Primbs, Maximilian A., Pennington, Charlotte Rebecca, Lakens, Daniël, Silan, Miguel Alejandro A., Lieck, Dwayne S. N., Forscher, Patrick S., Buchanan, Erin M. and Westwood, Samuel J. (2022). Are Small Effects the Indispensable Foundation for a Cumulative Psychological Science? A Reply to Götz et al. (2022). Perspectives on Psychological Science , p. 174569162211004.
Abstract
In the January 2022 issue of Perspectives, Götz et al. argued that small effects are “the indispensable foundation for a cumulative psychological science.” They supported their argument by claiming that (a) psychology, like genetics, consists of complex phenomena explained by additive small effects; (b) psychological-research culture rewards large effects, which means small effects are being ignored; and (c) small effects become meaningful at scale and over time. We rebut these claims with three objections: First, the analogy between genetics and psychology is misleading; second, p values are the main currency for publication in psychology, meaning that any biases in the literature are (currently) caused by pressure to publish statistically significant results and not large effects; and third, claims regarding small effects as important and consequential must be supported by empirical evidence or, at least, a falsifiable line of reasoning. If accepted uncritically, we believe the arguments of Götz et al. could be used as a blanket justification for the importance of any and all “small” effects, thereby undermining best practices in effect-size interpretation. We end with guidance on evaluating effect sizes in relative, not absolute, terms.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916221100420 |
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Divisions: | College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Institute of Health & Neurodevelopment (AIHN) College of Health & Life Sciences College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology Aston University (General) |
Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Funding Information: FundingThis work was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research VIDI Grant 452-17-013 (to D. Lakens). |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | effect sizes,small effects,benchmarks,practical significance,statistical inference |
Publication ISSN: | 1745-6916 |
Last Modified: | 02 Dec 2024 08:39 |
Date Deposited: | 08 Apr 2022 14:33 |
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PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2022-09-20 |
Published Online Date: | 2022-09-20 |
Accepted Date: | 2022-03-30 |
Authors: |
Primbs, Maximilian A.
Pennington, Charlotte Rebecca ( 0000-0002-5259-642X) Lakens, Daniël Silan, Miguel Alejandro A. Lieck, Dwayne S. N. Forscher, Patrick S. Buchanan, Erin M. Westwood, Samuel J. |
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