Self-affirmation may be an effective tool to reduce prejudice and discrimination against minority groups. Its hypothesised mechanism is that prejudice is a defensive act that can be reduced by reinforcing a positive imagine of the self. Such a reinforced self-image is meant to weaken perceived threat to one’s social identity that may be posed by minority groups, such as Muslims in majority Christian countries.

 

To address mixed evidence for the effectiveness of self-affirmation across the literature, this Registered Report (RR) was designed to elucidate conditions under which self-affirmation may reduce prejudice and discrimination. Whether self-affirmation has the desired effect may be moderated by an individual’s internal representation of secularism. That is, as a reaction to self-affirmation, people may flexibly endorse their feelings towards secularism (‘ideological malleability’) to either reduce prejudice, or maintain and justify it. This study is the first to consider whether this effect depends on a participant’s attitude that French citizens should be able to practice their religion in public places (‘historical’ secularism), or that they should hide it in public (‘new’ secularism).

 

Alnajjar et al. present a study design (i.e., three-way mixed ANOVA) in which they self-affirmed French participants (N=602) with differing internal representations of secularism. Study results demonstrated that a historical representation of secularism is associated with less effective and behavioural prejudice towards religious groups compared to a new representation of secularism. Participants’ prejudiced attitudes were larger against Muslims than against Christians. It was unexpected that new secularism was linked to negative attitudes towards religious minority groups given that the French government mandated by law that religion should not be practiced in public. Across three self-affirmation conditions (i.e., self-affirmation on a threat-related value, a threat-unrelated value, and no self-affirmation), the authors found no evidence that self-affirmation affected prejudice against religious groups, and there was no evidence that the effectiveness of self-affirmation depended on a participants representation of secularism, which contradicted their pre-registered hypotheses. This paper adds conclusive and sufficiently-powered results to a body of literature with mixed evidence for the effectiveness of self-affirmation.

 

It increased the robustness of this study that the design considered desirability concerns and employed multiple manipulation checks. By considering nuances of public opinion towards secularism in France specifically, the authors identified a unique opportunity to investigate ideological malleability, which can be challenging to conceive and directly measure. 

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated by two experts who performed in-depth peer review across one round of revisions. There were no substantial changes to the introduction or the methods, the analyses were conducted as planned and additional analyses were labelled as exploratory. The revised manuscript was judged to meet the Stage 2 criteria and was awarded a positive recommendation. 

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/f4wm6

 

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:

 

• Collabra Psychology
• International Review of Social Psychology
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Social Psychological Bulletin
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

 

1. Alnajjar, Y., Badea, C., & Sternberg, B. (2024). Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/st47h

 

Surveys that measure self-report are a workhorse in psychology and the social sciences, providing a vital window into beliefs, attitudes and emotions, both at the level of groups and individuals. The validity of self-report data, however, is an enduring methodological concern, with self-reports vulnerable to a range of response biases, including (among others) the risk of social desirability bias in which, rather than responding honestly, participants answer questions in a way that they believe will be viewed favourably by others. One proposed solution to socially desirable responding is the so-called Bayesian Truth Serum (BTS), which aims to incentivise truthfulness by taking into account the relationship between an individual’s response and their belief about the dominant (or most likely) response given by other people, and then assigning a high truthfulness score to answers that are surprisingly common.

 

Although valid in theory (under a variety of assumptions), questions remain regarding the empirical utility of the BTS. One area of concern is participants’ uncertainty regarding incentives for truth-telling – if participants don’t understand the extent to which telling the truth is in their own interests (or they don’t believe that it matters) then the validity of the BTS is undermined. In the current study, Neville and Williams (2024) aim to test the role of clarifying incentives, particularly for addressing social desirability bias when answering sensitive questions. The authors will administer an experimental survey design including sensitive questions, curated from validated scales, that are relevant to current social attitudes and sensitivities (e.g. “Men are not particularly discriminated against”, “Younger people are usually more productive than older people at their jobs”). Three groups of participants will complete the survey under different incentive conditions: the BTS delivered alone in standard format, the BTS with an interim bonus payment that is awarded to participants (based on their BTS score) half-way through the survey to increase certainty in incentives, and a Regular Incentive control group in which participants receive payment without additional incentives.

 

The authors will then address two questions: whether the BTS overall effectively incentivises honesty (the contrast of BTS alone + BTS with interim payment vs the Regular Incentive group), and whether interim payments, specifically, further boost assumed honesty (the contrast of BTS alone vs BTS with interim payment). Regardless of how the results turn out, the study promises to shed light on the effectiveness of the BTS and its dependence on the visibility of incentives, with implications for survey design in psychology and beyond.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on ​detailed responses to reviewers’ and the recommender’s comments, the recommenders 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:

 

 

Neville, C. M & Williams, M. N. (2024). Does Truth Pay? Investigating the Effectiveness of the Bayesian
Truth Serum with an Interim Payment: A Registered Report. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/vuh8b

Measuring people’s experiences, thoughts, and mental processes has always been a core challenge of psychological science (e.g. Nisbett & Wilson 1977). When such measurement relates to rapidly changing and conceptually diverse human-technology interactions, the task becomes even more difficult due to protean, multidimensional constructs. A good understanding of a construct is a basic step in its measurement (Borsboom 2005).  
 
In the present registered report—carried out as part of a long-term measure development project—Dunne et al. (2024) carried out a focus group study with adolescents (n=26) aged 11 to 15 in Northwest England to improve the understanding of constructs related to social media and mental health. The authors applied reflexive thematic analysis to explore adolescents’ social media use experiences and related motivations in the light of mental health.
 
The data and research process led to a construction of five themes, which were connected to mental health in direct and indirect ways. The participants voiced direct experiences of anxiety, self-esteem, and social aspects that reflect a mental health network where social media play diverse roles. Indirect implications of coping and self-control were found to supplement the network. Taken together, the themes and their implications to wellbeing make a valuable contribution to the evolving qualitative understanding young people's social media use in the UK (e.g., Conroy et al. 2023) and serve as a useful basis for future measure development.
 
A particular strength of the work was the engagement of three Young Researchers who co-facilitated the focus groups and were involved in the analysis. The research meets high reflexivity and transparency criteria, and the carefully constructed supplementary materials provide informative details especially for measure developers. Finally, the authors must be commended for sharing these valuable data for reuse.
 
The Stage 2 manuscript was reviewed over two rounds by three unique reviewers. The reviewers’ expertise ranged from social media and technology use research to health psychology and qualitative methods. Based on careful revisions and 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/w24ec
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 2. At least some data/evidence had been accessed and partially observed by the authors prior to IPA, but the authors certify that they have not yet observed the key variables within the data that were used to answer the research question.

 

List of eligible PCI-RR-friendly journals: 
 

• Collabra: Psychology
• F1000Research
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open
• WiderScreen  

 

References
 
1. Borsboom, D. (2005). Measuring the mind: Conceptual issues in contemporary psychometrics. Cambridge University Press.
 
2. Conroy, D., Chadwick, D., Fullwood, C., & Lloyd, J. (2023). “You have to know how to live with it without getting to the addiction part”: British young adult experiences of smartphone overreliance and disconnectivity. Psychology of Popular Media, 12, 471-480. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000425

 

3. Dunne, J. H., Black, L., Banwell, E., Nanda, P., Anderton, M, Butters, L.C., Demkowicz, O., Davies, J., Davidson, B., Qualter, P., Humphrey, N., Jay, C., & Panayiotou, M. (2024). Identifying relevant dimensions to the measurement of adolescent social media experience via focus groups with young people [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 9 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/erjvz
 
4. Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological review, 84, 231-259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231

The excessive consumption of energy-dense but nutrient-poor foods and drinks can lead to many health problems. There is thus an increasing need for tools that may help people reduce the consumption of such foods and drinks. Training people to consistently respond or not respond to food items has been shown to reliably change their subjective evaluations of and choices for these items, mostly within laboratory settings. However, evidence on whether such trainings can also modify real consumption behavior remains mixed.

Najberg et al. developed a mobile-based response training game that combines two training tasks, one in which people consistently do not respond to sugary drinks (i.e., the go/no-go training), and one in which they consistently respond to water items rapidly (i.e., the cue-approach training). Recent work showed that after the training, participants in the experimental group reported more reduction in liking for sugary drinks and more increase in liking for water items compared to the control group. However, both groups showed equivalent reduction in self-reported consumption of sugary drinks (Najberg et al. 2023a). 

In the current study, Najberg and colleagues will further examine the efficacy of the gamified response training, by testing whether the training can help people resist the consumption of sugary drinks (Najberg et al. 2023b). Participants will be divided into experimental and control groups, and will receive the respective training for a minimum of seven days (and up to 20 days). After completing the training, they will be asked to avoid the trained sugary drinks, and the number of days in which they successfully adhere to this restrictive diet will be used as the dependent variable. Reporting the time at which one consumed a certain drink is presumably easier than reporting the exact volume consumed (cf. Najberg et al. 2023a). Furthermore, certain diets may require people to avoid specific foods and drinks entirely, rather than merely reduce the amount of consumption. Examining whether the training will be effective in this setting will therefore be informative. The authors will additionally examine whether the amount of training one completes, and the changes in subjective valuation of drinks after training, will be correlated with the successful avoidance of sugary drinks. These results will offer insights into the underlying mechanisms of the training and provide guidance on how they may best be implemented in applied settings.

This Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over three rounds of in-depth reviews by three expert reviewers and the recommender. 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:
 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Collabra: Psychology
• F1000Research
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

References

1. Najberg, H., Mouthon, M., Coppin, G., & Spierer, L. (2023a). Reduction in sugar drink valuation and consumption with gamified executive control training. Scientific Reports, 13, 10659. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36859-x

2. Najberg, H., Tapparel, M., & Spierer, L. (2023b). Sugary drinks devaluation with response training helps to resist their consumption. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/97aez

Visual symmetry is critical to our interaction with our environment so that when detected, symmetry automatically produces a neural marker in the form of an Event Related Potential (ERP) called Sustained Posterior Negativity (SPN). However, when symmetry is presented to the visual system slanted away from the viewer, there is a reduction in SPN, termed a perspective cost. 

 

Considering ​objects are rarely presented front-on (or frontoparallel) in our natural environment, Karakashevska et al., (2023) examined the extent of the perspective cost with the addition of visual cues to facilitate extraretinal representation of the visual symmetry. The authors recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from 120 participants while they performed a luminance task on symmetrical and asymmetrical stimuli. The authors hypothesized that perspective cost would be reduced by three perspective cues: 1) monocular viewing, eliminating binocular cue conflict, 2) a static frame surrounding the symmetrical stimulus, adding a depth cue, and 3) a moving frame, providing a structure-from-motion 3D cue, prior to the symmetry onset. If the SPN was equivalent during frontoparallel and slanted presentation in a cue condition, the authors would have concluded extraretinal representation can be automatic when sufficient visual cues are available. The experiment was powered to detect a relatively small difference between perspective cue conditions.

 

The authors found that there was no impact of different visual cues on the perspective cost, as measured using the SPN. Perspective cost was consistent across all conditions, contrary to the pre-registered hypotheses. Karakashevska and colleagues conclude that the three perceptual cues tested in their design do not reduce perspective cost. The study prompts future research into the nature of the extraretinal representations of planar symmetry.  

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over four rounds by three expert reviewers. Two of our reviewers reviewed the Stage 1 manuscript, and one new reviewer. Following in-depth review and responses from the authors, the recommenders determined that the Stage 2 criteria were met and awarded a positive recommendation.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/yzsq5
 
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. Karakashevska, E., Bertamini, M. & Makin, A. D. J. (2024). Putting things into perspective: Which visual cues facilitate automatic extraretinal symmetry representation? [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/z9c28