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Max Primbs

@maxprimbs.bsky.social

2.4K followers 229 following 341 posts

PhD Student, Radboud University (Netherlands). Researching how social and cultural environments shape attitudes. Big Team Science & Statistics enthusiast.

Posts Replies Media

Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

A few weeks ago I defended my PhD at Radboud University and on September 1st I'll start my dream postdoc at Kellogg School of Management / Northwestern in Chicago. If I know anyone in or around Chicago, let me know 🙈

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The leftmost graph here is a crossover interaction. From journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Merry Christmas ⛄🎄

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

The University I gave a talk at today has a sparkling water machine. It warms my German heart.

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

And just because I more often see people using the Aspirin example: They used the wrong effect size and that is why the effect seems to small.

To further illustrate the claim that small effects can be consequential in large samples or at the population level, Götz et al. (2022) presented the correlation between aspirin and the prevention of heart attacks (r = .03). Ferguson (2009) pointed out the flaw in using this effect size to make the generalized argument that small effects matter through an analogy with wearing a bulletproof vest: The effect size of wearing a bulletproof vest on the probability of dying is large if we examine people who get shot but very small if we include the millions of people who never get shot. Likewise, the causal effect of aspirin on the chance of a heart attack is substantial, but there is only a small effect in the reduction of heart attacks if a large group of people, many of which would never suffer a heart attack, regularly take aspirin. The important difference between medicine and psychology is that in psychology researchers rarely include a large majority of individuals in their studies that are not expected to benefit from an intervention. For example, when we examine the effectiveness of a new treatment for depression, we usually do not conduct the study on a sample in which only a small minority of individuals are depressed. Therefore, when a small effect is observed in psychology, it may not matter at the population level, and any claims of why it would matter need to be theoretically justified and/or empirically supported.

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Automatic Email Reply is set, time to vacation.

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Sorry to hear that 😔 I don't have wise words but I have a motivational cat picture.

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

I'm slightly jealous of the UCSB campus 😅

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Max Primbs @maxprimbs.bsky.social · 26/11/2023

Yes, that is a form of (imo) useful relative information. But basically almost all criticisms that are applicable to Cohen's thresholds are also applicable to the revised thresholds. But I definitely appreciate that people spend more time thinking about effect sizes, it is really a blackspot :)

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