Re:The piranha problem in social psychology / behavioral eco...
by conformist on Friday May 06, 2022 @07:13PM
(#31290506)
I guess the point is that if there are a large number of big, variable, competing effects with interactions etc, you can't just look at each of them in isolation and expect them to predict a large fraction of the variance. So you need a more sophisticated (possily impossibly complex) model or study, as you said.
In the nudging example, this appears to imply something like "conditioned on a large effect having been measured using a sufficient amount of data (!), you have to be extremely confident in the study design and model to actually believe it"?
Even if you've got competing parties actively trying to nudge people in a particular direction, it doesn't mean there is no discernible effect; increases in political polarisation and emotional attachment to brands can be observed even as people consciously attempt to nudge other people in broadly opposite directions.
This doesn't mean the social psychology and behavioural economics experiments hypotheses are necessarily good ones or the experiments well constructed. But complex systems and competing hypotheses are present in all science and are what controlled experiments and statistical controls are for...