Atlas Trail
How Psychology Learned to Doubt Itself
From a single misremembered stop sign to a field-wide reckoning: this trail follows memory research, personality theory and the replication crisis through the psychologists and studies that taught psychology to question its own classic findings.
Stop 1 of 8.
Psychologists
Elizabeth Loftus, who showed that the questions asked after an event can rewrite a witness's memory of it.
Stop 2 of 8.
Theories and Concepts
The misinformation effect: the mechanism behind Loftus's finding, and the theory it grew into.
Stop 3 of 8.
Psychologists
Walter Mischel, whose marshmallow experiments and 1968 critique of trait theory reopened the question of what actually predicts behavior.
Stop 4 of 8.
Studies and Experiments
The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment itself, and the 2018 replication that found its famous link to later outcomes was weaker than believed.
Stop 5 of 8.
Theories and Concepts
The person-situation debate Mischel's critique set off: do traits or situations better predict behavior?
Stop 6 of 8.
Psychologists
Brian Nosek, who turned the question of whether findings replicate into a field-wide research program.
Stop 7 of 8.
Studies and Experiments
The Reproducibility Project: Psychology, whose 36 percent replication rate gave the crisis its number.
Stop 8 of 8.
Theories and Concepts
The replication crisis itself: the field's own name for the reckoning this trail has traced.
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