JEPS Bulletin

Between science and policy: an interview with Dr Toby Wardman

Even though scientists are oftentimes lost in the ivory towers of their scientific work, academic research in any discipline – and especially psychology – is tightly connected to the society. It contributes to the improvement of the living conditions in the population. It supports the decision-making process of policy-makers with scientific evidence. And it is paid for by the tax-payers’ money. In an attempt to ensure that this natural relationship between science and society is always well-balanced, we make policies – governmental policies, international policies, institutional policies. The field at the interplay between science and policy-making – very intuitively coined ‘science policy’ – therefore concerns itself with topics such as the allocation of resources for scientific research, the careers of scientists, and the systems of efficient communication between scientists and policy-makers (Pielke, 2005). Continue reading →

Karla Matić

Karla Matić is a PhD student at Max Planck School of Cognition interested in cognitive neuroscience, large-scale neuroimaging methodology, and science policy. Her research topics include visual awareness, functional architecture of sensory cortices, and meta-cognition. If she didn't aspire for an academic career, she would be running a book-café on a small Croatian island.

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Publishing a Registered Report as an Undergraduate: An Interview with Tatiana Kvetnaya

In the past, we have talked a lot about Registered Reports and their potential to increase the rigor and reproducibility of psychological science (see here, here, and here). In a previous blog post, James Bartlett interviewed Dr. Hannah Hobson, who published a Registered Report as part of her PhD project.

In this blog post, we talk with Tatiana Kvetnaya who received her Bachelor degree from the University of Tübingen, and who is currently pursuing her graduate studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Excitingly, Tatiana recently published her bachelor thesis as a Registered Report with the Journal of European Psychology Students. Below, she recounts how she first came in contact with Registered Reports, her experience publishing one herself, and tips for students thinking about doing the same. Continue reading →

Fabian Dablander

Fabian Dablander is doing a PhD at the Department of Psychological Methods at the University of Amsterdam. You can find more information at https://fdabl.github.io/.

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Technology-assisted Therapy: An Interview with “Aaron T. Beck” Professor Daniel David

The technological developments we see today set a whole new view of life as we know it. Starting with the Industrial Revolution, and getting to robot assisted mass production of goods, we get to use intelligent machines in order to make life easier and evolve as a species. And psychology is not an exception. Ever since ELIZA was developed to simulate a psychotherapist in the ‘60s (try it for yourself here) computers have been widely used within clinical psychology and psychotherapy. Today, we will be talking about the efforts of the Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy School of “Babeș-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania in pursuing Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and practice excellence.

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Ioana Piscoi

Currently a first year Master Student of Clinical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy at "Babes-Bolyai" University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Ioana is interested in developing her skills to become an ACT Therapist. She is particularly interested in the field of Personality Disorders and Techlonogy Assisted Psychotherapies, wishing to pursue a PhD in the future.

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Writing a Systematic Literature Review

Investigating concepts associated with psychology requires an indefinite amount of reading. Hence, good literature reviews are an inevitably needed part of providing the modern scientists with a broad spectrum of knowledge. In order to help, this blog post will introduce you to the basics of literature reviews and explain a specific methodological approach towards writing one, known as the systematic literature review. Continue reading →

Eva Štrukelj

Eva Štrukelj is currently studying Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Algarve in Portugal. Her main areas of interest are social psychology and health psychology. Regarding research, she is particularly curious about stigma and with it related topics.

“WHAT REALLY MATTERS IS SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS AND NOT PERSONAL SUCCESS.” — AN INTERVIEW WITH PROF. DORTHE BERNTSEN

Take a minute to think about the following question. Who are you?

In trying to come up with an answer, you most likely have relied on knowledge about your past experiences. You might have thought about where you grew up, where you went to school or university, your current career, or your particular interests and hobbies. Most of these memories are autobiographical. Continue reading →

Nicola Falzon

After finishing her Bachelor's in Psychology at the University of Malta, Nicola Falzon currently works at YMCA Homeless Shelter, working with diverse clients presenting various difficulties and at Willingness Malta, organising various scientific events and being involved in various projects related to sexuality. She intends to sit for a Masters in Counselling Psychology in the near future and go on to further her studies in the field of sexuality and gender diversity.

Accelerating Psychological Science with Large-Scale Collaborations

Science is the collaborative attempt to understand ourselves and the world around us better by gathering and evaluating evidence. Ironically enough, we are pretty bad at evaluating evidence. Luckily, others rejoice in pointing out our flaws. It is this reciprocal corrective process which is at the core of science, and the reason why it works so well. Working collaboratively helps us catch and correct each other’s mistakes.
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Fabian Dablander

Fabian Dablander is doing a PhD at the Department of Psychological Methods at the University of Amsterdam. You can find more information at https://fdabl.github.io/.

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“Bullied Into Bad Science”: An Interview with Corina Logan

The last two years have seen a lot of talk about the issues of science and scientific publishing – and how the incentives prevalent in science (publish or perish, preferably with high-impact stories with lots of news coverage) are actually bad for science. Corina Logan, a zoologist and part of a group of postdocs from the University of Cambridge is eager to push for a change in the publishing culture. They argue that the current way of publishing is hindering the progress of science. A recent column by Brian Martinson in Nature summarises the problem nicely: “[The fact that researchers need publications encourages] all manner of corner-cutting, sloppiness in research, and other degradations in the quality of publications, not to mention an obvious motive for plagiarism. A quest for high-profile papers leads researchers to favour a spectacular result, even if it is specious. Authors cite themselves to boost the impact of publications, and cite colleagues to curry favour.” Continue reading →

Katharina Brecht

After finishing her PhD at the University of Cambridge, Katharina is currently a Postdoc in the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen. Her research interests revolve around the mechanisms of social and causal cognition in animals.

A conceptual introduction to mathematical modeling of cognition

Psychological researchers try to understand how the mind works. That is, they describe observable phenomena, try to induce explanatory theories, and use those theories to deduce predictions. The explanatory value of a theory is then assessed by comparing theoretical predictions to new observations. Continue reading →

Frederik Aust

Frederik Aust is pursuing a PhD in cognitive psychology at the University of Cologne. He is interested in mathematical models of memory and cognition, open science, and R programming.

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How to stop being busy and become productive

With the rise of social media, potential distractions have risen to unseen levels; they dominate our daily lives. Do you check Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or Email on a constant basis? Do you have an embarrassing relationship with your alarm clock’s snooze button? Do you pass on social invites, telling other people that you are too busy? As a generation, we have lost the ability to focus sharply on the task at hand; instead, we work on a multitude of things simultaneously, lamenting that we do not achieve what we seek to achieve. Continue reading →

Fabian Dablander

Fabian Dablander is doing a PhD at the Department of Psychological Methods at the University of Amsterdam. You can find more information at https://fdabl.github.io/.

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Are You Registering That? An Interview with Prof. Chris Chambers

There is no panacea for bad science, but if there were, it would certainly resemble Registered Reports. Registered Reports are a novel publishing format in which authors submit only the introduction, methods, and planned analyses without actually having collected the data. Thus, peer-review only focuses on the soundness of the research proposal and is not contingent on the “significance” of the results (Chambers, 2013). In one strike, this simple idea combats publication bias, researchers’ degrees of freedom, makes apparent the distinction between exploratory and confirmatory research, and calms the researcher’s mind. There are a number of journals offering Registered Reports, and this is arguable the most important step journals can take to push psychological science forward (see also King et al., 2016). For a detailed treatment of Registered Reports, see here, here, here, and Chambers (2015). Continue reading →

Fabian Dablander

Fabian Dablander is doing a PhD at the Department of Psychological Methods at the University of Amsterdam. You can find more information at https://fdabl.github.io/.

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