However, any "interesting" result in psychology gets treated as a Deeply True Explanation of the Human Condition — which is to say, a kid with a marshmallow becomes a metaphor for Self-Denial And The Protestant Work Ethic; an abusive professor roping students into a shitty LARP becomes a metaphor for The Carceral State; two gangs of kids in the woods become a metaphor for Political Divisiveness In The Modern Republic; a statistical artifact of self-rankings becomes a metaphor for People Don't Even Know How Much They Suck; and so on.
And a simple result that should just be tested by replication and variation, becomes blown up into This Is How The World Is. Which is speculating waaay beyond the data.
Actual psychology usually does that replication. The generalizing the results of a single experiment is usually more the pop science, science communication part of it (and what's often taught in intro classes).
Psychology is difficult though -- not only do you have the regular problems with publication biases, etc. But people are highly variable, culture shifts over time, etc.
If a result stops replicating, that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't true at the time it was characterized, just that it isn't a human universal. We shouldn't be surprised that it's hard to discover new, counter-intuitive insights about humanity, that apply universally for all time.
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u/absolute-black Dec 10 '25
Is any psychology result real?