A considerable body of research in behavioural economics has established the existence of ambiguity avoidance: the tendency for people, when given a choice between two options, to choose the option for which there is greater certainty about the probabilities of certain outcomes occurring. In a seminal study, Curley, Yates, and Abrams (1986) explored potential psychological explanations of ambiguity avoidance, contrasting five hypotheses: hostile nature (the anticipation that more ambiguous options are biased against oneself), other-evaluation (the anticipation that one’s decision will be evaluated by others), self-evaluation (the anticipation that one's decision will be self-evaluated in the future), forced-choice (in which the less ambiguous option is selected only when all other considerations are equal), and a more general uncertainty avoidance associated with risk aversion. The results favoured other-evaluation as the most promising explanation, with implications in the following decades for research in social psychology, judgment and decision making, behavioural economics, consumer behaviour, and cognitive psychology.

 

In the current study, Yiu and Feldman (2022) plan to revisit the psychological basis of ambiguity avoidance in a large online sample through a replication of key studies from Curley et al. (1986), including extensions to increase methodological rigour and to explore the relationship between ambiguity avoidance and hostility bias, anticipated future regret, and post-choice social judgment from others, as well as trait measures of risk tolerance and ambiguity tolerance.

 

The Stage 1 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 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

1. Curley, S. P., Yates, J. F. & Abrams, R. A. (1986). Psychological sources of ambiguity avoidance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 38, 230-256. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(86)90018-X

  

2. Yiu, S. Y. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting the psychological sources of ambiguity avoidance: 
Replication and extensions of Curley, Yates, and Abrams (1986), in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/wb3hc

According to the sensory recruitment framework, the visual cortex is at least in part responsible for maintaining information about elementary visual features in visual short term memory. Could an early visual area, constantly taking in new information, really be responsible for holding information for up to a second? But conversely, could higher order regions, such as frontal regions, really hold subtle sensory distinctions? It must be done somewhere. Yet the existing evidence is conflicting. Phylactou et al. seek to address this question by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt early visual areas at intervals up to a second after stimulus presentation to determine the effect on visual short term memory performance. In this way they will causally influence the sensory cortex at relevant times while tightening up on possible confounds in earlier research.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review by three expert reviewers. 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).

 

 
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. Phylactou, P., Shimi, A. & Konstantinou, N. (2022). Causal evidence for the role of the sensory visual cortex in visual short-term memory maintenance, in principle acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/empdt

In recent years, the study of mental accounting – the thought processes by which people informally record, categorise, and evaluate the costs and benefits of their financial transactions – has been an active research area, drawing attention to a range of biases and distortions that deviate from optimal economic decision-making (Zhang & Sussman, 2018). Although the term “mental accounting” is a relatively recent construction (Thaler, 1999), it stems from a longer history of behavioural economic research on value functions, decision frames, risk-taking, and related concepts.

 

In the current study, Li and Feldman propose to replicate 17 influential mental accounting problems (or tasks) reviewed by Thaler (1999) in a large online sample. The authors also propose several extensions examining the effects of sunk costs and expenses framing. 

 

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/d6cjk

 

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. 

 

 

 

1. Zhang, C. Y., & Sussman, A. B. (2018). Perspectives on mental accounting: An exploration of budgeting and investing. Financial Planning Review, 1, e1011. https://doi.org/10.1002/cfp2.1011

 

2. Thaler, R. H. (1999). Mental accounting matters. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12, 183-206. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199909)12:3%3C183::AID-BDM318%3E3.0.CO;2-F

 

3. Li, M. & Feldman, G. (2022). Revisiting mental accounting classic paradigms: Replication of the problems reviewed in Thaler (1999), in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/d6cjk

There are two fundamental processes that the brain engages in: statistical learning and selection. Indeed, past work has shown these processes often come together: People can use a task-irrelevant stimulus to predict a target stimulus even in different modalities (crossmodal statistical learning), thereby enhancing the processing of the target stimulus (selection). Further, people can learn where a distractor will be in order to efficiently suppress it (selecting out), using task irrelevant stimuli in the same modality (within-modality statistical learning).

 

In the current study, Jagini and Sunny will test whether people can learn where a distractor stimulus is, in order to suppress it (selecting out), using a task-irrelevant stimulus from a different modality (cross modal statistical learning). They will also test whether people can express awareness of the relation between the predictor task-irrelevant stimulus and the location of the distractor on a forced choice test. On some (but not other) theories of consciousness, such a test measures conscious knowledge of the association.

 

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/qjbmg

 

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. 

 

 

 

1. Jagini, K. K. & Sunny, M. M. (2022). Do task-irrelevant cross-modal statistical regularities induce distractor suppression in visual search? Stage 1 Registered Report, in principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/qjbmg

Paid loot boxes, i.e. randomised monetization methods that are similar to lottery-type gambling, have become prominent features of contemporary gaming (e.g., Macey & Bujić, 2022). Because the design structures of loot boxes vary and the value of their virtual rewards is not always clear-cut, many countries now struggle how to deal with them legally and in practice (see Drummond et al., 2020). Belgium is one of the few countries that have officially interpreted loot box monetization to widely belong under gambling regulation. Mobile games that monetize with paid loot boxes in Belgium should thus apply for a gambling license, and companies should generally not offer paid loot boxes to local underage players at all.
 
In this Stage 1 Registered Report, Xiao (2022) has constructed a careful plan for testing whether the “ban” in Belgium has made the local mobile game market distinct in terms of paid loot boxes. The work builds on a rapidly accumulating literature and evolving methods (e.g., Xiao et al., 2021). The author will carry out a systematic qualitative investigation of the country’s top 100 (iPhone) mobile games to investigate whether paid loot box design components have indeed been removed from the products -- and if not, whether related game companies operate with a required gambling license. Additionally, Xiao (2022) will assess Belgium’s overall paid loot box prevalence in comparison to other countries and carry out a field experiment to test whether players can easily circumvent the local regulation by transporting or downloading different versions of software.
 
The study will produce valuable evidence regarding the effectiveness of loot box regulation in general, and more specifically, the results should be of utmost interest to Belgian legal authorities. To ensure the transparency and validity of the chosen methods as well as upcoming interpretations, the registered report format allowed the research design to be reviewed in three rounds before data collection. Three experts, representing the fields of law and gaming, reviewed the Stage 1 manuscript twice and agreed upon the acceptance of all details. Finally, the recommender carried out a third iteration with further requested revisions, which was followed by in-principle acceptance.