) bothering to examine those "citations" at any step of the
chain.

For me, unless the science is old enough to be including in University 101
courses, I don't much care about it. Unless you work in the field (and will
actually use and evaluate the results mentioned in it) a peer reviewed paper
is worth almost nothing to the casual HN reader.

~~~
mabcat
By the way, "holding a pen in your mouth makes you feel smiley" is definitely
in psych 101 courses, and social 201, and also showed up in cognition 301 if
memory serves.

------
Osiris30
Also see previous discussion at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030791)

------
sp332
I'm pretty sure the first picture on page 4 shows a misunderstanding of how
the pen is supposed to be used. You're supposed to put it in your teeth cross-
wise, so your mouth is forced into a kind of smiling position.

~~~
nkurz
Actually, the replication seems to be correct. See Figure 1 in the original
here: [http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-
et-a...](http://datacolada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-
al-1988-cartoons.pdf)

I applaud both the original and replication authors for including clear
illustrations. And at a glance, Strack et al seems to be a well written paper.

------
threepipeproblm
I thought I knew the basic premise of "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" even
though I haven't read it... but I don't understand why this would be a key
study for the book. Can anyone provide a quick explain?

~~~
dvanduzer
Biting a pen with your teeth or your lips should induce one of two different
"Type I Thinking" facial expressions, associated with Kahneman's "fast
thinking" as I understand it.

This study appears to discuss the link between forcing a type I physical
response, while attempting to prompt a type II response (laughter/humor). As
I'm reading it, this study is talking about a previous study in which fuzzing
the "fast thinking" system affected the "slow thinking" system. This new paper
calls those results into question.

------
rer
Here's a link to the 1988 paper they're disputing [http://datacolada.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-a...](http://datacolada.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/Strack-et-al-1988-cartoons.pdf)

I wonder if it'd make a difference if the pen was horizontal in the
participant's mouth, touching both corners of the lips. That's the mental
image I walked away with when I read "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

------
brownbat
There's a fun p-hacking game embedded in this article from Fivethirtyeight:

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-
broken/](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/)

Really drives home how tough it is to thread the needle of both interesting
and useful results.

------
yalogin
The more I see these the more I am thinking these psychological conclusions
are just placebos. You pick the one that appeals to you most and ignore the
rest. They work only because you want them to be true.

~~~
nondescriptuser
It's funny, because your statement is a topic in the book.

------
pajop
From the pdf, data and registered protocols in the Open Science Framework
site: [https://osf.io/pkd65/](https://osf.io/pkd65/)

------
leereeves
Psychology (and social science in general) has a serious problem.

Standards for publication are far too low, incentives for replication almost
nonexistent, negative results rarely reported.

How many of the published results in social science are trustworthy?

[https://www.xkcd.com/882/](https://www.xkcd.com/882/)

~~~
dominotw
what do you think can be done here? These people obviously know that their
studies can't be replicated, they are not ignorant so they are obviously
malicious.

~~~
function_seven
> These people obviously know that their studies can't be replicated

I don't think that's fair to say at all. I can come up with several ways a
study can non-maliciously arrive at a false conclusion:

1\. The researchers may accidentally leak information to the participants
regarding the hypothesis being studied. When using human subjects, it's very
difficult to avoid biasing them toward results they may _think_ you're looking
for.

2\. Researchers may not sufficiently blind themselves during the experiment,
causing them to have undue influence on the outcome, even if they're not
consciously trying to exert it.

3\. Some unknown confounding effect may be at play during the experiment that
wasn't properly accounted and controlled for.

Those are just three I could think of. When dealing with behavioral sciences,
I can't imagine how difficult it must be to design a test protocol that
eliminates all the messiness of the meatbags being studied.

~~~
mabcat
I helped run a clinical trial for an antidepressant one time. It was a double-
blind randomised within-subjects-replicated crossover design. All that control
was complicated, time consuming and very expensive. Only the hospital pharmacy
knew whether participants were in treatment or placebo for a given session,
and we never met the pharmacist, just received an orange vial. But we're
pretty sure information still leaked, because drugs have side-effects. There's
nothing to be done about this. Use an active placebo, you might say, but now
you've added "get ethics approval to administer a nauseating placebo" to your
9-month-long ethics todo list. And then your placebo is worse than your active
and the whole study is screwed because everyone spewed up in the MRI. Meatbags
are tricky indeed.

------
jfager
It's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and the study in question is hardly "key" to
the book, it gets all of one paragraph in chapter 4.

~~~
dewarrn1
Both valid points, but this failure-to-replicate does erode some confidence in
the general notion of embodied cognition (and I believe deservedly so because
these phenomena have always seemed rather incredible). Much of Kahneman's
other work has a more solid empirical foundation.

------
xzion
Is the post title referring to "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman,
or something else?

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tootie
That study wasn't really key to the book.

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haddr
It's not key study, as title suggests.

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sly010
Also, smelling farts prevents cancer. Look it up.

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MollyR
Sigh. I wish I could explain this better to my business managers who read
PopSci like this, and try to remold the business to follow them.

------
Kenji
The rise of social 'science' is equal to the demise of intellectual rigour and
common sense. The sad part is that social science could be done right, but few
do it right because most people who don't suck at statistics go for fields
that are more worthwile.

