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Comment by petra | Hacker News Reader

Anybody read the original research ?

If so , how big was the effect ? What are the stats ?

The article mentions the "research" which, even though I think self-introspection is worthwhile, is extremely subjective and the self-measurements would influence the results. I wish social studies like these had other terms so that it wouldn't be conflated with real science.

What would you classify as "real" science? Be cautious of dismissing research because it doesn't fit into your personal definition of reality.

Quantifiable, repeatable, falsifiable theory that is peer reviewed and forms a foundation for other theory. Physics is at the peak of hard science. Social science is a worthy endeavor, but it belongs in a different category.

Sure, there is subjectivity in the ways researchers operationalize the concepts that they study. That doesn't mean that their research is not "real science". If the study is of sound design and the result is replicable, it ought to be called science.

Regarding the self-measurements influencing the results: the wisdom in the participants' reasoning (the dependent variable in the focal study) was evaluated by two independent hypothesis-blind raters. This seems like a pretty solid evaluation of the participants which should be immune to anything but the manipulation the researchers employed (the diary conditions). I am not sure what self-measurement you are concerned about.

I haven't read the entire paper, but it's here: https://psyarxiv.com/a5fgu

The main results are an interaction between Time (pre/post) and Diary condition (3rd person/1st person), t = 2.65, p = .008. They followed this up with a contrast showing that the 3rd person diary condition resulted in more wise reasoning post-intervention (as compared to pre-intervention), B = 0.130, SE = 0.028, t = 4.61, p < 0.0001. And importantly, this same improvement was not seen in the 1st person diary control group: B = 0.022, SE = 0.030, t = 0.74, p = 0.458.

They didn't provide degrees of freedom for their t-tests, but given their sample size (N=298) they're essentially z-tests anyway.

The largest difference seems to be in the "pre" condition for the training group vs everyone else. Seems weird. Anyone have an idea why that is?

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