In recent months, researchers and some journalists have strung cables around the necks of at least three monuments of the modern psychological canon:
- The famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which found that people playacting as guards quickly exhibited uncharacteristic cruelty.
- The landmark marshmallow test, which found that young children who could delay gratification showed greater educational achievement years later than those who could not.
- And the lesser known but influential concept of ego depletion - the idea that willpower is like a muscle that can be built up but also tires.
But since 2011, the psychology field has been giving itself an intensive background check, redoing more than 100 well-known studies. Often the original results cannot be reproduced, and the entire contentious process has been colored, inevitably, by generational change and charges of patriarchy.
"This is a phase of cleaning house and we're finding that many things aren't as robust as we thought," said Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, who has led the replication drive. "This is a reformation moment - to say let's self-correct, and build on knowledge that we know is solid."
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