Foxes who want to be hedgehogs

Is ethical pluralism possible in psychology's replication crisis

Bibliographic Data

ID8975440
AuthorsPaul Sullivan (0000-0003-2217-0193, Department of Psychology University of Bradford Bradford UK, corresponding author), J A D Ackroyd (0000-0002-0294-1096, Department of Sociology and Criminology University of Bradford Bradford UK)
Year2022
Volume53
Issue1
Pages46-61
Publication date2022-03-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jtsb.12342
OpenAlexW4220936593
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited33

In this article, we draw attention to public‐private dilemmas among psychologists that make sense of the debates around the replication crisis, citation practices and networking practices. We argue that the values of justice and caring map onto the public sphere and private sphere respectively and create the horns of a dilemma for academics. While bureaucratic justice is a publicly revered value of modernity in psychological research that underpins ethics, validity, reliability and equality of opportunity, ‘caring’ is a more subtle value of traditionalism that runs in parallel and is detected only by our psychological practices. In particular, we argue that it is detected by practices such as disputes between the replicated and their replicators in replication studies (understood as a dramatic counter reality) as to who is more ‘careless’ with procedure; citation (including the self‐care of self‐citation) as thanksgiving and incantation of powerful others in enchantment rituals, and the system of professional indebtedness that accrues in ‘kinship’ networks – where kinship is understood broadly as adoption into a research group and its network. The clashes between these values can lead to a sense of hypocrisy and irony in academic life, as incommensurate values split between private and public expression. From this position, we delve into Isaiah Berlin's work on incommensurate values to suggest that ethical pluralism, involving more public recognition of the equal but different ethical demands of these values can help overcome these everyday dilemmas in the public sphere

Dilemma · Epistemology · Fallacy · Hypocrisy · Kinship · Pluralism (philosophy · Political science · Public sphere · Relativism · Social science · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Functional Brain Connectivity Studies · Law · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Social Psychology

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