For centuries, the ubiquity of language and music across human societies has prompted scholars to speculate about their cross-cultural origins as well as their shared and unique characteristics. Depending on the extent to which contemporary theories emphasise the role of biology vs. culture, a range of hypotheses have been proposed concerning expected similarities and differences in song and speech. One class of hypotheses stemming from cultural relativism assumes a lack of universal regularities in song and speech, and therefore predicts no systematic cross-cultural relationships. On the other hand, more recent evolutionary hypotheses such as the social bonding hypothesis, motor constraint hypothesis, and sexual selection hypothesis all predict differences or similarities in specific characteristic of vocalisations, such as pitch regularity, pitch interval size, and melodic contour. Existing results are mixed in their support of these predictions.

 

In the current study, Ozaki et al. (2023) elucidated cross-cultural similarities and differences between speech and song in 75 different linguistic varieties spanning 21 language families. Understanding precisely how song and speech are related is methodologically challenging due to the multitude of confounds that can arise in comparing natural recordings. Here the authors overcame these difficulties with four types of carefully controlled recordings: singing, recitation of sung lyrics, spoken description of the song, and instrumental version of the sung melody. The authors then examined six features that are amenable to reliable comparison, including pitch height, temporal rate, pitch stability, timbral brightness, pitch interval size, and pitch declination. With this data in hand, the authors asked which acoustic features differ reliably between song and speech across cultures, with the expectation that song would exhibit higher pitch, slower rate and more stable pitch than speech. At the same time, the authors expected song and speech to be reliably similar in the characteristics of timbral brightness, pitch intervals and pitch contours

 

The findings provided strong support for the preregistered hypotheses. Relative to speech, songs exhibited higher pitch, slower temporal rate, and more stable pitches, while both songs and speech had similar pitch interval size and timbral brightness. Only one hypothesis was unsupported, with the comparison of pitch declination between song and speech turning out inconclusive. To overcome potential sources of analytic bias, the authors undertook additional robustness checks, including reanalysis of a previously published dataset of over 400 song/speech recordings; this exploratory analysis corroborated the conclusions from the confirmatory analysis. Overall this study offers a unique insight into the shared global characteristics of langage and music, with implications for understanding their cultural and biological (co)evolution.

 

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

 

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 2. At least some data/evidence that was used to answer the research question had been accessed and partially observed by the authors, but the authors certify that they had not yet observed the key variables within the data that were be used to answer the research question AND they took additional steps to maximise bias control and rigour.

 

 

 

1. Ozaki, Y. et al. (2023). Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower, higher, and use more stable pitches than speech [Stage 2 Registered Report]. Acceptance of Version 11 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/jr9x7

Social media is a popular tool for online discussion and debate, bringing with it various forms of hostile interactions –  from offensive remarks and insults, to harassment and threats of physical violence. The nature of such online toxicity has been well studied, but much remains to be understood regarding strategies to reduce it. Existing theory and evidence suggests that a range of responses – including those that emphasise prosociality and empathy – might be effective at mitigating online toxicity. But do such strategies work in practice?

 

In the current study, Young Reusser et al (2023) tested the effectiveness of three types of responses to online toxicity – benevolent correction (including disagreement), benevolent going along (including joking/agreement) and retaliation (additional toxicity) – on how able participants feel to contribute to conversations, their belief that the toxicity would be reduced by the intervention, and their belief that justice had been restored.

 

The results showed the benevolent correction – while an uncommon strategy in online communities – was most effective in helping participants feel freer to contribute to online discussions. Benevolent correction was also the preferred approach for discouraging toxicity and restoring justice. Overall, the findings suggest that responding to toxic commenters with empathy and understanding while (crucially) also correcting their toxicity may be an effective intervention for bystanders seeking to improve the health of online interaction. The authors note that future research should focus on whether benevolent correction actually discourages toxicity, which wasn't tested in the current experiment, and if so how the use of benevolent corrections might be encouraged.

 

Following one round of review and revisions, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria and awarded a positive recommendation.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/hfjnb

 

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:

 

 

1. Young Reusser, A. I., Veit, K. M., Gassin, E. A., & Case, J. P. (2023). Responding to Online Toxicity: 
Which Strategies Make Others Feel Freer to Contribute, Believe That Toxicity Will Decrease, and Believe that Justice Has Been Restored? [Stage 2 Registered Report] Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/k46e8

The psychology of meat-eating offers a fascinating window into moral reasoning, cognition and emotion, as well as applications in the shift toward more sustainable and ethical alternatives to meat consumption. One key observation in this field is the so-called “meat paradox” – the tendency for people to simultaneously eat meat while also caring about animals. One way to resolve this conflict and reduce cognitive dissonance is for people to separate the concept of meat from animals, mentally disengaging from the origins of meat in order to make the act of consumption more ethically acceptable. Another potential explanation is a motivated “denial of mind”, in which people believe that animals lack the mental capacity to experience suffering; therefore, eating an animal is not a harm that the animal will experience. In support of the latter hypothesis, Bastian et al (2012) found that animals judged to have greater mental capacities were also judged as less edible, and that simply reminding meat eaters that an animal was being raised for the purposes of meat consumption led to denial of its mental capacities.

 

Using a large-scale online design in 1000 participants, Jacobs et al. (2024) replicated two studies from Bastian et al. (2012): asking how the perceived mental capabilities of animals relates to both their perceived edibility and the degree of moral concern they elicit, and whether learning that an animal will be consumed influences perceptions of its mental capabilities. The original findings were successfully replicated. For study 1, attributions of mind were negatively related to animals’ edibility, positively related to negative affect towards eating animals, and positively related to moral concern for animals. For study 2, learning that an animal would be used for food led participants to attribute less mind to the animal. Overall, the results strengthen the conclusion that motivated denial of animal minds can be a mechanism for resolving the ‘meat paradox’.

 

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 awarded a positive recommendation.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/cru4z

 

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:

 

 

1. Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Radke, H. R. M. (2012). Don’t mind meat? The denial of mind to animals used for human consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 247–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211424291

 

2. Jacobs, T. P., Wang, M., Leach, S., Loong, S. H., Khanna, M., Chan, K. W., Chau, H. T., Tam, Y. Y. & Feldman, G. (2024). Revisiting the motivated denial of mind to animals used for food: Replication and extension of Bastian et al. (2012) [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/mwyde

The Medusa effect is a recently described phenomenon in which people judge a person to be more mindful when they appear as a picture (termed L1) than as a picture within a picture (L2). Across a series of experiments, Will et al. (2021) reported that at higher levels of abstraction, images of people were judged lower in realness (how real the person seemed), experience (the ability to feel) and agency (the ability to plan and act), and also benefited less from prosocial behaviour. The findings provide an intriguing window into mind perception – the extent to which we attribute minds and mental capacities to others.

 

In the current study, Han et al. (2023) undertook a close replication of two experiments from the original report by Will et al. (2021), asking first, whether the level of pictorial abstraction influences ratings of realness, agency and experience, and second, whether it also influences prosocial behaviour as measured in the dictator game (with participants predicted to allocate more money to recipients presented as pictures than as pictures within pictures). In the event of a non-replication using the original materials, the authors planned to further repeat the experiments using newly generated stimuli that are better matched for cultural context and more tightly controlled along various dimensions.

 

Results supported all pre-registered hypotheses. Participants rated and perceived L1 stimuli as having significantly higher levels of realness, agency, and experience than L2, and they also allocated significantly more money to L1 recipients than L2 recipients in a dictator game. Furthermore, participants who judged L1 as higher than L2 on all three dimensions also differentiated significantly between L1 and L2 in the dictator game, indicating a relationship between mind perception and prosociality. Overall, the findings confirm that pictures with lower levels of abstraction are perceived as more mindful and are associated with higher levels of prosocial behavior. Consequently, the results suggest that the Medusa effect is a reproducible phenomenon.

 

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 awarded a positive recommendation.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/xj46z

 

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:

 

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

 

1. Will, P., Merritt, E., Jenkins, R., & Kingstone, A. (2021). The Medusa effect reveals levels of mind perception in pictures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(32), e2106640118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2106640118

 

2. Han, J., Zhang, M., Liu, J., Song, Y. & Yamada, Y. (2023).The Medusa effect: A registered replication report of Will, Merritt, Jenkins, and Kingstone (2021). Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/yqnu8

It is increasingly recognised that resolving the climate crisis will require not only the reform of law and government policy but collective grassroots action to change individual behaviour and put public pressure on political leaders, companies and institutions to cut emissions. The capacity, however, for individual citizens to take such steps is limited by lack of knowledge/awareness of means and opportunities as well as psychological barriers that can make such actions seem impossible, fruitless or against the person's immediate self-interest. Interventions designed to overcome these obstacles and promote individual behaviour change have met with only limited success, with many based on weak psychological evidence and the outcome measures used to evaluate their success prone to error and bias.

 

In the current submission, Castiglione et al. (2024) propose a series of five studies to test, evaluate, and optimise a longitudinal intervention for engaging young adults (aged 18-35) in individual and collective climate action. Building on existing theory and evidence, the authors have designed an intensive 6-week educational intervention that draws on 12 psychological factors linked to pro-environmental behaviour, including emotional engagement, self-efficacy, collective efficacy, theory of change, cognitive alternatives, perceived behavioral control, implementation intentions, social norms, self-identity, collective identity, appraisal, and faith in institutions. Through the use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA), they plan to measure these targeted psychological correlates as well as individual and collective climate engagement of participants before and after the intervention (and in active groups vs. controls), and then again after a further three months.

 

The current submission is novel in being the first at PCI RR (and possibly the first RR anywhere) to propose an incremental programmatic workflow that combines two innovations: a single Stage 1 protocol leading to multiple Stage 2 outputs (under the PCI RR programmatic track) and a prespecification in which the design of the intervention in later studies is (for now) determined only broadly, with specific parameters to be shaped by the results of the first set of studies (under the PCI RR incremental registrations policy). This particular Stage 1 manuscript specifies the design of study 1 in two samples (high-school and university students in Italy; producing one Stage 2 output for each sample) and the general design of subsequent studies. The details of this later research in study 2 (in the same two populations) and study 3 (university students in the Netherlands) will be developed sequentially based on the results of the previous Stage 2 outputs and the state of the literature at that time.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA). Following the completion of study 1, the authors will submit an updated Stage 1 manuscript for re-evaluation that updates the plans for later studies accordingly, hence the current recommendation is labelled "Part 1".

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/zh3w9 (under temporary private embargo)
 
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:

 

 

 

Castiglione, A., Brick, C., Esposito, G., & Bizzego, A. (2024). A climate action intervention to boost individual and collective climate mitigation behaviors in young adults. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/zh3w9