Search

La science ouverte vise à améliorer la rigueur, la robustesse et la reproductibilité de la recherche en psychologie. Malgré la résistance de certain·es universitaires, le mouvement de la science ouverte a été soutenu par certain·es chercheur·euses en début de carrière (ECR), qui ont proposé de nouveaux outils et des méthodes innovantes pour promouvoir et utiliser les principes de la recherche ouverte. Les ECR féministes ont beaucoup à apporter à cette nouvelle façon de faire de la recherche. Cependant, elles et ils sont confronté·es à des obstacles spécifiques, qui peuvent les empêcher de s'engager pleinement dans le mouvement de la science ouverte. Nous, dix ECR féministes spécialisées en psychologie, issues de divers parcours universitaires et personnels, explorons la science ouverte à travers un regard féministe afin de considérer comment les ECR peuvent utiliser leur voix et leur pouvoir de manière unique. En adoptant une approche critique et intersectionnelle, nous discutons de la manière dont la recherche féministe en début de carrière peut être complétée ou remise en question par les changements en faveur de la science ouverte. Nous présentons également comment les ECR peuvent agir en tant qu’acteur·rices pour le changement dans un contexte de précarité universitaire. Nous identifions les moyens par lesquels la science ouverte peut bénéficier de l'épistémologie féministe et nous concluons en envisageant un avenir pour les ECR féministes qui souhaitent s'engager dans les pratiques de la science ouverte dans leur propre recherche.

[Note that this paper is now published at Psychology of Women Quarterly in the Special Issue on Feminist Psychology and Open Science https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843211029255] Open science aims to improve the rigor, robustness, and reproducibility of psychological research. Despite resistance from some academics, the open science movement has been championed by some early career researchers, who have proposed innovative new tools and methods to promote and employ open research principles. Feminist early career researchers have much to contribute to this emerging way of doing research. However, they face unique barriers, which may prohibit their full engagement with the open science movement. We, ten feminist early career researchers in psychology, from a diverse range of academic and personal backgrounds, explore open science through a feminist lens, to consider how voice and power may be negotiated in unique ways for early career researchers. Taking a critical and intersectional approach, we discuss how feminist early career research may be complemented or challenged by shifts towards open science. We also propose how early career researchers can act as grassroots changemakers within the context of academic precarity. We identify ways in which open science can benefit from feminist epistemology and end with envisaging a future for feminist early career researchers who wish to engage with open science practices in their own research.

Is art appreciation universal? Previous evidence suggests a general preference for representational art over abstract art, and a tendency to like art originating from one’s own culture more than another culture (an ingroup bias), modulated by art expertise. However, claims about universality are difficult given that most research has focused on Western populations. Across two pre-registered and statistically powered experiments, we explore the role of culture and art expertise in the aesthetic evaluation of Indian and Western paintings and dance depicting both abstract and representational content, by inviting expert and art-naïve Indian and Western participants to rate stimuli on beauty and liking. Results suggest an ingroup bias (for dance) and a preference for representational art (for paintings) exists, both modulated by art expertise. As predicted, the ingroup bias was present only in art-naïve participants, and the preference for representational art was lower in art experts, but this modulation was present only in Western participants. The current findings have two main implications: 1) they inform and constrain understanding of universality of aesthetic appreciation, cautioning against generalising models of empirical aesthetics to non-western populations and across art forms, 2) they highlight the importance of art experience as a medium to counter prejudices.

Humans copy other people without their conscious awareness, a behaviour known as automatic imitation. Although automatic imitation forms a key part of daily social interactions, we do not copy other people indiscriminately. Instead, we control imitative tendencies by prioritising some actions and inhibiting others. To date, neuroimaging studies investigating the control of automatic imitation have produced inconsistent findings. Some studies suggest that imitation control relies on a domain-specific neural circuit related to social cognition (the theory-of-mind network). In contrast, other studies show engagement of a domain-general neural circuit that is engaged during a diverse range of cognitive control tasks (the multiple demand network). Given the inconsistency of prior findings, in the current paper we avoided problems associated with interpreting individual studies by performing a meta-analysis. To do so, we used a multi-level kernel density analysis to quantitatively identify consistent patterns of activation across functional magnetic resonance imaging studies investigating the control of imitation. Our results show clear and consistent evidence across studies that the control of automatic imitation is guided by brain regions in the multiple demand network including dorsolateral frontoparietal cortex. In contrast, there was only limited evidence that regions in the theory of mind network were engaged. Indeed, medial prefrontal cortex showed no consistent engagement and right temporoparietal junction engagement may reflect spatial rather than imitative control. As such, the current meta-analysis reinforces the role of domain-general control mechanisms and provides limited evidence in support of the role of domain-specific processes in regulating imitative tendencies. Consequently, neurocognitive models of imitation need updating to place more emphasis on domain-general control mechanisms, as well as to consider more complex organisational structures of control, which may involve contributions from multiple cognitive systems.

Automaticity has been argued to be a core feature of the mental processes that guide social interactions, such as those underpinning imitative behaviors. To date, however, there is little known about the automaticity of imitative tendencies. In the current study, we used a finger movement stimulus-response compatibility task to index processes associated with controlling the urge to copy other people's actions. In addition, we manipulated the level of load placed on a secondary cognitive task to test if there is a capacity limit in the systems that filter distractor finger movement stimuli. Across three experiments, we showed that whether letter strings (Experiment 1), faces (Experiment 2), or hand postures (Experiment 3) are held in working memory, there was no impact on compatibility effects in the main task. These findings show that the cognitive operations that generate imitative tendencies are relatively efficient in that they operate the same whether or not a central resource is taxed heavily with nonsocial (letter strings) or social stimuli (faces and hand postures). Therefore, in the sense of persisting in the presence of a demanding cognitive load, this type of imitation behavior can be considered automatic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Although there is growing interest in the neural foundations of aesthetic experience, it remains unclear how particular mental sub-systems (e.g., perceptual, affective, cognitive) are involved in different types of aesthetic judgments. Here we use fMRI to investigate the involvement of different neural networks during aesthetic judgments of visual artworks with implied motion cues. First, a behavioural experiment (N=45) confirmed a preference for paintings with implied motion over static cues. Subsequently, in a pre-registered fMRI experiment (N=27), participants made aesthetic and motion judgments towards paintings representing human bodies in dynamic and static postures. Using functional region-of-interest and Bayesian multilevel modelling approaches, we provide no compelling evidence for unique sensitivity within or between neural systems associated with body perception, motion and affective processing during the aesthetic evaluation of paintings with implied motion. However, we show suggestive evidence that motion and body-selective systems may integrate signals via functional connections with a separate neural network in dorsal parietal cortex, which may act as a relay or integration site. Our findings clarify the roles of basic visual and affective brain circuitry in evaluating a central aesthetic feature – implied motion – whilst also pointing towards promising future research directions, which involve modelling aesthetic preferences as hierarchical interplay between visual and affective circuits and integration processes in frontoparietal cortex.

The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) is an organization whose mission focuses on bringing together scholars who want to improve methods and practices in psychological science. The organization reaffirmed in June 2020 that “[we] cannot do good science without diverse voices,” and acknowledged that “right now the demographics of SIPS are unrepresentative of the field of psychology, which is in turn unrepresentative of the global population. We have work to do when it comes to better supporting Black scholars and other underrepresented minorities.” The purpose of the Global Engagement Task Force, started in January 2020, was to explore suggestions made after the 2019 Annual Conference, held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, around inclusion and access for scholars from regions outside of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe (described in the report as “geographically diverse” regions), a task complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest in several task force members’ countries of residence. This report outlines several suggestions, specifically around building partnerships with geographically diverse open science organizations; increasing SIPS presence at other, more local events; diversifying remote events; considering geographically diverse annual conference locations; improving membership and financial resources; and surveying open science practitioners from geographically diverse regions.

In the current article, we discuss key issues faced by PhD students, and suggest ways in which PhD students can take care of themselves in the PhD in order to work to their full potential without leading to burnout.

The process of understanding the minds of other people, such as their emotions and intentions, is mimicked when individuals try to understand an artificial mind. The assumption is that anthropomorphism, attributing human‐like characteristics to non‐human agents and objects, is an analogue to theory‐of‐mind, the ability to infer mental states of other people. Here, we test to what extent these two constructs formally overlap. Specifically, using a multi‐method approach, we test if and how anthropomorphism is related to theory‐of‐mind using brain (Experiment 1) and behavioural (Experiment 2) measures. In a first exploratory experiment, we examine the relationship between dispositional anthropomorphism and activity within the theory‐of‐mind brain network (n = 108). Results from a Bayesian regression analysis showed no consistent relationship between dispositional anthropomorphism and activity in regions of the theory‐of‐mind network. In a follow‐up, pre‐registered experiment, we explored the relationship between theory‐of‐mind and situational and dispositional anthropomorphism in more depth. Participants (n = 311) watched a short movie while simultaneously completing situational anthropomorphism and theory‐of‐mind ratings, as well as measures of dispositional anthropomorphism and general theory‐of‐mind. Only situational anthropomorphism predicted the ability to understand and predict the behaviour of the film's characters. No relationship between situational or dispositional anthropomorphism and general theory‐of‐mind was observed. Together, these results suggest that while the constructs of anthropomorphism and theory‐of‐mind might overlap in certain situations, they remain separate and possibly unrelated at the personality level. These findings point to a possible dissociation between brain and behavioural measures when considering the relationship between theory‐of‐mind and anthropomorphism., Is trying to understand an artificial mind the same as trying to understand a human mind? Using a multi‐method approach, we test if and how the process of anthropomorphism overlaps with that of theory‐of‐mind using brain and behavioural measures. While dispositional anthropomorphism did not capture variation in theory‐of‐mind network activity, situational anthropomorphism did influence how people understand and predict the ongoing actions of an agent.

Cognitive control refers to the ability of human beings to adapt flexibly and quickly to continuously changing environments. Several decades of research have identified a diverse range of mental processes that are associated with cognitive control but the extent to which shared systems underlie cognitive control in social and non-social contexts, as well as how these systems may vary across individuals, remains largely unexplored. By integrating methodological approaches from experimental and differential psychology, the current study is able to shine new light on the relationships between stable features of individuals, such as personality and sex, and the architecture of cognitive control systems using paradigms that index social (automatic imitation) and spatial processes. Across three large-sample experiments (>600 participants in total), we demonstrate that cognitive control systems are largely invariant to stable aspects of personality, but exhibit a sex difference, such that females show greater task-interference than males. Moreover, we further qualified this sex difference in two ways. First, we showed that the sex difference was unrelated to the sex of the interaction partner and therefore did not reflect an in-group bias based on sex. Second, we showed that the sex difference was tied to a form of spatial interference control rather than social (imitative) control and therefore it does not reflect a specialised mechanism for guiding social interactions exclusively. Instead, our findings suggest that a robust sex difference exists in the system (or set of subsystems) that operate in resolving a form of spatial interference control, and that such systems are unaffected by social factors such as the sex of the interaction partner. The results highlight the value of integrating approaches from experimental and differential psychology by providing a deeper understanding of the structure of cognitive control systems, while also providing new dimensions to incorporate into theories and models of social and non-social control.