SIPS 2026 DC

Psychological science relies heavily on scale scores for diagnosis, prediction, and evaluating intervention effectiveness. Yet scale scores often aggregate items that reflect multiple, and sometimes weakly related, constructs. Drawing on validation work with the Adolescent Attachment Anxiety and Avoidance Inventory (AAAAI), this talk examines what is gained and lost when item-level information is reduced to a scale score. Scale scores are contrasted with the shared variance of underlying latent factor structure, illustrating how theoretically distinct dimensions can be “smushed” into one number. At the same time, different populations (such as clinical and non-clinical) distributions overlap, such that a proposed cutoff value trades misclassification between groups. This multi-dataset analysis invites closer scrutiny of routine scale score practices by using a concrete example to show how assumptions involving latent homogeneity and cutoff values are embedded in a single scale score.

This unconference extends the Courage and Cowardice series by examining a complementary tension in psychological science: the projection of individual moral or political commitments into professional contexts. Scientific work necessarily involves value-laden judgements, yet not all values are equally appropriate to impose as professional norms. Some moral constraints, such as minimizing harm in research with children, are widely shared and foundational. Others reflect personal, cultural, or political preferences that are difficult to justify as scientific obligations. Between these extremes lies a broad and contested space in which researchers must decide when moral positions should guide scientific practice, discourse, or institutional expectations. The aim is not to establish shared rules or resolve disagreement, but to provide space for individual reflection on when, which, and whether individual moral decisions or political positions should be brought into academia.