Psychology is in many ways built on top of problematic methodology which have led to conflicting findings and a broad replication crisis.
Not to mention nearly all psychological research is conducted on WEIRD individuals (western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic). Usually college students.
Psychology gets unfairly singled out wrt replication but the same issues are found in a lot of other disciplines, such as biomed.
Pure psychology research definitely has its methodological and rigour issues that cast doubt on all its findings. However I think working psychologists in industry have validated psychological methods (A/B testing) and theories (dark patterns) for making profit at the expense of users’ privacy, mental health, time, and attention.
The standard p value in most psych research is 0.05, which means that you are willing to accept a 1/20 risk of a Type 1 error - that you are content with a 5% chance of a false positives, that your results were entirely due to random chance.
Keep in mind that you don’t publish research that doesn’t give results most of the time. Keep in mind that you have to publish regularly to keep your job. (And that if your results make certain people happy, they’ll give you and your university more money). Keep in mind that it is super fucking easy to say “hey, optional extra credit - participate in my survey” to your 300 student Intro Psych class (usually you just have to provide an alternative assignment for ethical reasons).
The biggest issue is that every brain is different, and you can’t slap absolutes on that. One study may be completely accurate, but with their specific sample.
