Inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunities are rampant both between and within nations around the world. Making strides to rectify inequalities requires examining how people come to understand them as well as the psychological processes that translate those understandings into reparative actions. There is some evidence for a “comparative framing effect,” in which the group that is initially referenced impacts judgements by communicating salient information and the appropriate reference point. Research on this comparative framing effect suggests that focusing on disadvantage, relative to advantage, leads to a more negative assessment and intentions to engage in action to reduce the inequality. 

 

In two pilot studies (reported in the current proposal) focused on global inequalities (low-income vs high-income countries), Schnepf et al. (2023) did not find evidence for a main effect of framing on perceived legitimacy of the inequality or intentions to engage in action. They did, however, find some evidence for an interaction with the perceived size of the inequality. When the low-income country was the subject of the comparison, larger perceptions of the size of the inequality were associated with greater intentions to engage in action (both studies) and greater perceptions of the differences as illegitimate (Study 1 only). Moreover, they found some evidence in both studies that negative social emotions such as guilt and shame were the mechanism that explained why perceiving greater inequality in the low-income framing condition was associated with the outcomes. 

 

In the current study, Schnepf et al. (2023) build upon these two pilot studies to conduct a high-quality replication and a stronger test of their hypotheses. Most notably, the proposed Registered Report uses a much larger sample, providing adequate statistical power to detect relatively small interaction effects. Additionally, the proposed project manipulates the size of the inequality that is being evaluated, rather than relying on participants’ perceptions. Finally, the study includes “justice sensitivity,” or the degree to which individuals assess inequality as unfair as an additional hypothesized moderator, and “social dominance orientation” as an exploratory moderator. Along with the pilot studies, the proposed project will represent a strong test of several hypotheses relevant to many different areas of social and personality psychology. 

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth peer review, both of which consisted of substantial comments from two scholars with relevant expertise. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and was therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/pgyvw
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

 

1. Schnepf, J., Reese, G., Bruckmüller, S., Braun, M., Rotzinger, J., & Martiny, S. E. (2023). Justice in the eye of the beholder: How comparison framing affects the perception of global inequality through social emotions and justice sensitivity. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/pgyvw

How are the thousands of existing, and yet to be created, psychological measurement instruments related, and how reliable are they? Hommel and Arslan (2024) have trained a language model--SurveyBot3000--to provide answers to these questions efficiently and without human intervention.

 

In their Stage 1 submission, the authors describe the training and pilot validation of a statistical model whose inputs are psychological measurement items or scales, and outputs are the interrelationships between the items, scales, and their reliabilities. The pilot results are promising: SurveyBot3000's predicted inter-scale correlations were extremely strongly associated with empirical correlations from existing human data.

 

The authors now plan for a further examination their model's performance and validity. They will collect novel test data across a large number of subjects, and again test the model's performance fully out of sample. Reviewers deemed these plans, and their associated planned analyses suitable. The anticipated results--along with already existing pilot results--promise a very useful methodological innovation to aid researchers in both selecting and evaluating existing measures, and developing and testing new measures.

 

The Stage 1 submission was reviewed twice by three reviewers each with expertise in the area. All reviewers identified the initial submission as timely and important, and suggested mostly editorial improvements that could be made to the Stage 1 report. After two rounds of review, the relatively minor remaining suggestions can be taken into account during preparation of the Stage 2 report.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/2c8hf
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

 

 

Hommel, B. E., & Arslan, R. C. (2024). Language models accurately infer correlations between psychological items and scales from text alone. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/2c8hf

Especially after the impactful experiments in modern comics (e.g. McCloud 1993), research interest in the medium increased with new practical developments (Kukkonen 2013). Some of these developments now manifest in educational settings where comics are used for various pedagogical purposes in diverse cultural contexts. To what degree comics are able to reach educational outcomes in comparison to other pedagogical tools remains largely unknown, however.
 
In the present registered report, Pagkratidou and colleagues (2024) respond to the research gap by investigating the effectiveness of educational comics materials. By means of systematic review and meta-analysis, the authors assess all empirical studies on educational comics to map out what their claimed benefits are, how the reported effectiveness differs between STEM and non-STEM groups, and what moderating effects complicate the phenomenon. With the help of large language models, all publication languages are included in analysis. 
 
The research plan was reviewed over three rounds by four reviewers with diverse sets of expertise ranging from education and meta-analytic methodology to comics culture and design. After comprehensive revisions by the authors, the recommender considered the plan to meet high Stage 1 criteria and provided in-principle acceptance.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/vdr8c

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 3. At least some data/evidence that will be used to the answer the research question has been previously accessed by the authors (e.g. downloaded or otherwise received), but the authors certify that they have not yet observed ANY part of the data/evidence.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

• Cambridge Educational Research e-Journal
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Swiss Psychology Open

 
References

 

1. Kukkonen, K. (2013). Studying comics and graphic novels. John Wiley & Sons.

 

2. McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: The invisible art. Tundra.

 

3. Pagkratidou, M., Cohn, N., Phylactou, P., Papadatou-Pastou, M., & Duffy, G. (2024). Learning from comics versus non-comics material in education: Systematic review and meta-analysis. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/vdr8c

Does being good free people up to be bad? A large literature in social psychology suggests that it might, with evidence that moral licensing gives people a perception that actions deemed morally questionable, or socially undesirable, will be tolerated more readily if they have demonstrated a past history of praiseworthy, moral behaviour. In a formative study, Monin and Miller (2001) reported that having a track record of moral credentials as being nonprejudiced (e.g. non-sexist or non-racist) increased the willingness of participants to later express a prejudiced attitude. For example, in their Study 2 they found that participants who built up their moral credit by selecting a Black woman in a hypothetical recruitment task were then more willing to prefer a White man for a second job, compared to participants who did not have the opportunity to initially recommend a Black woman. These results have prompted a burgeoning literature on moral licensing, albeit one that is mixed and has been found to exhibit substantial publication bias.

 

In the current study, Xiao et al. (2024) undertook a large online replication of Study 2 in Monin and Miller (2001), asking whether previous moral behaviours that furnish participants with moral credentials make them more likely to then engage in morally questionable behaviours (N=932). The authors also extended earlier work by testing whether moral credentials license immoral behaviours more effectively in the same domain (e.g. within sex) than in a different domain (e.g. across sex and race), asking whether there is a negative relationship between expression of prejudice and trait reputational concern (fear of negative evaluation), and whether moral credentials attenuate any such observed relationship.

 

The results constitute a resounding non-replication, revealing no reliable evidence of a moral credential effect, no evidence that higher trait reputational concern predicts the expression of potentially problematic preferences, and no evidence that moral credentials moderate any such association. In discussing the implications of their findings, the authors call for further replication attempts and investigations of the effectiveness of experimental manipulations of moral licensing.

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria and therefore awarded a positive recommendation.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/uxgrk
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that was used to answer the research question was generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

 

References
 

1. Monin, B., & Miller, D. T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.81.1.33

2. Xiao, Q., Ching Li, L., Au, Y. L., Chung, W. T., Tan, S. N. & Feldman, G. (2024). Licensing via credentials: Replication Registered Report of Monin and Miller (2001) with extensions investigating the domain-specificity of moral credentials and associations with trait reputational concern [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 7 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/zgf8y

Do people who are more alert towards social stimuli vary in loneliness? This report addresses the question how loneliness relates to hypersensitivity to social stimuli using an oddball paradigm. Based on preliminary results, the study plans to compare high and low lonely individuals for how they react to happy and angry facial expressions using neurophysiological correlates. Findings from the study will provide further insights in how loneliness might be related to processing of social information.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' and recommender's comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/fxngv
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Brain and Neuroscience Advances
• Cortex
• Imaging Neuroscience
• Journal of Cognition
• NeuroImage: Reports
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
   

References
 
1. Bathelt, J., Dijk, C., & Otten, M. (2024). Loneliness in the Brain: Distinguishing Between Hypersensitivity and Hyperalertness. In principle acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/fxngv