
Seeing a political logo can impair understanding of facts: study - pmcpinto
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-seeing-a-political-logo-can-impair-your-understanding-of-facts
======
oerpli
Approx. last week there was a big study that investigated whether other
studies replicate or not.

Here's a fun quiz where people can guess the results:
[https://80000hours.org/psychology-replication-
quiz/](https://80000hours.org/psychology-replication-quiz/)

One of the trends was that priming studies usually failed. I would assume that
the quality of study form OP is similar.

~~~
trishume
Remembering exactly this I went and found the paper and looked and the sample
sizes aren't that small, I couldn't see any missing comparisons, and the
relevant P values are less than 0.01 so not obviously super P-hacked.

On the other hand it is a priming study that would probably not have been
published if the result went the other way, and it's a newsworthy result. All
indicators of non-replication.

I got 88% accuracy on the replication quiz and if this was on the quiz I would
have marked it as unsure. I don't think it's obviously bogus, but also I'm not
totally convinced.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _it is a priming study_

Wasn’t the original study which claimed to “discover” priming recently
debunked as not replicable?

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userbinator
_and asked participants to sketch out a prediction for sea ice through 2025_

The good thing is that 2025 is only 7 years away, so we will likely see the
actual numbers to compare with. I hope the researchers have saved their data
until then.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Actually the predictions of the participants is orthogonal to the purpose of
the study. The study was meant to determine how political labels affect
cooperation and understanding. Climate change was only one of many issues that
could have been used for this.

I do however take issue with headlines that try to draw conclusions from a
study other than “this study happened and this was the result.”

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olliej
Can we stop posting articles like this to HN when the underlying paper isn’t
publicly available?

Especially these “doing X causes [major behavioral change]” papers where the
sample size is super important, and they also tend to have very low
reproducibility rates?

~~~
jahewson
Sample size is pretty big:

> they recruited 2,400 people to join four custom-made social networks

~~~
olliej
2400 people is not a lot, especially for a claim like this.

Also there was a similarly sized study a few weeks ago, and basically all
participants were students or faculty at 2 different universities.

If you are going to make a claim like this, you need to have a very large and
very significant measurable effect, and the smaller your sample size the
larger the effect needs to be to have any confidence of the correctness of the
study.

Again, to be on HN the paper itself, and the source data, should be freely
available. By allowing them to be on HN as they are we are essentially
allowing unchecked press releases that _always_ over state the validity of
claims.

~~~
Nadya
_> 2400 people is not a lot, especially for a claim like this._

For a population size of 350,000,000 people the required sample size for a 95%
confidence level within a 2% margin of error is 2,401 people. Assuming these
2,401 people were selected properly then that is just about enough, even for a
claim like this.

~~~
mamon
To be „chosen properly” means that the sample must have similar age, racial,
educational, gender structure as the 350M society it is supposed to represent.
Recruiting 2401 college students as the only sample automatically makes any
study unscientific bullshit.

Also, if you ask me, 95% confidence with 2% error margin is pretty low bar.

------
xabuq

      "LIBERALS"
    

There's this cross section of people who physically wretch and convulse at
hearing that word, and can be whipped into an animalistic rage with the
mention of it.

When I hear it used in a certain way, by certain media outlets, it's obvious
that they're gunning for a pavlovian response.

It's incredibly manipulative, and the real problem I have with it, is that an
astounding number of people eat it up, eager to froth at the mouth and start
speaking in tongues, wailing and gnashing teeth.

It's funny, but maybe three quarters of all people are looking for a reason to
just unload on someone, at any given moment. They really want the lid lifted,
so they can vent some rage onto another person. People may differ on how they
rationalize the way they find targets, but one common trait unites them, in
that more than half of everyone is looking for a fight.

