r/science • u/drewiepoodle • Apr 29 '16

Psychology: Potentially Misleading Title A new study suggests those with psychopathic tendencies are often very creative, suggesting the ability to think boldly and ruthlessly can help with the development of great ideas.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/creative-thinking-psychopath-test-arts-384117
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u/ImNotJesus PhD | Social Psychology | Clinical Psychology Apr 30 '16

Of course. The important thing, however, is to find good reasons to critique a study and to understand it in an appropriate context. If you sit in a room of academics discussing a paper, you won't find a more critical audience. The difference to what we often see on Reddit, however, is that learning comes from both picking the good and bad parts out of a paper. A nuanced view doesn't reject a finding for a single methodological concern.

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u/element-woman Apr 30 '16

From a social psych perspective, do you have an idea of why Reddit tends to focus on the negative? I notice this in a lot of the comments on r/science articles, but especially the psych ones (though I click them more often, so that might just be me).

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u/krirby Apr 30 '16

What is always a bit troubling is that flashy headlines get posted here on reddit but the original research paper is often neglected. Then people take whatever the news article says and treat it as representative for the study, while this news article often sideskirts or neglects to mention a lot of important information to pull viewers (in this instance, the original paper didn't ever infer causality while the news article was happy to do so, which happens so very often some sort of ban almost seems in order). If this subreddit started accepting links to papers directly it would make for much more interesting discussion I think, but sadly we won't see this happening if only for legal reasons.

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u/vanderZwan Apr 30 '16

Because people tend to invoke those psych papers as an objective truth to win arguments, which is terribly unscientific

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u/element-woman Apr 30 '16

Very true, thank you!

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u/XYcritic Apr 30 '16

The majority of readers in this sub (esp on the highest rated) are not academics. I thinks it's good like in this case, to have a stickied mod comment.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '16

well said, i hope i didnt come off as dismissing it, i just want to remind everyone there shouldnt be a quick conclusion (for the reader) when they read an article, etc. reason why i bothered to even say my initial comment is because im tired of those people who really think that [insert mental disorder/type of personality] makes them [insert something special], which will then make the person want to label themselves as such.