In 2012, Kahneman wrote a letter to the leading researcher of implicit priming studies, expressing his doubts about priming results, that attracted a lot of attention ( Young, 2012). Implicit priming assumes that stimuli that are presented outside of awareness can still influence behavior (e.g., you may have heard the fake story that a movie theater owner flashed a picture of a Coke bottle on the screen and that everybody rushed to the concession stand to buy a Coke without knowing why they suddenly wanted one). A major concern was that implicit priming results might not be replicable. Kahneman also started to wonder whether some of the results that he used in his book were real. It became apparent that even articles with several significant statistical results could not be trusted. This changed when Bem (2011) was able to provide seemingly credible scientific evidence for paranormal phenomena nobody was willing to believe.

However, in 2011 most psychologists believed that most published results in their journals can be trusted. It is likely that Kahneman’s book, or at least some of his chapters, would be very different from the actual book, if it had been written just a few years later. Third, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman published a popular book that reviewed his own work, but also many findings from social psychology ( ). Second, a highly respected journal published an article with the incredible claim that humans can foresee random events in the future, if they are presented without awareness ( ). First, it became apparent that one social psychologist had faked results for dozens of publications ( ). 2011 was an important year in the history of psychology, especially social psychology.

Thinking fast