Individual vs Systemic: The pedagogical approaches to solutions of the replication crisis

With increased interest in the replication crisis and the open science movement, it is important to examine the implications of communicating these topics to undergraduate psychology students. At the beginning of the open science movement, the effort to improve research practices was seen and discussed as both an individual and systemic endeavor. Some authors placed the focus on individual researchers, encouraging them to engage in practices like pre-registration and open data. Others, however, placed the responsibility with the system, arguing that incentive structures and norms need to reward these new practices. The current project examined whether using individual vs. systemic teaching approaches impacted psychology student’s trust, motivation, and optimism regarding the field of psychology. Undergraduate psychology students (N= 476) were randomly assigned to one of three video conditions, one specifying how researchers’ practices should change (individual), one specifying on incentive structures should change (systemic), and one summarizing general research practices in psychology. I expected to find that participants in the individual condition would show the highest levels of trust in the field, motivation to improve the field, and optimism, while participants in the systemic condition would show the highest trust in psychological researchers. Overall, while our manipulation effectively influenced participants' perceptions of the teaching approaches, the expected differences in trust, motivation, and optimism were not consistently observed. These results suggest that, regardless of whether one takes an individual or systemic approach, teaching about the replication crisis does not always undermine (or enhance) trust, motivation, and optimism.