Stop talking about "psychology" like it's a monolithic thing. Start by separating "hard" psychology (perception, attention, psychophysics, etc) from social psychology.
Papers about saccadic adaptation are, I suspect, much more reproducible than those about implicit association.
That puts them in the general level of quality for all bio-medical research, so, yeah, deeper issues indeed, but I find it fascinating that this sub-group is so good.
The problem with social psychology, on the whole, is that it's highly politicized. This is especially true with regards to any study involving race, gender, or "identity" (in the sense of identity politics).
The boundaries are fuzzy, and you'll find people with psych, medical, neuro, math, CS and philosophy degrees in experimental cogsci labs.
I think your hypothesis conflates a few notions, for instance hierarchical organization and study design. I think the relevant factor in your comparison is not the level of analysis, but the measure. "Early life event X" is likely to be measured by a survey, while studying neuronal populations is in the realm of electrophysiology.