Talk:Amy Cuddy

Replication section
This section of the article was recently blanked repeatedly by an anonymous editor. This is to initiate a discussion over section blanking.


 * update: Thanks to ever helpful editors, the section is unblanked. It has been greatly improved by
 * 1. A neutral and descriptive heading
 * 2. An excellent summary of the primary author's response to Ranehill now included as the conclusion of the section
 * The section makes good sense, presents the situation well, IMHO. Tim bates (talk) 10:50, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

The web page cited as a basis for blanking the controversy section doesn't mention the word blog (and also is "currently inactive and is retained for historical reference").

Wikipedia references must be published, traceable, authentic, and relevant. The two cited in this section both meet these criteria.

Psychological Science is a prestigious peer-reviewed journal. Joe Simmons and Uri Simohnson are widely recognized authorities on replication and replicability. The datacolada website is a well-recognised, expert review of these issues, widely read in the academic community.

The comments made describe the claim made by the authors of these two reports: The psych science paper failed to replicate the effect; the meta-analysis and p-curve result are compatible with zero effect. No suggestion is made of anything other than a Type-II error being made.

This seems fairly clear cut: vote retain Tim bates (talk) 22:56, 30 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Simmons and Simohnson's website contains statements that are not verified or refereed by any outside authority. It also doesn't contain sufficient detail that would allow the 'analysis' within it to be checked or verified. The veracity of the statements can not be verified. It is difficult to remove the 'personal website' opinions from this sections and still leave any content of value without removing the whole section. Any ideas on how to do this would be appreciated. Continual reposting of personal opinions drawn from a blog, reported as fact is against wikipedia policy regarding acceptable sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.9.202.126 (talk) 14:22, 1 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Also see that data colada has a "BLOG" button in the top right corner to get to the content. Therefore as a blog this content should be inadmissible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.9.202.126 (talk) 15:12, 1 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Dear anon. As noted above, blogs, newspapers, and many forms of reference are not only acceptable but commonplace. Regarding the important point of verification, the authors include the R code allowing anyone to conduct their p-curve analysis for themselves. I think that's about as verifiable as things get.
 * As noted, they are world-experts in meta-analysis, and developed several of the techniques now being used to understand publication bias. The traceability is high, the report is authentic: they too have their academic reputations in the public arena. Best, Tim bates (talk) 10:50, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * For completeness, here is a link to the current (as opposed to defunct) wikipedia guidelines for sources, linking to its section on newspapers and blogs.
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Newspaper_and_magazine_blogs Tim bates (talk) 10:54, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Definitely retain, though it could also just be part of the 'posing' section w/o a subsection. That part of the article was clearly written in a different tone: it doesn't flow well, and is really detailed compared to the rest of the article - perhaps the result of an edit war? It would fit in a longer bio with more research specifics all around; or more condensed.

Re: data colada, their work should be mentioned, but perhaps in better proportion to the casual effort they put into publishing & revising it. The authors' work is good, and they've regularly gotten their meta-analyses published in Psychological Science. But they don't put that sort of effort into most posts. (p-curve analysis is a beautiful tool, but also not foolproof.) I did a brief search to see how this controversy has been discussed by psych professionals, and I like the way Joachim Krueger framed it: the main issue is Ranehill & understanding it; the p-curve analysis gets a sentence at the end. Tim bates, what do you think? – SJ  +  02:55, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * My guess is it in pretty good shape now, with multiple eyes on. Nothing is fool proof, but "casual" doesn't reflect the work in the Simonsohn et al. post. They have now taken the trouble to publish their article, with a doi. publication-selection sheet, and analysis files. Removing the subsection would misdirect all but the most sophisticated of readers. As to length, the  section grew organically in response to folk who believe this is a large and robust effect, describing the  Ranehill article as almost supportive apart from its limitations. So there are divergent opinions to represent, which takes a few lines as we see now.
 * I had not read the Krueger blog. Given its subhead is "Death of the power pose" I am guessing modeling this article on that would engender some controversy :-) If someone wants to update the Simonsohn entry to its doi version, that would help, else I will when I get time. PS: Thanks for your help here and, I see from your wiki bio, around the wiki world: Nice work! Tim bates (talk) 14:22, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Aha, DOI version & files would help; hadn't seen that. Do you have a link?  I'll have time to look at this again in a week or so.  I wouldn't model after Krueger, clearly on one end of the controversy spectrum; just reflecting that [even?] for someone w/ an extreme reaction, the meta-analysis was secondary.  And thank you :)  –  SJ  +  21:55, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, looking at other researcher's sections recently, I don't understand why this section exists on a researcher's bio page, especially the reference to a non-peer reviewed blog post of all things. If one was to have every academic's page cover various claims of veracity or contention the pages wouldn't be very, very long. Isn't there a page specific to the research topic that could cover this? Normally the research section broadly covers the type of research one is engaged in. Given the prominence of power posing (based on some google searches), isn't it time for a dedicated "Power Posing" page? Dean Maclair (talk) 08:25, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Dean, topics that are mainly notable in the context of one person or organization are sometimes developed as a section on that page, until they are notable enough to have their own article. Since most coverage of the concept references either Cuddy's TED talk, or the Carney et al. paper, and the term doesn't have a clear definition outside of her talk, it's not clear that it needs its own article.  But something like the current section could work.  If you want to try to split out a separate article, go for it.  I'd suggest writing a balanced posing article before removing anything from this one.  –  SJ  +  03:29, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

After this section was edited in 2015, her co-author disavowed her main study in September 2016 Unified field (talk) 10:03, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Power posing & replication sections
Replication only applies to the power posing work; I made it a subsection and copyedited for clarity.

I also took some of the detail about & quotes from those three recent studies, and put them in footnotes. That level of detail would be good for a separate article about power posing; less so here in a bio.

I can't find a DOI for the Simonsohn work; Tim if you or others can it would be great to add that. – SJ  +  07:16, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

On two occasions someone has attempted to add the following: "Another recent study, soon to be published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, has demonstrated that adopting an upright posture may increase positive affect, reduce fatigue, and decrease self-focus in people with mild-to-moderate depression.[26] This further supports Cuddy's postural feedback hypothesis." I removed this language once and it was reverted, with the editor classifying my removal as vandalism. The suggestion of vandalism is unfounded. The removal of this study is a substantive edit. The cited study is very clearly not a replication of the work on "Power Posing" carried out by Cuddy and her colleagues. It is already somewhat rare for a "replication efforts" section to be included in a scholar's wiki, but it is sensible in Cuddy's case because of the high-profile debate surrounding the evidential value of the Power Posing literature. However, works that are only tangentially related to power posing decidedly do not merit inclusion on the Amy Cuddy page. I would further ask that editors refrain from casting accusations of vandalism for edits that are accompanied by clear explanations.2601:86:101:C940:8C99:42CD:1850:2CCA (talk) 02:50, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Please stop wasting my time. It is utterly unjustifiable to remove information about replications but leave non-replications. The study you removed is clearly a conceptual replication on the influence of posture on mood, as described in the original text. At the very least it should be left as I added it to a section of related work. Given the contention I can't understand the harm in leaving verifiable, well cited, information on the page for readers to decide how closely it relates to the Carney paper. I find it odd and troubling that a wikipedia editor has taken the attitude that it is his role to prevent the public from having access to well cited and unquestionably true information. Shame. Perhaps you could explain this to me.14:53 UTC 22 Sept 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by EWay90001 (talk • contribs) 14:55, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The page does contain information about replications - dozens of them, nicely summarised by a paper examining them in toto, finding that jointly they lack evidential value, suggesting publication bias. Listing one or more of them, in that circumstance, is redundant and misleading. Tim bates (talk) 08:17, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The state of knowledge can't be advanced by conceptual replications: treating these as replications rather than asking if the original claim replicates is a further part of the system that encouraged the many thousands (as you note) of false-positive papers in the field. If this paper is added, then all the other claims will be, and we will reduce science to a he-said she-said battle, where incumbents have the advantage of access to publication. If your paper was a large, direct, pre-registered publication showing support, it would belong here. But it isn't. As such the existing citations as direct access for readers to all the other small conceptual positive results, along with Professor Cuddy's rejection of the failures as meaningful is ample to inform readers of the state of the hypothesis.Tim bates (talk) 08:17, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * There is no evidence that this paper is a product of publication bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EWay90002 (talk • contribs) 16:30, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The field suffers publication bias. Each paper has a better chance of being written, submitted, reviewed favourably, and accepted if it supports the hypothesis. That means that there are dozens of studies that never got published because they failed to find the effect. We can't cite those, so, the field needs some large (i.e., well powered), preferably pre-registered direct replications to sort out the truth.  Two such studies exist,  and they are therefore cited here. Tim bates (talk) 08:17, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Need I point out that the sample size of the p-curve analysis is 33?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by EWay90002 (talk • contribs) 16:30, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * You note that the p-curve analysis had a sample size of 33. But this misunderstands what goes into the p-curve. Each point is a critical result from a full study: The combined samples size (number of individuals) is more like 3,000. The point of the p-curve is to examine what kind of evidence is entering the literature. The pattern of these published results "indicate evidential value is absent". Perhaps each of the 100 authors involved believed that their paper was "unquestionably true information". But, because of publication bias, "the public" have been denied access to likely 100 or more studies that failed, and never got written up, or were rejected from conferences or were triaged, or got scathing reviews and never made the light of day.  Tim bates (talk) 08:17, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * There is no evidence of 100 failed studies. P-curve not preregistered. There may also be 100 failed p-curve analyses before randomness produces a result to the liking of the person performing the analysis. Why not leave both in for the reader to decide the merits. Your own publication bias is clearly on display here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EWay90002 (talk • contribs) 14:38, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

non-replication papers in Replication section
As can be seen above, this section (in a living person's biography) is not designed (and should not be on wikipedia) to be a complete list of papers. It is designed to be a concise, coherent report on attempts to directly replicate the phenomenon. It contains 2 large peer-reviewed replication attempts, and a p-curve analysis. The p-curve is not "related", it is central to the question. If it is deemed desirable to create a power-posing page, perhaps begin such a thing. But this is not the place to add small (n= 30 per group) non-replications (different sample, different manipulation, and different outcome measures... Tim bates (talk) 14:43, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

born
Born when? Parents? Sufferingsurfer (talk) 23:39, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

detailed article
@nytimes.com Oct. 18 2017: When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy. I'm no native speaker; maybe another wikipedian brings  this or that into the article. --Neun-x (talk) 19:50, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Conflict of interest
The user Accidentalsouthernbelle has a documented conflict of interest with the subject of this article and should not make flattering edits to this page. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:NeilN#Amy_Cuddy. This user has been warned here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Accidentalsouthernbelle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.115.121.164 (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I came here to say the page is an obvious puff piece. I have no opinion on any of this, but I suggest the proper reaction to puff pieces on Wikipedia is scepticism, whittling the page down to wheterver core of evidence for notability there is. --dab (𒁳) 09:09, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I have gone over it, maybe too harshly(?), it is absolutely detrimental to the project if adacemics abuse Wikipedia to advocate themselves, and WP:PROF needs to be adhered to very strictly. This appears to be a WP:RECENTISM/WP:1E case covered under power posing. Outside of that, Cuddy appears to be a bona fide academic, but Wikipedia doesn't do profiles on bona fide academics by default, the requirements for inclusion of biography articles are much higher. Contribution by academics working on a given topic of interest are covered in the article on that topic, not in biography articles. --dab (𒁳) 09:45, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Notability review
This turns out to be an interesting case for BLP notability. Cuddy became widely reported upon in the popular media after her 2012 TED talk went viral. Slate.com called her "power-posing guru". Her 2015 book advocates power posing. So far, this is entirely WP:1E and should be treated under the power posing topic. She co-authored one paper on power posing, and five papers on stereotyping. This does not establish WP:ACADEMIC, if WP:BLP is argued, it would have to be entirely on the basis of her being the "guru" of the "power posing" fad during 2012 to 2016 or so. After the original study had been falsified, its lead author recognised this and abandoned the topic, but apparently Cuddy decided her entire reputation now rode on this and had to double down on it.

Now, coverage shifted on whether her treatment had been "fair", whether she "deserved" being "dragged through the mud for her mistakes", and even whether the failure of the hypothesis was somehow an example of the "glass ceiling" preventing women from succeeding in academia (100 Women (BBC)). The slate.com article manages to suggest it was somehow unfair that the 2010 paper was subjected to a replication effort and was found to have been pure p-hacking.
 * "Cuddy “emerged from this upheaval [the replication crisis] as a unique object of social psychology’s new, enthusiastic spirit of self-flagellation,” writes Dominus, “as if only in punishing one of its most public stars could it fully break from its past.” ... In the end, she became the “poster girl” for problems in psychology"

Apparently, Cuddy was singled out for using online media and viral videos to capitalise on the results of a single study later found to be pure p-hacking. Presumably this happened because she represented a particularly egregious case of this type of unethical behavior by academics. If this is really the case (i.e. can be substantiated outside of the slate.com article), reference to it should be made in the replication crisis article. Then the NYT made it about gender, asking about "the effects of harsh discourse on the field and particularly on women", i.e. apparently it is fine to criticize male academics for unethical behavior, but it female academics may be out of bounds because (according to the NYT journalist) they cannot be expected to be exposed to "harsh discourse".

It turns out that the leading author of the 2010 paper, Dana Carney, is also a female academic. But since she did not try to propagate her work by "going viral", and did behave like an academic in conceding when her hypothesis was falsified, she did not become a media darling, and did not end up with a Wikipedia article. Clearly there is a pernicious incentive structure here rewarding people for questionable academic behaviour, and Wikipedia should avoid as much as possible being part of this.

I would strongly suggest merging this entire page into power posing under WP:1E, already in order to protect the article subject, because her entire notability as an individual appears to be based on how it is unfair focus on her person specifically in the context of the "power posing" debacle. BLP would explicitly prescribe that her personal biography should be let alone and coverage should focus on power posing and replication crisis. A biography page would need to focus on what she is publicly notable for, which is the power posing affair. --dab (𒁳) 10:16, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Cuddy clearly meets WP:ACADEMIC, as her research has had "significant impact in their scholarly discipline", in addition Cuddy herself has received in depth coverage, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/when-the-revolution-came-for-amy-cuddy.html NPalgan2 (talk) 17:46, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

NPOV review needed
As per concerns raised to User:Jimbo Wales by the subject as per this,I have put NPOV tag as a minimum in the BLP till the review is done.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:36, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Now in archive 271. Pelagic (talk) 02:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Power posing
There is a separate article on Power posing. This article currently contains 10 paragraphs of information on this topic. I'd like to reduce it to at most 4 paragraphs here; 1-2 paragraphs describing the phenomenon, 1 paragraph on the issues with replication, and 1 paragraph on Cuddy's rebuttals to those concerns. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 21:22, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It would be good if both article-leads agreed on if PP is "disputed" or "discredited". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:50, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok, but is power posing really over-covered here? It's what she's mainly notable for. Natureium (talk) 17:20, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that power posing is given WP:UNDUE. I lack the technical expertise to help, but I support Power~enwiki's proposal to reduce that section. KalHolmann (talk) 17:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree that power posing is covered here quite a bit, but undue means that it is overcovered compared to how much it is covered by reliable sources. Do you believe that we have covered her involvement in power posing more than reliable sources? This is what got her on the map. Natureium (talk) 17:32, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I concede your point about WP:UNDUE and have struck that portion of my comment. KalHolmann (talk) 17:46, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The current version is better; I may do a bit more editing but don't feel a need to reduce it further. WP:SUMMARYSTYLE is probably the most relevant all-caps link here. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 17:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Natureium, thanks for taking the bull by the horns (so to speak) and reducing this section in a careful, coherent manner. I reckon this will not satisfy Mr. Wales & other fans of Amy Cuddy, but you have definitely improved the article. KalHolmann (talk) 18:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Denial of bias and declaration of no relationship
At 20:17, 30 June 2018, User:Lesslikely made their very first Wikipedia edit by removing sourced content that I had added to the lead on 21 June 2018. In their edit summary, Lesslikely charged: "I am further inclined to believe that whoever has been placing snips like this throughout the page is highly biased towards Cuddy and may have some sort of relationship with her." I emphatically deny such bias and declare for the record that I have no relationship with the subject of this BLP, her family, friends, associates or supporters. I also strongly recommend that Lesslikely become acquainted with Wikipedia's behavioral guideline Assume Good Faith. KalHolmann (talk) 21:15, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Archived BLP Noticeboard discussion (June 2018))
Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive271

Reduce power posing to one paragraph?
I've been doing some work on the power posing article and it's coming along nicely. It contains much of the information that is also in the power posing section here, but could absorb even more. Are there any objections to reducing the coverage here to three or four sentences that direct the reader to the full article. As far as I can tell, that would also make it possible to remove the neutrality tag at the top of the article. After all, to say that she is the most prominent advocate for power posing isn't controversial, however controversial the technique itself may be.--Thomas B (talk) 08:10, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we could say that she is an advocate for the "controversial Power Posing hypothesis" instead? That way we are not calling her controversial, (though she is). -Roxy, the dog . wooF 08:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Just a further thought - note that without the "Power posing" nonsense, it is extremely doubtful she would be notable at all. It may be that this article should be merged with the PP article? -Roxy, the dog . wooF 08:17, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * She's a bestselling author and a key figure in a major scientific controversy. Definitely notable enough for an article. I think she should be described as "a foremost proponent of power posing, which has been the subject of scientific controversy" in the lead. The section should be reduced to three or four sentences, summarizing the original research and noting history of failed replication, concluding with a statement about her undaunted claims about increased power.--Thomas B (talk) 09:40, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Removing neutrality tag
Having made what I think are the needed changes, and seeing no objections, I am removing the neutrality tag. Let me know if there's any bias I've missed.--Thomas B (talk) 19:26, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

News article
Article on power posing / postural feedback that mentions Amy Cuddy and Marcus Credé.

Also points to a 2018 paper by Cuddy that is not yet listed under Publications. (Though I'm not convinced it's our responsibility to list every academic paper written that has one or more notable authors. Should we be limiting ourselves to "significant" papers?)

Will cross-post to the main Power posing article.

Pelagic (talk) 00:59, 4 October 2019 (UTC)