The psychological science accelerator: Advancing psychology through a distributed collaborative network

Hannah Moshontz, Lorne Campbell, Charles R. Ebersole, Hans Ijzerman, Heather L. Urry, Patrick S. Forscher, Jon E. Grahe, Randy J. McCarthy, Erica D. Musser, Jan Antfolk, Christopher M. Castille, Thomas Rhys Evans, Susann Fiedler, Jessica Kay Flake, Diego A. Forero, Steve M.J. Janssen, Justin Robert Keene, John Protzko, Balazs Aczel, Sara Álvarez SolasDaniel Ansari, Dana Awlia, Ernest Baskin, Carlota Batres, Martha Lucia Borras-Guevara, Cameron Brick, Priyanka Chandel, Armand Chatard, William J. Chopik, David Clarance, Nicholas A. Coles, Katherine S. Corker, Barnaby James Wyld Dixson, Vilius Dranseika, Yarrow Dunham, Nicholas W. Fox, Gwendolyn Gardiner, S. Mason Garrison, Tripat Gill, Amanda C. Hahn, Bastian Jaeger, Pavol Kačmár, Gwenaël Kaminski, Philipp Kanske, Zoltan Kekecs, Melissa Kline, Monica A. Koehn, Pratibha Kujur, Carmel A. Levitan, Jeremy K. Miller, Ceylan Okan, Jerome Olsen, Oscar Oviedo-Trespalacios, Asil Ali Özdoğru, Babita Pande, Arti Parganiha, Noorshama Parveen, Gerit Pfuhl, Sraddha Pradhan, Ivan Ropovik, Nicholas O. Rule, Blair Saunders, Vidar Schei, Kathleen Schmidt, Margaret Messiah Singh, Miroslav Sirota, Crystal N. Steltenpohl, Stefan Stieger, Daniel Storage, Gavin Brent Sullivan, Anna Szabelska, Christian K. Tamnes, Miguel A. Vadillo, Jaroslava V. Valentova, Wolf Vanpaemel, Marco A.C. Varella, Evie Vergauwe, Mark Verschoor, Michelangelo Vianello, Martin Voracek, Glenn P. Williams, John Paul Wilson, Janis H. Zickfeld, Jack D. Arnal, Burak Aydin, Sau Chin Chen, Lisa M. Debruine, Ana Maria Fernandez, Kai T. Horstmann, Peder M. Isager, Benedict Jones, Aycan Kapucu, Hause Lin, Michael C. Mensink, Gorka Navarrete, Miguel A. Silan, Christopher R. Chartier

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

207 Scopus citations

Abstract

Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)501-515
Number of pages15
JournalAdvances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
Volume1
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018

Keywords

  • Crowdsourcing
  • Generalizability
  • Large-scale collaboration
  • Psychological Science Accelerator
  • Theory development

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