When we familiarise with new faces over repeated exposures, it is generally in situations that have meaning for us. Seeing a face more often tends to go along with learning more about the person, and their likely contexts and actions. In this Registered Report, Noad and Andrews (2024) tested whether meaningful context during exposure improves the consolidation of faces into long-term memory. Participants were shown video clips from the TV series Life on Mars, either in their original chronological sequence, which provides meaningful context, or in a scrambled sequence. It was expected that the original sequence would provide a better conceptual understanding, and this was confirmed by free recall and structured question tests. Face recognition memory was tested with images of the actor from the original clips (‘in show’) and the same actor from another show (‘out-of-show’), to test whether memory was modulated by the similarity of appearance to that at encoding. Face recognition was tested immediately after exposure and after four weeks, to allow time for consolidation. As expected, recognition memory was better for participants in the meaningful context condition, and for in-show faces. However, meaningful context did not lead to less forgetting of the faces at the follow up test, even for in-show faces, which did not support the original predictions. An exploratory analysis found that a metric of overlap between pairs of participants’ conceptual understanding was related to overlap in the set of faces they recognised. This relationship was stronger after four weeks, which suggests increased interaction of conceptual knowledge and face recognition after consolidation.

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was assessed over two rounds of review, and the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria for recommendation.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/8wp6f
 
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. Noad, K. & Andrews, T. J. (2024). The importance of conceptual knowledge when becoming familiar
with faces during naturalistic viewing [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/thgrz

Previous research has shown that higher-level cognitive processes like attention, memory or mental imagery can produce pupil responses, without any actual difference in luminance of the visual stimulus. Interestingly, the inverse scenario remains untested: when a difference in luminance is perceptually eliminated from awareness, does pupil size still track cognitive factors? In this study, Vilotijević and Mathôt (2024) seek to test this experimentally using a perceptual fading phenomenon where two Gaussian patches with different luminances fade from consciousness and are thus perceived as mid-level uniform grey. The researchers will present this fading manipulation and a control condition where no fading occurs in separate blocks. Participants are instructed to covertly attend one of the patches. If pupil size reflects attentional selection, pupil responses should be reduced in the fading condition, and this should evolve with time as the stimuli are perceptually fading.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by three reviewers and the Recommender over three rounds of review. One reviewer advises conducting robustness checks to rule out eye movements confounds. This constitutes exploratory analyses at Stage 2 that probably require some flexibility. Despite this, the Recommender decided to grant in-principle acceptance of this study. While these robustness tests can put the eventual results in context, the general hypotheses and predictions specified in this version are clear and straightforward.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/bmtp6
 
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. Vilotijević, A. & Mathôt, S. (2024). The effect of covert visual attention on pupil size during perceptual fading. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/bmtp6

 

This study seeks to understand cultural and age differences in the effort moralization effect, a phenomenon in which people who put more effort into a task are considered more moral, regardless of the quality or the morality associated with the task. This is shown in common phrases such as the “great resignation” or “quiet quitting”, which are mostly used against younger members of the population, in particular generation Z.

 

Tissot and Roth (2024) propose to conduct a replication of a study from Celniker et al. (2023) which found evidence for this effect, with new samples from Mexico and Germany to test potential cultural differences. They will also test the effect of age on the effort moralization effect. Therefore, the study will be a quantitative analysis.
 
The authors included an adequate power analysis, alternatives for non-supported hypotheses, and filtering to ensure a high quality of data collection. They already provided an R script and dummy data to ensure the quality of the analysis.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over three rounds of in-depth review. Based on ​detailed responses to reviewers’ and the recommender’s comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance.​​​

 

 

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:
 

 
References

 

1. Celniker, J. B., Gregory, A., Koo, H. J., Piff, P. K., Ditto, P. H., & Shariff, A. F. (2023). The moralization of effort. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152, 60–79. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001259

 

2. Tissot, T. T. & Roth, L. H. O. (2024). Is it Worth the Hustle? A Multi-Country Replication of the Effort Moralization Effect and an Extension to Generational Differences in the Appreciation of Effort. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/tvgw2

This study by Ritchie and Wilbiks (2024) investigates whether the generation effect, a memory advantage for self-generated verbal information, is enhanced under multisensory conditions. It is designed to explore a gap in the literature regarding the interplay between the generation effect and multisensory facilitation, with potential applications in educational settings.

Exploring multisensory aspects of the generation effect, the study has the potential to provide new insights into cognitive processing and memory enhancement. It is well rooted in established theories of the generation effect and multisensory facilitation, deducing a reasonable hypothesis that multisensory processing amplifies the generation effect. By implementing a 2 (Task Type: generate vs. read) x 3 (Sensory Modality: auditory, visual, multisensory) factorial design, it ensures a comprehensive evaluation of multisensory benefits in the generation effect. The findings could inform multisensory learning strategies in educational contexts, enhancing teaching methods and learning outcomes.

Based on these considerations and two rounds of in-depth review, the recommender awarded in-principle acceptance of the study proposal. Its strong theoretical foundation and well-conceived methodology make it a valuable contribution to the fields of cognitive and educational psychology.

 

 

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.

 

 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Collabra: Psychology
• Experimental Psychology
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice
  
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open
  
  

 

Ritchie, M. & Wilbiks, J. (2024). From Thought to Senses: Assessing the Relationship Between the Generation Effect and Multisensory Facilitation. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/3u7eh

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