I am convinced that this is representative of the entire field of psychology:
Until this year, a box of Festinger’s documents—communications with colleagues, research notes, transcribed telephone conversations—in his archives at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, remained sealed at the request of his widow, Trudy. When the files were released, a political scientist named Thomas Kelly discovered that the researchers, who were ostensibly neutral observers, actually wielded a profound level of influence over the Seekers. In a recent peer-reviewed paper, Kelly noted that there were at least five paid observers in addition to the three researchers; at some Seekers meetings, half of those present may have been infiltrators. One research assistant pretended to dream about a flood and receive psychic messages; one of Festinger’s co-authors, Henry Riecken, was revered by the group’s leaders. When the flood didn’t come, Riecken apparently encouraged the Seekers to double down on their beliefs, Kelly told me in November. “Here’s this canonical study, and it’s backwards,” Kelly said. “This is misleading people about the dynamics of new religions and social psychology.
Cognitive-dissonance theory faltered again in 2024. In an effort to replicate research from the eighties, a team of psychologists across thirty-nine labs instructed nearly five thousand college students to write an essay in favor of increasing school tuition, a position they were presumably against. Some were told they had to take this stance; others were allowed to make their own decision. Cognitive-dissonance theory holds that people in the voluntary group would have been more likely to update their opinions on school costs: they couldn’t justify having written dissonant essays on the ground they’d been forced. But the researchers didn’t detect any difference: the two groups changed their minds at similar rates.
Honestly so much of science stuffers from these issues in some way shape or form. Even today we have study's that everything thought were revolutionary and breakthrough that had bad actors in this.
That being said Counterfactual Thinking is a much better explanation of the Indian earthquake and disaster/life altering events. It addresses cognitive dissonance in a much better way.
Can USA still engage in any military aggression of scale and substance now that it has lost the supply of refined rare earths essential to the manufacture of most modern war hardwares?
It seems many Americans still believe they are the dominant military power - but in reality, are they?
Adjusting our understanding of the world to rapidly changing global power dynamics can be challenging and takes time.
No hurry, just whenever you are ready to confront the reality that the US military industrial combine is crippled by its lack of reliable access to refined rare earths supply chains for at least the next decade...
Yes because dumb bombs dont need rare earths and they can be attached to the unmatched military hardware that already exists and the US has stock piles of.... same with stock piles of rare earths.... and funny you think that the US in a war with China wouldnt bomb their capability to kingdom come.
This isn't the only case of famous psychology research that turns out to be fraudulent or just poorly done. The Stanford Prison Experiment is one. The recent scandal involving Francesca Gino is another. I definitely remember reading about another famous psychologist whose life work was discovered to be all fabricated, though I can't remember the name.
Because of this, social psychology is one of my least trusted fields of study among those that purport to use the scientific method.
one other? It's like every single one of them. Social psych was the biggest victim of the replication crisis...mostly just complete bullshit of a "science"
"victim of the replication crisis"? I'd say they were the perpetrators
yeah, sure. I meant more in terms of the discipline that was most exposed/lost credibility from the revelations
While the replication crisis is real, esp in social sciences, note that the construct of "dissonance" has a broader application than Festinger's formulation in When Prophecy Fails, or the replication study mentioned in the article.
For instance, there's the phenomenology of dissonance (how does it feel to express one thing and feel another), whether and how people resolve these consistencies, etc. There are also related terms that get at related aspects of the phenomenon like cognitive consistency. All make different claims and have different scopes.
Point is, it would be a mistake to extend this criticism too far.
Perhaps the idea of cognitive dissonance is still real in part, but we should no longer use that story about the cult as an example.
And I would caution anyone to be wary of any claims made regarding social psychological research. They just love to do these cute experiments that get headlines but the results are often exaggerated, misinterpreted, or downright fraudulent.
Has there ever been a dominant empire that did not trample on and subjugate other nations and cultures?
Has to USA not invaded many other nations over its history?
Is the US a brutal militarist global bully?
Perhaps because you enjoy wealth and security as a result of US imperialism you ignore the facts-
Nations USA has invaded -
(1) American Indian nations (1776 onwards, American Indian Genocide; 1803, Louisiana Purchase; 1844, Indians banned from east of the Mississippi; 1861 onwards, California genocide; 1890, Lakota Indians massacre), (2) Mexico (1836-1846; 1913; 1914-1918;
1923), (3) Nicaragua (1856-1857; 1894; 1896; 1898; 1899; 1907; 1910; 1912-1933; 1981-1990), (4) American forces deployed against Americans (1861-1865, Civil War; 1892; 1894; 1898; 1899-1901; 1901; 1914; 1915; 1920-1921; 1932; 1943; 1967; 1968; 1970; 1973; 1992; 2001), (5), Argentina (1890), (6), Chile (1891; 1973), (7) Haiti (1891; 1914-1934; 1994; 2004-2005), (8) Hawaii (1893-), (9) China (1895-1895; 1898-1900; 1911-1941; 1922-1927; 1927-1934; 1948-1949; 1951-1953; 1958), (10) Korea (1894-1896; 1904-1905; 1951-1953), (11) Panama (1895; 1901-1914; 1908; 1912; 1918-1920; 1925; 1958; 1964; 1989-), (12) Philippines (1898-1910; 1948-1954; 1989; 2002-), (13) Cuba (1898-1902; 1906-1909; 1912; 1917-1933; 1961; 1962), (14) Puerto Rico (1898-; 1950; ); (15) Guam (1898-), (16) Samoa (1899-), (17) Honduras (1903; 1907; 1911; 1912; 1919; 1924-1925; 1983-1989), (18) Dominican Republic (1903-1904; 1914; 1916-1924; 1965-1966), (19) Germany (1917-1918; 1941-1945; 1948; 1961), (20) Russia (1918-1922), (21) Yugoslavia (1919; 1946; 1992-1994; 1999), (22) Guatemala (1920; 1954; 1966-1967), (23) Turkey (1922), (24) El Salvador (1932; 1981-1992), (25) Italy (1941-1945); (26) Morocco (1941-1945), (27) France (1941-1945), (28) Algeria (1941-1945), (29) Tunisia (1941-1945), (30) Libya (1941-1945; 1981; 1986; 1989; 2011), (31) Egypt (1941-1945; 1956; 1967; 1973; 2013), (32) India (1941-1945), (33) Burma (1941-1945), (34) Micronesia (1941-1945), (35) Papua New Guinea (1941-1945), (36) Vanuatu (1941-1945), (37) Austria (1941-1945), (38) Hungary (1941-1945), (39) Japan (1941-1945), (40) Iran (1946; 1953; 1980; 1984; 1987-1988; ), (41) Uruguay (1947), (42) Greece (1947-1949), (43) Vietnam (1954; 1960-1975), (44) Lebanon (1958; 1982-1984), (45) Iraq (1958; 1963; 1990-1991; 1990-2003; 1998; 2003-2011), (46) Laos (1962-), (47) Indonesia (1965), (48) Cambodia (1969-1975; 1975), (49) Oman (1970), (50) Laos (1971-1973), (51) Angola (1976-1992), (52) Grenada (1983-1984), (53) Bolivia (1986; ), (54) Virgin Islands (1989), (55) Liberia (1990; 1997; 2003), (56) Saudi Arabia (1990-1991), (57) Kuwait (1991), (58) Somalia (1992-1994; 2006), (59) Bosnia (1993-), (60) Zaire (Congo) (1996-1997), (61) Albania (1997), (62) Sudan (1998), (63) Afghanistan (1998; 2001-), (64) Yemen (2000; 2002-), (65) Macedonia (2001), (66) Colombia (2002-), (67) Pakistan (2005-), (68) Syria (2008; 2011-), (69) Uganda (2011), (70) Mali (2013), (71) Niger (2013).
Here is a summary of post-1950 avoidable mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%) for each country occupied by the US in the post-1945 era. The asterisk () indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era (thus, for example, the UK and the US have been major occupiers of Afghanistan , Iraq and Korea , leaving aside the many other minor participants in these conflicts). Data is also given for the US: US [8.455m/300.038m = 2.8%], Afghanistan [16.609m/25.971m = 64.0%], Cambodia* [5.852m/14.825m = 39.5%], Dominican Republic [0.806m/8.998m = 9.0%], Federated States of Micronesia [0.016m/0.111m = 14.4%], Greece* [0.027m/10.978m = 0.2%], Grenada* [0.018m/0.121m = 14.9%], Guam [0.005m/0.168m = 3.0%], Haiti* [4.089m/8.549m = 47.9%], Iraq* [5.283m/26.555m = 19.9%], Korea* [7.958m/71.058m = 11.2%], Laos* [2.653m/5.918m = 44.8%], Panama [0.172m/3.235m = 5.3%], Philippines [9.080m/82.809m = 11.0%], Puerto Rico [0.039m/3.915m = 1.0%], Somalia* [5.568m/10.742m = 51.8%], US Virgin Islands [0.003m/0.113m = 2.4%], Vietnam* [24.015m/83.585m = 28.7%], total = 82.193m/357.651m = 23.0%.
Thus in the period 1950-2005 there have been 82 million avoidable deaths from deprivation (avoidable mortality, excess deaths, excess mortality , deaths that did not have to happen) associated with countries occupied by the US in the post-1945 era.