APA Convention - Society for General Psychology

As I mentioned in a prior post, while I'm not a big fan of the main APA convention, I am a big fan of the APA Shadow Convention (© Charles 2012). This year I am in charge of the hospitality suite run by The Society for General Psychology (APA Division 1). We are co-hosting a number of events with The Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24) and The Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26). It is a pretty fun program, with some experiments thrown in (Post-symposium discussions, a Speed Scholars Event, etc.) as well as a lot of social activities. There is also the two-hour "Unifying Psychology" Lunch I mentioned in the last post, featuring several authors from this month's special issue. I'll do my best to get the program cut and pasted below. Hope to see some of you in Hawaii!

Unifying Psychology - RGP and APA

This month's issue of the Review of General Psychology is a special issue on Unifying Approaches to Psychology. I highly recommend it! The issue features 19 brief statements that move us towards a more unified field. Most importantly, the articles are not speculative pipe dreams; they are introductions to already existing and already productive interdisciplinary approaches also, later this week at the APA convention in Hawaii several of the authors, and anyone else who is interested, will be getting together in the Division 1 Hospitality Suite for a two-hour luncheon to discuss next-steps now that the issue is out (Friday August 2nd, from noon to 2). The ever-brilliant Daniel Hutto has generously offered to serve as host. The table of contents is:

The APA Publication Manual: How could a good thing go so wrong?

The professional manual in the news right now is the DSM V, which has drawn quite a lot of criticism. However, we shouldn't forget the other major manual, the APA publication manual. As the fall semester ends, with student papers to grade, and manuscripts to revise, we will all be griping about the publication manual in due course. Some recent reviewers informed me in no uncertain terms, for example, that I was a horrible and insensitive person because I referred to people who like to have intercourse with members of the same sex as "homosexual". A quick check of the new APA manual, which they directed me to forcefully, informed be that such people were "gay". It didn't seem to matter that "gay" was a pejorative term not too long ago, nor that people who like to have intercourse with members of the opposite sex were still called "heterosexual". This type of arbitrary rule making, especially when it leads to blatant inconsistencies of style, have caused many of us to question why the hell we let the APA tell us how to write. How did we get into this mess? Who ever thought this was a good idea?

For those who have felt this way, even a little, I highly recommend an article in this month's Review of General Psychology:

A Question Re: APS (Association for Psychological Science)

Dear Readers,
The Association for Psychological Science (APS) is holding its annual meeting in Washington DC this year, which makes it easy than usual for me to attend. I am generally not a fan of big conventions (c.f., prior comments on the APA convention). At smaller conferences you can meet new people, have lots of good unplanned conversations, and see lots of things you are interested in. In my general experience at big conferences, you can say "hi" to lots of people, but not really meet them; everything is too anonymous for unexpected good conversations; and there are tons of talks, but few are interesting. I am hoping for advice about whether or not I should give APS a try. In particular, I would like to know what types of positive experiences (if any) people have had there, and/or why you might think APS is worth prioritizing over other options.

Many thanks!
Eric

New Trends for Finding Fraud in Experimental Psychology

I have just returned from my first American Psychological Association meeting that I thought was worth attending. I noted in a previous post that APA meetings now feature a wide array of division activities, and that those are worth going to, regardless of the main convention. This time, however, there were a handful of talks (out of many) which were valuable enough to make me think the main convention was starting to turn things around. The highlight was a session organized by Joseph Simmons, and featuring talks by Leslie John and Uri Simonsohn.

The APA convention can be worth while?!?

Last year I attended the American Psychological Association's annual meeting for the first time in over a decade. The main conference was as much a waste of time as I had remembered. It was filled with sad talks given to mostly empty rooms and sad poster presentations that only a handful of people stopped at (including my own). The only filled rooms were for awards talks, where people talked about work long past. That was really interesting, but only if they were in an area you were not familiar with, and people tended not to attend talks in areas they were unfamiliar with. (In fairness, many rooms were filled for talks that counted as continuing education credits for clinicians, as well as a few "advice" sessions for students.)

That said, it was actually a very positive experience; I was now connected enough to find out about The APA Shadow Conference (© Charles 2012). It turns out that almost every APA division has a bunch of meetings, small talks, and organized discussions in dedicated hotel suites, and that a lot of very interesting stuff happens there. Small groups (ranging from 5 to 25) people interested in similar topics were continuously coming together, with discussion continuing over meals and across days. Most of the time the suites were filled to a neigh ideal level of intimacy, sometimes they were downright crowded. Never was a person talking to an empty room, nor was a speaker ever addressing people who were not genuinely interested. This was actually worth while!