“The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills”

I heard about the above-titled book by science journalist Jesse Singal when it came out, actually before it came out, as the author had talked with me about some of the topics in the book and had run some passages by me to check before publication. But I only happened to read it recently. As I often say with this kind of book, I’m not the intended audience; still, I find it interesting to see what people have to say about the replication crisis and related problems with public science. One thing I like about this book is its modesty: it doesn’t push any big theories, instead going through several examples of hyped psychology research that found its way into public attention and policy. The examples are “self-esteem,” “superpredators,” “power pose,” “positive psychology,” “grit,” “implicit bias,” “social priming,” and “nudging.” I’m putting all these terms in scare quotes because they’re slogans as much as anything else. I don’t want to say that Singal offers no big-picture…