Talk:Error management theory

Untitled
Hello, my partner and I were assigned a final project for one of our psychology courses which involves editing a Wiki page. We will be making changes to this page if no one objects.

CathyFreud (talk) 05:22, 28 November 2012 (UTC)CathyFreud

Multiple Issues
This article has multiple issues, can someone please tag it with the appropriate tag(s)? The article relies too heavily on two sources and one source is a dead link. Only one source is freely readable online so verifying statements is difficult. All of the sources are books or articles written by the two persons who first forwarded this theory, raising the question of notability within the greater field of psychology or even just evolutionary psychology. No criticisms, peer-reviews, etc. are cited or elaborated on within the article. The statistics quoted in the article come from a single study with no comparison studies. The Further Reading link is also dead. 173.3.10.140 (talk) 11:21, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Peer Review 1
Hi, I've provided some comments on your article below, plus some minor suggestions for improvement. This is a really strong article! The talk page for this article didn't say which sections had been edited recently, so I tried to trace this on the page's history.
 * I think your introduction is very good, as it clearly explains error management theory in general and then expands on how this is relevant to evolutionary psychology.
 * Overall, the article has a balanced view and the use of 'exceptions' under perception bias plus a general 'alternative explanations' section demonstrates this.
 * Your references seem to be from a selection of reliable journal articles and textbooks which is great.
 * I added a link to 'Ebbinghaus Titchener' in the first paragraph of the introduction. This takes readers to the Wikipedia page that explains more about this illusion.
 * I added a link to 'Darwinian' in the second paragraph of the introduction, to lead readers to the Wikipedia page on Darwinism.
 * Be careful of using capital letters in the right place, as there are some inconsistencies e.g. 'sexual Overperception Bias' and 'Overperception bias' in the section titled 'Skeptical Dad and Encouraging Mum' Hypothesis. This is a really minor point though!
 * You could add links to pages under a 'See Also' heading, so that readers can access Wikipedia pages on similar topics.

Kroyds (talk) 20:22, 28 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello,
 * Thanks for the review and for helping with the article! I followed the link to the Ebbinghaus illusion article and decided to add a dash between Ebbinghaus and Titchener as it makes it more clear that they are two separate people. I've also removed the capitalisation where it wasn't necessary.  I found some more inconsistencies with British and American English in the same paragraph, so I changed them all to British.  More editing will follow. Thanks again! D.toumazou (talk) 14:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: Regarding a 'See Also' heading, we have a Further Reading section (in which I've recently added another article), so I am not sure if that is necessary. People can follow links throughout the article about relevant topics.  I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this! D.toumazou (talk) 15:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If you add a hyphen (-) between two surnames, it implies that it is one person with a double-barrelled surname. You need an en dash (–) to designate two different people. It's only a small point, but see MOS:DASH.
 * Beware of changing capitalisation of words in a url - most web-servers are case-sensitive and you'll get a "page not found" error.
 * The See also section (note the capitalisation!) is for links to other relevant Wikipedia articles, not already linked in the article text – what we call "wiki-links" or internal links.
 * The Further reading section (note the capitalisation!) is for other relevant resources, such as sources that were not used as references, but which might contain more a detailed treatment of the topic (often books).
 * MOS:FOOTERS has a quite comprehensive summary of the various sections found at the bottom of articles. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 18:13, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The Further reading section (note the capitalisation!) is for other relevant resources, such as sources that were not used as references, but which might contain more a detailed treatment of the topic (often books).
 * MOS:FOOTERS has a quite comprehensive summary of the various sections found at the bottom of articles. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 18:13, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello, thanks for your reply. I followed the links you provided and corrected the dashes. I wasn't aware that the See also section links to articles that haven't already been linked.  I'll suggest it to the team, and if we find anything useful we will definitely add it!D.toumazou (talk) 11:54, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review 2
Hi there,

Really good article, very interesting. I just have a few details to help improve your article.

I provided a few small edits:

• I added a link on heuristic to the corresponding Wikipedia page

• To make facilitate understanding I have added the word “(orange)” when describing the Ebbinghaus Titchener circles illusion

• Removed “of” in Type I error example

Overall I have come across several spelling/grammar errors, here are some that I have encountered:

• I have noticed the second sentence of “sister effect” has a few word order issues that affect comprehension. Additionally, I have a hard time understanding this sentence “most accurate as it fell between women’s perception of women and women’s perception of their own sexual interest”. Could you clarify what are women’s perception of women?

• I have noticed the same word order issues in the “Sexual and commitment self-interest” part

• Several times in the "exception" types it is mentioned that men/women “self-report”, I think it should say “report” as it is understood that they are ‘self-reporting’

• I think the examples given in the women overperception risks/costs are very valuable and I suggest some could be added in the male section when it says “reproductive costs of sexual underperception are greater for men than the risk of making false positives”.

Overall I found this article very well structured with good use of paragraphs and headings. The part on ‘alternative explanations’ is very useful as it conveys the full picture of the current literature. Thank you for your contribution! — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlexandraDB (talk • contribs) 10:22, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello and thanks for your contribution! You are right about "self-report", I fixed it, apart from one case which I believe it was necessary to make the sentence easier to comprehend.  More editing will follow! D.toumazou (talk) 14:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your comments. I appreciate you taking the time to help improve our page! I have altered the word order of the Sister Effect to make it more comprehensive. DaisyParker1995 (talk) 14:20, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

3rd Year Human Sexuality Assignment
Hello,

Bec, Daisy and I have chosen Error Management Theory as the topic for our 3rd year Human Sexuality assignment. The aim was to improve this article by adding information related to human sexuality.

To help with the peer review I'd like to clarify what our contribution was.


 * In the introduction, we added the Ebbinghaus illusion and how it relates to the error management theory, as well as the presence of exceptions and alternative explanations. An image of the Ebbinghaus illusion was also included.


 * "Type Errors" was also expanded to include explanations as to how they relate to over and underperception.


 * Exceptions to Sexual Overperception Bias were added, such as the Sister Effect, Sexual Commitment and Self-Interest, "The Fox and The Grapes" and Male Insensitivity Bias.


 * Skeptical Commitment Bias was expanded, and exceptions were added for Sexual Underperception Bias, such as the "Skeptical Dad ad Encouraging Mum" hypothesis and Post-menopausal women.


 * We've also introduced Alternative Explanations, which consist of Culture, Individual Differences, Projection and Reciprocity.


 * Minor edits were also done for section titles.

We'd like to thank everybody who has helped our team improve this article. We really appreciate your reviews and we would like to encourage others to share their opinion about our work!

Dimitris, Bec, Daisy.

D.toumazou (talk) 13:26, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Peer review
You've made some great improvements to this article. However, there are a few areas that could be improved.

The sister effect section- this is a great paragraph. It would be good, if possible, to link to somewhere talking about incest avoidance mechanisms.

In the sexual and commitment self-interest paragraph, the sentence starting ‘A person’s their own’ doesn’t quite make sense to me? Perhaps rewording this could help.

The skeptical commitment bias section is great but could be improved by explaining some courtship behaviour (or at least linking to some information on it) and maybe explaining why it is ambiguous.

I think the skeptical dad, encouraging mum hypothesis would benefit from an introductory sentence or two to explain that parents show biases etc. in this context. It would help the reader to make sense of the paragraph straight away, rather than half way down.

There are a few general spelling and grammar errors to be changed e.g. ‘logical’ instead of ‘logic’. Proof reading would rectify this!

Good work though!

Srt1996 (talk) 17:11, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello, thanks for the review! I changed logical to logic.  More editing will follow! D.toumazou (talk) 14:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer review - November 2016
Really informative! The additions/improvements to the page really help to understand the topic more. Your introduction is very clear and concise, can easily read it and understand the basics and then read further on to learn more.

Just a few things that could potentially be changed:


 * Under the Type Errors heading, you could maybe include "For example" before "ignoring the fire alarm [...]". And perhaps connecting the two examples by just adding "or".
 * Under the Manipulation heading, I don't think its necessary to but the percentages in quotation marks, instead just writting the percentages and making sure they are referenced.
 * Under the Sexual and commitment self interest heading, the sentence starts "A person’s their own level of attraction" - needs rephrasing.
 * Under the dad and mum hypotheses, maybe include a short introduction to put the theories in context
 * Perhaps more studies could be used to support Buss's research

Overall thought it was very interesting! Emilycollins (talk) 17:27, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello and thanks for the review! I fixed what you mention in the first bullet point about "ignoring the fire alarm".  I also removed the unnecessary quotation marks. More editing will follow! D.toumazou (talk) 14:50, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hi, firstly i thought your topic was extremely interesting and you guys made a lot of valid contributions that has improved the page massively. The following points are not criticism, just points i hope you find helpful TBH I generally think your article is really good, fab and well detailed and you've done a lot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by QuuenChris (talk • contribs) 19:32, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * i think the circle illustration could be explained more clearly
 * i think you could also add links to the biases and heuristic wikipedia pages at the start about the circles instead of later in the second paragraph
 * you could also cite the additions you made about reproductive success and darwinian principles
 * review phrase "...acting on of a fire alarm..."
 * could link "incest avoidance mechanisms" to "westermack effect" and "inbreeding avoidance" wiki pages
 * please review phrase "... a persons' their own level of attraction rather than gender..."
 * mention evolution in "other examples"

Page Editor for Error Management Theory
Thank you for your helpful comments.

QuuenChris - I have taken on board the point you made about heuristics and biases and added a link to the first set instead of the second set. I do think this is a more logical place for the link. Also I have attempted to be more clear about the use of the Circles illustration by adding an extra line of text to highlight the point. I think it is a good point about citing Darwin in further reading. Thank you.

EmilyCollins - I think the point about Buss is a valid one to think through, but we have done an extensive literature review and used all the current research that there is to illustrate his points already. Thank you

Dimitris, Bec and Daisy

FlowerPower46 (talk) 21:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hi guys, I've just read your contributions and there are some very positive additions. Here are some of my comments:
 * The Ebbinghaus illustration was a welcome illustration, and makes for a much stronger and clearer point.
 * Initially, I thought that the type I and II errors could be elaborated on further, but thinking about it again, I'm not sure what you can add without waffling, so a concise point.
 * Small correction, but the second sentence in 'the sister effect' paragraph may gain more clarity if 'which' or 'that' was added after the word 'target'.
 * Unsure if there are separate pages for 'the sister effect' or 'incest avoidance'... if so, to hyperlink them might be a good idea, but if not then don't worry.
 * The first paragraph of 'sexual commitment bias' I feel could be phrased more clearly. I understand what's being said but I had to read it two or three times just to clarify it for myself. That could just be me, though.
 * The second paragraph could do with hyperlinking the long-tailed manakin bird? Or if not, perhaps adding a picture? Also, maybe 'falls flat' is a bit too conversational for Wikipedia. It makes for more enjoyable reading in my opinion, but maybe other people will find it too colloquial.
 * For the first paragraph of 'Skeptical Dad and Encouraging Mum', maybe put in brackets an explanation of what an 'ancestral cost-benefit matrix' is. Also, there's a rogue 'a' in the third sentence of the second paragraph.
 * Other than that, I can't fault your hyperlinking elsewhere, or your general formatting.
 * The alternative explanations section gives a well rounded view of many other perspectives so as to give as unbiased of a representation of the evidence as possible, nicely done.
 * Overall, really well done guys, both informative and enjoyable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WillGray (talk • contribs) 22:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)