Ulrich Schimmack writes on the replication crisis in psychology, covering priming, stereotype threat, ego depletion, and statistical power.
HN commenters link it for Kahneman's response on priming studies and as evidence that much behavioral research doesn't replicate.
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone here both of the replication crisis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
and of hindsight bias:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias
I see quite a few comments of people looking at the result and trying to come up with explanations for why it might hold. Heck, there even seems to be some confusion with the term "bullshit-receptivity" (and "bullshit-sensitivity"), which means that, even if the paper is valid, you might be drawing the opposite conclusion.
I'd like you to imagine, without going back to check right now, that you are wrong about the result. That they've found the opposite correlation to the one you thought holds. Can you find a reason why it would? Does it seem justifiable, explainable? As much so as your original belief? That should be a warning sign that your explanation might be a bit pre-emptive.
I am glad for the commenters saying they found the result "counter-intuitive". Noticing your confusion in this way is a good skill to learn, especially in this day and age. That nagging feeling in the back of your mind that something is off or that you forgot something.
-----
As an aside: If you are interested in more on biases, may I suggest reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. One of my favourite non-fiction books. Some of the results in there (notably priming) have themselves unfortunately fallen prey to the replication crisis, but the book as a whole is still…
My point is not that this work is flawed, or that there should not be an article reporting on this research or the topic of interviewing. Rather, I think it'd be better for a third party to write about the topic in a more objective manner, rather than a professor promoting his own research (and thus with skewed incentives).
In particular, I was disappointed to find a (short) paragraph in the article that I find bogus. That does not mean the article shouldn't have been posted in the first place, but just that this paragraph should have been edited or removed.
I think there is something wrong when I feel like I have to look up the actual research paper and check whether the claims made in an article are supported by data and methodology. I should not be a skeptic when reading New York times articles.
To be fair, it is posted in the opinion section, but should we really just take this article as an opinion? That doesn't feel right to me either.
Then onto your last question and Daniel Kahneman, we can talk about that for a long time, but let me keep it short. The best place I know (though technical) is the blog by Andrew Gelman ([1][2] turned up in a 5 second Google, but there is way more on his blog), and Daniel Kahneman himself has "admitted" flaws in his studies [3][4].
[1] http://andrewgelman.com/2014/09/03/disagree-alan-turing-daniel-kahneman-regarding-strength-statistical-evidence/
[2] http://andrewgelman.com/2016/06/26/29449/
[3]…
Before this thread gets too negative, I would like to point out a positive example of intellectual humility: Kahneman's retraction of a chapter of Thinking Fast and Slow [1]. In it, Kahneman acknowledges the basic points of of the Retraction Watch article, explains his mistake, and says specifically what parts of his worldview have changed as a result of the new evidence that he's been faced with. He clearly says that, although he still thinks that priming is real, he has significantly more doubts now about the generality and replicability of priming research, now that study after study has failed to find the effects of priming when attempting to reproduce famous results. He even says that he had the information to come to the same conclusions as the blog, but failed to do so because of his own biases.
[1]: https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-1454
See also Kahneman's response to this: https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-1454
> I still believe that actions can be primed, sometimes even by stimuli of which the person is unaware. There is adequate evidence for all the building blocks: semantic priming, significant processing of stimuli that are not consciously perceived, and ideo-motor activation. I see no reason to draw a sharp line between the priming of thoughts and the priming of actions. A case can therefore be made for priming on this indirect evidence. But I have changed my views about the size of behavioral priming effects – they cannot be as large and as robust as my chapter suggested.
(Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228712)
Another example of studies that seem to be hard to dublicate is about the concept of priming [0]. I think sometimes the non-scientific community picks up an idea which just seems so good and starts to apply it to an array of life sitations, while the idea itself might be limited to a small amount of sitations/conclusions. Especially with priming, I read some hair-raising statemens from laymen, about how priming seems to explain virtually everything.
It also happens to scientists, of course, but they tend to be a bit more careful and stick a little closer to the original experiment (which itself might not be evidence enough for the conclusion).
[0] https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-1454
Regarding cognitive differences between men and women having a biological component: https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html
Regarding the quality and replicability of stereotype threat studies, that came in vogue after the seminal Steele & Aronson 1995 paper:
https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/tag/does-stereotype-threat-influence-performance-of-girls-in-stereotyped-domains-a-meta-analysis/
https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-replication-failures-in-the-stereotype-threat-literature/
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/12/30/is-stereotype-threat-overcooked-overstated-and-oversold/