There is conflict afoot on whether psychological science can offer anything to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Jay Van Bavel et al (2020) offered up a smorgasbord of possibilities https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0884-z. Not everyone was happy . . .

IJzerman, Lewis & Przybylski et al (2020) [ILP] wrote that “Psychological Science is Not Yet a Crisis-Ready Discipline” https://psyarxiv.com/whds4/  The title misleads; the claims are narrower, “Psychology research on COVID-19, we argue, is unsuitable for making policy decisions.”

ILP compare psychology to NASA Technology Readiness Levels as a standard, which requires substantial testing and qualification. But anyone who’s watched Apollo 13 knows sometimes it’s better to go with your best bet in a crisis than to do nothing at all.

The claim of “not being ready” has a fundamental mistake built into it, one not made by Van Bavel et al: Psychology, and social psychology in particular, is not “one thing.”

Some areas are shaky, promising-but-untested, and some areas are as rock-solid as one could ever hope them to be. The complaints over-focus on the shaky ground.

Many of the complaints about “not being ready” the sense that we know so little because replications rates are low in some areas.

There have been failures to replicate, but because the selection of targets of replication has never been close to representative, we have *no idea* of “replication rates.” It’s anec-data.

For the first years, many of the replication targets were selected because of the reasonable doubts observers had about some studies (and were “easy” to carry out). This biased selection focused on the unlikely and the recent. It cannot speak reliably to “rates” within a field.

[And why, ever, do NHST-based replications use two-tailed tests? This has never made any sense, and its only value is to under-estimate replication rates.] ($SET soap-box aside=off.)

Is their reliable, solid, replicated research and ideas in psychology worth knowing and using for the COVID-19 pandemic? Absolutely yes.

Anyone making policy decisions from research begun just a few years ago is taking a big risk, but what about research areas begun 40, 50, up to 90 years ago? Can some of this be trusted? Yes!

A few possibilities include conformity and social norms, social comparison, that attitude change is unnecessary for behavior change, opt-in < opt-out, cognitive coping strategies reduce stress, and so many more.

Does anyone think that people typically prefer freedom and choice to ultimatums and threats?

Does anyone think that people demonstrating against masks and the state shutdowns are not experiencing psychology reactance? Could increasing a sense of autonomy increase mask use? Or is that idea simply too dangerous to try?

Psychology isn’t unitary but a construction of many parts & pieces. Unlike Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “Wonderful One-Hoss-Shay” that was built all parts with equal strength and weakness, some parts are more reliable, better understood, and capable of value in a crisis than others.

Judging a science by its weakest parts is a pessimism that beckons toward nihilism.