Sulik Justin, Rim Nakwon, Pontikes Elizabeth, Evans James, Lupyan Gary
Cognition, Values and Behavior Lab, Munich Interactive Intelligence Initiative, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2025 Apr 17. doi: 10.1038/s41562-025-02153-1.
Scientific research is often characterized by schools of thought. We investigate whether these divisions are associated with differences in researchers' cognitive traits such as tolerance for ambiguity. These differences may guide researchers to prefer different problems, tackle identical problems in different ways, and even reach different conclusions when studying the same problems in the same way. We surveyed 7,973 researchers in psychological sciences and investigated links between what they research, their stances on open questions in the field, and their cognitive traits and dispositions. Our results show that researchers' stances on scientific questions are associated with what they research and with their cognitive traits. Further, these associations are detectable in their publication histories. These findings support the idea that divisions in scientific fields reflect differences in the researchers themselves, hinting that some divisions may be more difficult to bridge than suggested by a traditional view of data-driven scientific consensus.
科学研究往往具有思想流派的特征。我们调查了这些分歧是否与研究人员的认知特质差异（如对模糊性的容忍度）有关。这些差异可能会引导研究人员偏好不同的问题，以不同的方式处理相同的问题，甚至在以相同方式研究相同问题时得出不同的结论。我们对7973名心理学领域的研究人员进行了调查，研究了他们所研究的内容、他们对该领域开放性问题的立场以及他们的认知特质和性格之间的联系。我们的结果表明，研究人员对科学问题的立场与他们所研究的内容以及他们的认知特质有关。此外，这些关联在他们的出版历史中也能被检测到。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即科学领域的分歧反映了研究人员自身的差异，这暗示着某些分歧可能比传统的数据驱动的科学共识观点所认为的更难弥合。
