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

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. (2022) embark on an ambitious project to elucidate cross-cultural similarities and differences between speech and song in 81 different linguistic varieties spanning 23 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 overcome 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 will then examine 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 will ask which acoustic features differ reliably between song and speech across cultures, with the expectation that song will exhibit higher pitch, slower rate and more stable pitch than speech. At the same time, the authors expect song and speech to be reliably similar in the characteristics of timbral brightness, pitch intervals and pitch contours. In addition to these confirmatory tests, the authors will explore variation across a range of additional stimulus characteristics and ancillary research questions.

 

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).

 

 

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

 

 

 

1. Ozaki, Y., Savage P. E. et al. (2022). Similarities and differences in a global sample of song and speech recordings, in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/jdhtz

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) propose an experiment to test the effectiveness of three types of responses to online toxicity – Benevolent Correction (including disagreement), Benevolent Going Along (including joking/agreement), or 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 findings promise to shed light on approaches for improving the health of online discourse.

 

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/hfjnb (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:

 

 

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? In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/hfjnb

Human meat consumption is associated with a variety of risks to health, animal welfare, sustainability, and the environment (including greenhouse gas emissions and loss of biodiversity), prompting a growing research effort to develop psychological interventions to reduce it and encourage alternative diets. At the same time, although meat consumption remains the majority choice in the UK, its prevalence is declining, with the proportion of vegetarians and vegans increasing substantially over the last two decades.

 

One potential tool to accelerate behaviour change is to expose people to “dynamic norm” messaging, which, rather than providing static descriptive information about the prevalence of a desired behaviour, emphasises how the desired behaviour is changing over time so that people can begin to conform to the emerging trend. Although promising in theory, previous research offers mixed evidence on the effectiveness of dynamic norms in encouraging a reduction in meat consumption, with some studies suggesting benefits and others showing no effect or even counterproductive effects. The methodological rigour of some studies is also in question.

 

In the present study, Aldoh et al. (2022) will investigate the effectiveness of dynamic norm information (compared to static norms) on several indicators of meat consumption, including interest, attitudes, and intentions toward reducing meat consumption, as well as self-reported meat consumption itself. Using an online sample up to 1500 participants, the authors will also test the role of visual cues (including data trend graphics) in causing any effects and will explore the potential longevity of the intervention over a period of 7 days.

 

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).

 

 

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. Aldoh, A., Sparks, P. & Harris, P. R. (2022). Communicating dynamic norm information, in principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/txzvm

Many studies have investigated the extent to which word learning is underpinned by statistical learning, i.e. tracking probabilistic relationships between forms and referents. Previous literature has investigated whether these processes differ in bilingual learners – who have to track two such sets of mappings in their linguistic environment. However, the evidence is mixed: some say bilinguals have a learning advantage and some find no evidence of differences.

 

The current study by Simonetti et al. (2024) aims to further explore this in an experiment using the cross-situational word learning paradigm. In this paradigm participants hear words and view arrays of object across a series of trials. Taking each trial in isolation the word is ambiguous, but there are consistent co-occurrences of words with referents across the trials. Two groups of participants will be compared: monolingual English speaker and English-German bilinguals. Using this paradigm, the study can track learning over time as well as looking at individual trial by trial analyses. The researchers predict specifically that bilingual learners will have a specific advantage in learning 1:2 mappings, where one-word maps to two objects. The study will use Bayes Factors as the method of inference when analysing the data, allowing them to differentiate evidence for "no difference" from ambiguous evidence from which no conclusion can be drawn.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over four rounds of review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' and recommender's comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/8n5gh
 
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
• Biolinguistics
• Collabra: Psychology
• Cortex
• 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

 
References

 

Simonetti, M. E., Lorenz, M. G., Koch, I., & Roembke, T. C. (2024). The Influence of Bilingualism on Statistical Word Learning: A Registered Report. In principle acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/8n5gh