Stress is a familiar presence in modern life and may be rising in severity (Almeida et al., 2020). As a key driver of many health problems, controlling stress and its impacts is a central goal in clinical and health psychology, yet the effectiveness of existing interventions to regulate stress remains unclear. 

 

In the current study, Sparacio et al tackled this question from a meta-analytic perspective, focusing on a corpus of existing research that has addressed the efficacy of two specific stress regulation interventions: being in nature and emotional social support. As well as evaluating the evidential content of the relevant literatures, the authors also examined signs of publication bias and the moderating role of personality traits.

 

After correcting for publication bias, the results reveal evidence that being in nature is effective at reducing stress while emotional social support is not. The moderating role of personality for both interventions was inconclusive due to lack of evidence. In addition, the quality of the surveyed literature was found to be low overall, suffering from a high risk of bias and high rate of statistical reporting errors. The authors offer several recommendations to improve the rigour and quality of studies in this field, including open data, open materials, code review, preregistration and the use of Registered Reports.

 

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/c25qw

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 3. At least some data/evidence that was used to the answer the research question had been previously accessed by the authors (e.g. downloaded or otherwise received), but the authors certify that they did not observe ANY part of the data/evidence prior to Stage 1 IPA.

 

 

• F1000Research
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

 

1. Almeida, D. M., Charles, S. T., Mogle, J., Drewelies, J., Aldwin, C. M., Spiro, A. III, & Gerstorf, D. (2020). Charting adult development through (historically changing) daily stress processes. American Psychologist, 75(4), 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000597

 

2. Sparacio, A., Ropovik, I., Jiga-Boy, G. M., Lağap, A. C. & IJzerman, H. (2023). Stage 2 Registered Report: Stress regulation via being in nature and social support in adults, a meta-analysis. Acceptance of version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/a4zmj

Forgiveness is a core feature of human psychology in which a person makes a deliberate decision to cease negative emotions or attitudes toward an offender who has done them harm. The concept of interpersonal forgiveness is deeply embedded across societies, but much remains to be understood about how it actually works. What are its key ingredients and why does it occur in the first place? Research in social psychology has demonstrated a range of personal and social benefits of forgiveness, giving rise to two dominant mechanistic accounts – one that positions empathy as the driving factor and another that centres motivated reasoning (Donovan & Priester, 2017).

 

In the current study, Chan and Feldman (2023) seek to replicate a formative study by McCullough et al (1997) that led to the so-called Empathy Model of forgiveness. According to this theory, forgiving is a motivational change facilitated (crucially) by empathy, promoting constructive over destructive behaviour toward the offender. Chan and Feldman will replicate Study 1 from McCullough et al., measuring the correlational relationship between apology, forgiving, and empathy for offenders, and exploring whether forgiving is associated with increased conciliation and decreased avoidance motivation. As well as closely replicating the original study, the authors will extend it to test the more severe hypothesis that empathy causally influences forgiveness. To achieve this, they will experimentally manipulate empathy by adding two groups to the design: one in which participants are asked to recall hurtful past experiences in which they were not empathetic to the offender, and another in which they were highly empathetic.

 

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).

 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/q78fs

 

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. Donovan, L. A. N., & Priester, J. R. (2017). Exploring the psychological processes underlying interpersonal forgiveness: The superiority of motivated reasoning over empathy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 71, 16-30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.02.005

 

2. Chan, C. F. & Feldman, G. (2023). The link between Empathy and Forgiveness: Replication and extensions of McCullough et al. (1997)'s Study 1, in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/q78fs

In this protocol, Yue et al. (2023) aim to clarify whether the sample of non-WEIRD countries included in multi-lab studies is actually representative of those countries and cultures. Focusing on China, this study will compare Chinese samples in several multi-lab studies with participants in studies published in leading national Chinese journals on various aspects, including demographic data and geographic information. This work will provide useful information on the extent to which multi-lab studies are able to deal with generalizability, especially as they intend to address the generalizability problem.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was reviewed by three experts, including two with an interest in the WEIRD problem and a wealth of experience in open science and multi-lab research, plus an expert in Bayesian statistics, which this manuscript uses. Following multilpe rounds of peer review, and 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).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/ehw54

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 4. At least some of the data/evidence that will be used to answer the research question already exists AND is accessible in principle to the authors (e.g. residing in a public database or with a colleague) BUT the authors certify that they have not yet accessed any part of that data/evidence.

 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals: 
 

 

References
 
Yue, L., Zuo, X.-N., & Hu, C.-P. (2023) The WEIRD problem in a “non-WEIRD” context: A meta-research on the representativeness of human subjects in Chinese psychological research, in principle acceptance of Version 7 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/ehw54

Mindset theories suggest that the mere belief in the malleability of human abilities can already help one to develop related performance. On the other hand, one and the same performance situation can also be experienced in various affective ways, which differently contribute to performance outcomes. Arguably, appraising a performance situation as a “threat” instead of “challenge” is associated with maladaptive responses, such as impaired cardiovascular mobilization. If people could experience performance situations as positive challenges, this might also improve performance outcomes. Drawing from these connected theoretical premises, the synergistic mindset intervention was developed and tentatively found to help adolescents in stressful situations (Yeager et al., 2022).
 
In the present registered report, Behnke et al. (2023) build on the above and test whether the synergistic mindset intervention can help individuals in competitive gaming situations. The authors utilize one of the leading esport games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive​, and recruit its active players into randomized control and intervention groups for two weeks. Ultimately, the participants compete in a cash-prize tournament involving measures of affective experience and cardiovascular responses. Behnke et al. (2023) hypothesize that the synergistic mindset group will show greater challenge affective responses and superior performance outcomes. As such, the study design has significant potential to generate valuable evidence for various theoretical models and the synergistic mindset model in particular.
 
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds by four experts with experimental psychology specializations in mindsets, stress, and statistics. Based on the comprehensive responses to the reviewers' feedback, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/z3adb
 
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
• F1000Research
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

References
 
Behnke M., Lakens D., Petrova K., Chwiłkowska P., Kaczmarek L. D., Jamieson J. P., & Gross J. J. (2023) Optimizing Esports Performance Using a Synergistic Mindsets Intervention. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/z3adb

Yeager D.S., Bryan C.J., Gross J.J., Murray J., Krettek D., Santos P., ... & Jamieson J.P. (2022) A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress. Nature 607, 512–520. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04907-7

Numeracy – the ability to understand and work with numbers – is associated with a wide range of social and health-related outcomes, including socioeconomic status, employment, literacy, reasoning, and life satisfaction. A substantial body of evidence has also shown links between numeracy and decision-making, prompting the question of how it relates to finer-grained measures of reasoning, judgment and affect/emotion.

 

In the current study, Zhu and Feldman repeated four influential experiments from a study by Peters et al. (2006), which reported links between numeracy and performance on a variety of decision-making tasks, including attribute framing, frequency-percentage framing, susceptibility to affective influences, and various cognitive biases. The authors also explored several extended questions, including refinements of the original hypotheses and an examination of the relationship between numeracy and confidence in numeric judgments (subjective numeracy).

 

The results broadly constitute a successful replication, with higher numeracy associated with weaker attribute framing and susceptibility to bias. The relationship between numeracy and the frequency-percentage framing effect – that is, the change in decision-making when numbers are presented as frequencies (e.g. 5 out of 100) rather than percentages (e.g. 5%) – was inconclusive for the main analysis that treated numeracy as a categorical variable (low vs. high); however the link emerged reliably in exploratory analyses that considered numeracy as a continuous variable. The outcomes of the extended analyses were mixed, revealing evidence for a potentially weak relationship between numeracy and confidence.

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewer's 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/r73fb

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

1. Zhu, M. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the links between numeracy and decision making: Replication Registered Report of Peters et al. (2006) with an extension examining confidence. Acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/62wqb

 

2. Peters, E., Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., Mertz, C. K., Mazzocco, K., & Dickert, S. (2006). Numeracy and decision making. Psychological Science, 17, 407-413. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2006.01720.x