The Bayesian Truth Serum, first introduced by Prelec (2004) rewards participants based on how surprisingly common their own answers are in relation to the actual distribution of answers. As such, it has been suggested as a possible incentive-compatible design for survey studies in different disciplines that rely on participants’ self-reports about their true preferences (Schoenegger, 2021). 

 

In this study, Schoenegger and Verheyen propose to replicate the results reported by Schoenegger (2021) and to directly investigate whether the effect elicited by the manipulations known as the Bayesian Truth Serum is distinct from its separate constituent parts. 

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments and edits to the stage 1 report, 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. Prelec, D. (2004). A Bayesian Truth Serum for Subjective Data. Science, 306(5695), 462-466. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1102081

 

2. Schoenegger, P. (2021). Experimental Philosophy and the Incentivisation Challenge: a Proposed Application of the Bayesian Truth Serum. Review of Philosophy and Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00571-4 

 

3. Schoenegger, P., & Verheyen, S. (2022). Taking A Closer Look At The Bayesian Truth Serum: A Registered Report. Stage 1 Registered Report, in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/dkvms 

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. addressed 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 causally influenced the sensory cortex at relevant times while tightening up on possible confounds in earlier research.

 

They found that TMS applied to the occipital hemisphere at each of 200ms and 1000ms after presentation of a brief visual stimulus disrupted stimuls detection on a visual short term memory test. These findings support sensory recruitment, which claims that both perceptual and memory processes rely on the same neural substrates in the visual cortex.

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated by two expert reviewers. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria for recommendation.

 

 
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 Stage 1 IPA. 

 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

 

 

1. Phylactou, P., Shimi, A. & Konstantinou, N. (2023). Causal evidence for the role of the sensory visual cortex in visual short-term memory maintenance, acceptance of Version 13 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/64hdx

How does emotion influence item memory (what?) temporal memory (when?) and associative memory (in which context?), and does this differ for younger and older adults? Previous research has found inconsistent results, possibly due to small sample sizes. In this study, Laulan and Rimmele (2024) and will build on the paradigm in Palombo et al. (2021) in which participants see images embedded in videos and are asked to remember the images (what?), their temporal position within the videos (where?), and the association between the images and the videos (in which context?). Image valence (positive vs negative vs neutral) and participant age-group (18-30 vs 60-80 yr olds) are manipulated. Pre-registered analyses will first look at the two age groups separately to test for an effect of valence for each of the memory components, and second test for modulating effects of age-group. To be cost-effective, a sequential analysis approach with statistical analyses conducted at three time points and a maximum sample size of 150 younger and 150 older adults is planned.

 

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/z4e8j
 
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:

 

References
 

1. Laulan, P. & Rimmele, U. (2024). The role of positive and negative emotions on multiple components of episodic memory (“what”, “when”, “in which context”) in older compared to young adults: a pre-registered study. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/z4e8j

 

2. Palombo, D. J., Te, A. A., Checknita, K. J. & Madan, C. R. (2021). Exploring the Facets of Emotional Episodic Memory: Remembering “What,” “When,” and “Which”. Psychological Science, 32, 1104–1114. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797621991548

The Temporal Doppler Effect is a phenomenon where people subjectively perceive the past to be further away than the future even when both temporal distances are objectively the same from the present moment (Caruso et al., 2013). A common explanation for this phenomenon assumes that our perception of the past and future is based on spatial and temporal analogies (Matlock, Ramscar, & Boroditsky, 2005; Casanto & Boroditsky, 2008) and that the subjective discrepancy is due to people feeling that they are moving towards the future and away from the fast, thus underestimating the temporal distance of the former and overestimating the temporal distance of the latter (Caruso et al., 2013).

 

In the current study, Zhang et al. propose to replicate the Temporal Doppler Effect as tested by Caruso et al. (2013) in study 1 and to test an alternative explanation for the effect in study 2 based on the filled-duration illusion (Thomas & Brown, 1974). This alternative explanation assumes that the subjective discrepancy is based on the difference that the past and the future are filled with events that we can remember or imagine. Because the past has already happened, it is comprised of more events (those that were planned and those that were not), while the future still exists only of events that are currently planned. 

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over three rounds of in-depth review. The main changes during the review process involved clarifications and adaptations of the way that the authors will measure the participants’ perception of how full of events the past and the future are, as the originally proposed way measuring this did not have sufficient theoretical or empirical justifications. The authors decided to address this by firstly, clarifying this issue in the stage 1 report so that the reader is aware of the potential shortcomings of this measure, and secondly, by testing a second group of participants with an alternative measure. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments and edits to the stage 1 report, 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/d9ec3

 

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. Caruso, E. M., Van Boven, L., Chin, M., & Ward, A. (2013). The temporal doppler effect: When the future feels closer than the past. Psychological Science, 24, 530-536. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612458804 

 

2. Casanto, D., & Boroditsky, L. (2008). Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition, 106, 579-593. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.03.004

 

3. Matlock, T., Ramscar, M., & Boroditsky, L. (2005). One the experiential link between spatial and temporal language. Cognitive Science, 29, 655-664. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog0000_17 

 

4. Thomas, E. C., & Brown, I. (1974). Time perception and the filled-duration illusion. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 449-458. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198571 

 

5. Zhang, Q., Masuda, Y., Ueda, K.,Toda, K., & Yamada, Y. (2022). Is the past farther than the future? A registered replication and test of the time-expansion hypothesis based on the filling rate of duration. Stage 1 Registered Report, in principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/d9ec3

Does being good free people up to be bad? A large literature in social psychology suggests that it might, with evidence that moral licensing gives people a perception that actions deemed morally questionable, or socially undesirable, will be tolerated more readily if they have demonstrated a past history of praiseworthy, moral behaviour. In a formative study, Monin and Miller (2001) reported that having a track record of moral credentials as being nonprejudiced (e.g. non-sexist or non-racist) increased the willingness of participants to later express a prejudiced attitude. For example, in their Study 2 they found that participants who built up their moral credit by selecting a Black woman in a hypothetical recruitment task were then more willing to prefer a White man for a second job, compared to participants who did not have the opportunity to initially recommend a Black woman. These results have prompted a burgeoning literature on moral licensing, albeit one that is mixed and has been found to exhibit substantial publication bias.

 

In the current study, Xiao et al. (2024) undertook a large online replication of Study 2 in Monin and Miller (2001), asking whether previous moral behaviours that furnish participants with moral credentials make them more likely to then engage in morally questionable behaviours (N=932). The authors also extended earlier work by testing whether moral credentials license immoral behaviours more effectively in the same domain (e.g. within sex) than in a different domain (e.g. across sex and race), asking whether there is a negative relationship between expression of prejudice and trait reputational concern (fear of negative evaluation), and whether moral credentials attenuate any such observed relationship.

 

The results constitute a resounding non-replication, revealing no reliable evidence of a moral credential effect, no evidence that higher trait reputational concern predicts the expression of potentially problematic preferences, and no evidence that moral credentials moderate any such association. In discussing the implications of their findings, the authors call for further replication attempts and investigations of the effectiveness of experimental manipulations of moral licensing.

 

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 therefore awarded a positive recommendation.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/uxgrk
 
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. Monin, B., & Miller, D. T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.81.1.33

2. Xiao, Q., Ching Li, L., Au, Y. L., Chung, W. T., Tan, S. N. & Feldman, G. (2024). Licensing via credentials: Replication Registered Report of Monin and Miller (2001) with extensions investigating the domain-specificity of moral credentials and associations with trait reputational concern [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 7 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/zgf8y