By Matthew Warren

Often when we discuss the replication crisis in psychology, the main focus is on what it means for the research community — how do research practices need to change, for instance, or which sub-disciplines are most affected? These are all important questions, of course. But there’s another that perhaps receives less attention: what do the general public think about the field of psychology when they hear that supposedly key findings are not reproducible?

So a new paper in Social Psychological and Personality Science should make for concerning reading. Across a series of studies involving a total of almost 1,400 participants, the researchers find that not only do low rates of reproducibility decrease public trust in the field, but that it may also be tricky to build that trust up again.