Abstract

Psychology’s credibility crisis has inspired a movement toward “Big Team Science”, wherein scientists from widely dispersed institutions pool together resources and expertise to complete projects that would be hard or impossible to complete individually. This movement has subsequently inspired the growth of scientific organizations dedicated to developing infrastructure, workflows, and knowledge necessary to complete large, distributed, collaborative projects. In the past few years, these organizations have completed some of the largest studies in psychological science. For example, the Psychological Science Accelerator recently completed a global project examining the effects of a brief cognitive reappraisal intervention on emotional well-being during COVID-19 – a project which involved 455 collaborators and 21,000 participants from 87 countries.

Over the past several years, Big Team Science organizations in psychology have discovered the potential and pitfalls of their new approach to conducting research. This panel discussion brings together representatives from three psychology organizations—the Psychological Science Accelerator, the Many Babies Consortium, and the ManyPrimates project—to discuss the promises, pitfalls, and barriers to conducting Big Team Science movement. This will include discussions of: decision-making and workflows; funding and sustainability; incentivizing and acknowledging diverse contributions; failures and mistakes; and diversity issues.