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Latest recommendations
| Id | Title * ▼ | Authors * | Abstract * | Picture | Thematic fields * | Recommender | Reviewers | Submission date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
28 Dec 2021
STAGE 1
Sight vs. sound in the judgment of music performance: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitionsUnderstanding the role of visual and auditory information in evaluating musical performanceRecommended by Yuki Yamada based on reviews by David Hughes and Kyoshiro Sasaki
In this Stage 1 Registered Report, Chiba and colleagues (2021) aim to investigate how people use information from visual and auditory modalities when evaluating musical performances. Previous studies, mainly using Western music, have reported a visual dominance, but this has not yet been clearly and consistently reported. Thus, the authors propose to evaluate both the reproducibility and generalizability of the previous findings by conducting a replication study using the methodology of the previous studies and by introducing a new experimental condition in which the Tsugaru-shamisen, a unique Japanese musical instrument, is also performed. This study could represent an important turning point in the research context of performance evaluation and would be of considerable value. This manuscript was peer-reviewed by two experts in scientific methodology and Japanese traditional music, respectively, and during the two-round peer-review process they made a number of important points, but eventually awarded the manuscript a highly positive response. I am therefore pleased to recommend that this Stage 1 Registered Report meets our Stage 1 criteria and is worthy of in-principle acceptance. I look forward to seeing the results and discussion reported in Stage 2, with the expectation that the experiment conducted by the authors will be in strict accordance with this protocol. *The following is a very minor comment, which I hope the authors will find helpful in the future. Of course, this is not related to hypothesis construction and does not require revision: The "Blind Audition" study cited in the introduction is very impactful, but has recently been called into question, so I am at least a little cautious when citing this study. This article may be useful. https://www.wsj.com/articles/blind-spots-in-the-blind-audition-study-11571599303 URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/ry2b6 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
| Sight vs. sound in the judgment of music performance: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitions | Gakuto Chiba, Yuto Ozaki, Shinya Fujii, Patrick E. Savage | <p style="text-align: justify;">Which information dominates in evaluating performance in music? Both experts and laypeople consistently report believing that sound should be the most important domain when judging music competitions, but experime... | | Social sciences | Yuki Yamada | Kyoshiro Sasaki | 2021-09-24 08:59:26 | |
24 Sep 2023
STAGE 1
Sensorimotor Effects in Surprise Word Memory – a Registered ReportEvaluating adaptive and attentional accounts of sensorimotor effects in word recognition memoryRecommended by Vishnu Sreekumar based on reviews by Gordon Feld and Adam Osth
Words have served as stimuli in memory experiments for over a century. What makes some words stand out in memory compared to others? One plausible answer is that semantically rich words are more distinctive and therefore exhibit a mirror effect in recognition memory experiments where they are likely to be correctly endorsed and also less likely to be confused with other words (Glanzer & Adams, 1985). Semantic richness can arise due to extensive prior experience with the word in multiple contexts but can also arise due to sensorimotor grounding, i.e., direct perceptual and action-based experience with the concepts represented by the words (e.g. pillow, cuddle). However, previous experiments have revealed inconsistent recognition memory performance patterns for words based on different types of sensorimotor grounding (Dymarska et al., 2023). Most surprisingly, body-related words such as cuddle and fitness exhibited greater false alarm rates.
In the current study, Dymarska and Connell (2023) propose to test two competing theories that can explain the increased confusability of body-related words: 1) the adaptive account - contextual elaboration-based strategies activate other concepts related to body and survival, increasing confusability; and 2) the attentional account - somatic attentional mechanisms automatically induce similar tactile and interoceptive experiences upon seeing body-related words leading to less distinctive memory traces. The adaptive account leads to different predictions under intentional and incidental memory conditions. Specifically, contextual elaboration strategies are unlikely to be employed when participants do not expect a memory test and therefore in an incidental memory task, body-related words should not lead to inflated false alarm rates (see Hintzman (2011) for a discussion on incidental memory tasks and the importance of how material is processed during memory tasks). However, the attentional account is not dependent on the task instructions or the knowledge about an upcoming memory test. Here, Dymarska and Connell (2023) have designed an incidental recognition memory experiment with over 5000 words, disguised as a lexical decision task using carefully matched pseudowords during the encoding phase. The sample size will be determined by using a sequential hypothesis testing plan with Bayes Factors. To test the predictions of the adaptive and attentional accounts, the authors derive a set of lexical and sensorimotor variables (including a body-component) after dimensionality reduction of a comprehensive set of lexical and semantic word features. The analysis will involve running both Bayesian and frequentist hierarchical linear regression to explain four different measures of recognition memory performance based on the key sensorimotor variables and other baseline/confounding variables. While this analysis plan enables a comparison with the earlier results from an expected memory test (Dymarska et al., 2023), the current study is self-contained in that it is possible to distinguish the adaptive and attentional accounts based on the effect of body component scores on hit rate and false alarm rate. The study plan was refined across two rounds of review, with input from two external reviewers after which the recommender judged that the study satisfied the Stage 1 criteria for in-principle acceptance (IPA). URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/ck5bg
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
Dymarska, A. & Connell, L. (2023). Sensorimotor Effects in Surprise Word Memory – a Registered Report. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/ck5bg
Dymarska, A., Connell, L. & Banks, B. (2023). More is Not Necessarily Better: How Different Aspects of Sensorimotor Experience Affect Recognition Memory for Words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Language, Memory, Cognition. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001265 Glanzer, M., & Adams, J. K. (1985). The mirror effect in recognition memory. Memory & cognition, 13, 8-20. Hintzman, D. L. (2011). Research strategy in the study of memory: Fads, fallacies, and the search for the “coordinates of truth”. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), 253-271. | Sensorimotor Effects in Surprise Word Memory – a Registered Report | Agata Dymarska, Louise Connell | <p>Sensorimotor grounding of semantic information elicits inconsistent effects on word memory, depending on which type of experience is involved, with some aspects of sensorimotor information facilitating memory performance while others inhibit it... | Social sciences | Vishnu Sreekumar | 2023-01-31 15:21:17 | |||
Self-Control Beyond Inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS)Strategies for self control: German translation and evaluation of the Self Control Strategy ScaleRecommended by Zoltan Dienes based on reviews by Eleanor Miles, Kaitlyn Werner and Sebastian Bürgler
Self-control has shown to be a trait related to beneficial outcomes, including health, academic achievement and relationship quality. It is mostly understood as the ability to suppress immediate urges in order to achieve long-term goals, such as not watching another episode and therefore reaching a healthy amount of sleep. An emerging perspective on self-control shows that there is broader variety in applied strategies, such as removing oneself from a tempting situation, or reminding oneself of one's long-term goal, or reinterpreting the temptation.
Katzir et al. (2021) developed a novel instrument, the Self-Control Strategy Scale, that measured the tendency to engage in eight such strategies. In the current study, Roth et al. (2024) translated the scale into German and assessed its psychometric properties: internal consistency and retest reliability were sufficient for six or seven of the eight subscales. Further, different strategies (subscales) were related to particular outcomes; at least one strategy was related to each outcome for 20 out of 23 outcomes in health behavior, school/work achievement, life satisfaction, interpersonal functioning and pro-environmental behavior (though the particular pattern of similarities and differences would need confirming). Thus, the SCSS is a valid and reliable measure that can now be used in German.
The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and at least two expert reviewers. Following revision, 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/s7qwk
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. Katzir, M., Baldwin, M., Werner, K. M., and Hofmann, W. (2021). Moving beyond inhibition: Capturing a broader scope of the self-control construct with the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS). Journal of Personality Assessment, 103, 762-776. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2021.1883627
2. Roth, L. H. O., Jankowski, J., Meindl, D., Clay, G., Mlynski, C., Freiman, O., Nordmann, A., Stenzel, L., and Wagner, V. (2024). Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS) [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gpmnv
| Self-Control Beyond Inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS) | Leopold H. O. Roth, Julia M. Jankowski, Dominik Meindl, Georgia Clay, Christopher Mlynski, Olga Freiman, Artemis L. Nordmann, Loana-Corine Stenzel, Victoria Wagner | <p>Self-control is crucial for goal attainment and related to several beneficial outcomes, such as health and education. For a long time, it was predominantly understood in terms of inhibition, namely the ability to suppress immediate urges for th... | Social sciences | Zoltan Dienes | Sebastian Bürgler, Eleanor Miles, Kaitlyn Werner | 2024-06-28 11:50:25 | ||
04 Dec 2023
STAGE 1
Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS)Strategies for self control: German translation and evaluation of the Self Control Strategy ScaleRecommended by Zoltan Dienes based on reviews by Eleanor Miles, Kaitlyn Werner and Sebastian Bürgler
Self-control has shown to be a trait related to beneficial outcomes, including health, academic achievement and relationship quality. It is mostly understood as the ability to surpress immediate urges in order to achieve long-term goals, such as not watching another episode and therefore reaching a healthy amount of sleep. An emerging perspective on self-control shows that there is broader variety in applied strategies, such as removing oneself from a tempting situation, or reminding oneself of one's long-term goal, or reinterpreting the temptation.
Katzir et al. (2021) developed a novel instrument, the Self-Control Strategy Scale, that measured the tendency to engage in eight such strategies. In the current study, Roth et al. (2023) propose to translate the scale into German and assess its psychometric properties. Further, they will determine which strategies are related to particular outcomes that may be beneficial; for example, amount of physical activity engaged in, how healthy the diet is, exam performance and life satisfaction.
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and at least two expert reviewers, before issuing in-principle acceptance.
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/s7qwk
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. Katzir, M., Baldwin, M., Werner, K. M., & Hofmann, W. (2021). Moving beyond inhibition: Capturing a broader scope of the self-control construct with the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS). Journal of Personality Assessment, 103, 762-776. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2021.1883627
2. Roth, L. H. O., Jankowski, J., Clay, G., Meindl, D., Vogt, L.-M., Wagner, V., Nordmann, A., Stenzel, L., Freiman, O., Mlynski, C., & Job, V. (2023). Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS). In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/s7qwk
| Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS) | Leopold H. O. Roth1, Julia Jankowski1, Georgia Clay1, Dominik Meindl1, Lisa-Marie Vogt1, Victoria Wagner1, Artemis Nordmann1, Loana Stenzel1, Olga Freiman1, Christopher Mlynski1, Veronika Job1; 1University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria | <p>Self-control is crucial for goal attainment and related to several beneficial outcomes, such as health and education. For a long time, it was predominantly understood in terms of inhibition, namely the ability to suppress immediate urges for th... | Social sciences | Zoltan Dienes | 2023-07-13 13:46:30 | |||
20 Dec 2024
STAGE 1
Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological MalleabilityDoes ideological malleability moderate the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice?Recommended by Anna Elisabeth Fürtjes based on reviews by Sauro Civitillo and Pete Harris
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 image 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, Alnajjar et al. (2024) aim 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 to either reduce prejudice, or maintain and justify it.
The authors present a study design (including a three-way mixed ANOVA) in which they plan to self-affirm French participants (N=600) with differing internal representations of secularism. Across three self-affirmation conditions (i.e., self-affirmation on a threat-related value, a threat-unrelated value, and no self-affirmation), the authors will assess the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice towards Muslims. They will also assess their participants’ attitudes towards Christians and Muslims, to distinguish whether prejudice is specifically targeted against Muslims, rather than religious groups in general. In addition, the study setup considers desirability concerns and it employs multiple manipulation checks to increase robustness of results.
With this proposed plan, the manuscript presents a persuasive rationale that it taps into the wider concept of ‘ideological malleability’ that could be the underlying mechanism to explain a moderating effect of secularism on the effectiveness of self-affirmation in this French sample. By considering nuances of public opinion towards secularism in France specifically, the authors have identified a unique opportunity to investigate ideological malleability, which can be challenging to conceive and directly measure.
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by two experts who performed in-depth peer review across multiple rounds of revisions. The authors were very responsive in editing their manuscript based on the reviewers’ comments and dedicated much effort to increasing clarity and interpretability of their power analyses. Consequently, the revised manuscript was judged to meet the Stage 1 criteria and was awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
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 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. Alnajjar, Y., Badea, C., & Sternberg, B. (2024). Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/f4wm6
| Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability | Yara Alnajjar, Constantina Badea and Béatrice Sternberg | <p><em>[IMPORTANT: Abstract, method, and results were written in past tense, to simulate what these sections will look like after data collection, but no pre-registration or data collection took place yet.]</em></p> <p> </p> <p>Self-affirma... | Social sciences | Anna Elisabeth Fürtjes | 2023-09-15 15:39:55 | |||
Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological MalleabilityDoes ideological malleability moderate the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice?Recommended by Anna Elisabeth Fürtjes based on reviews by Zoltan Dienes and Pete Harris
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: References
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
| Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability | Yara Alnajjar, Constantina Badea and Béatrice Sternberg | <p>Self-affirmation has shown mixed findings when used as a prejudice reduction technique, sometimes diminishing prejudice while sometimes increasing it or having no significant effect. In a Registered Report experiment with a French representativ... | Social sciences | Anna Elisabeth Fürtjes | 2024-07-30 11:57:10 | |||
28 Jan 2025
STAGE 1
See me, judge me, pay me: Gendered effort moralization in work and careA gender difference in effort moralization?Recommended by Adrien Fillon based on reviews by Jared Celniker and Vincent Kouassi
Effort moralization is the well known idea that, unrelated to actual performance, people doing more effort are judged better, attributed more morality and seen as better collaborators than people doing less effort. However, the series of studies on this topic mostly used vignettes with a man or a neutral protagonist. The current study by Roth et al. (2025) proposes to tackle the gender problem by testing the difference in attribution morality between a man and a woman protagonist, and two contexts: a “care” and a “work” context, mirroring the stereotypes associated with men and women.
The authors included two different and adequate power analyses, various interpretation of the possible effects, and filtering to ensure a high quality of data collection. They also provide a supplementary repository including the qualtrics survey, R script, and simulated data.
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers’ and the recommender’s comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance. URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/xd87r 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
Roth, L. H. O., Tissot, T. T., Fischer, T. & Masak, S. C. (2025). See me, judge me, pay me: Gendered effort moralization in work and care. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/xd87r
| See me, judge me, pay me: Gendered effort moralization in work and care | Leopold H. O. Roth, Tassilo T. Tissot, Thea Fischer, S. Charlotte Masak | <p>The display of high effort at work is commonly rewarded with more positive moral judgements and increased cooperation partner attractiveness. This effect was shown to hold, even if higher effort is unrelated to better performance. Yet, current ... | Social sciences | Adrien Fillon | 2024-09-09 15:12:30 | |||
14 Nov 2023
STAGE 1
Scrolling to wisdom: the impact of social media news exposure on knowledge perceptionMight we know less about current events than we think we do?Recommended by Moin Syed based on reviews by Adrien Fillon, Erik Løhre and Moritz Ingendahl
We are bombarded with news about current events from multiple sources: print media, digital media, friends, family, and more. At the same time, there is an imperative to “stay informed” and be knowledgeable of happenings both local and global. But how much knowledge do we actually gain from this bombardment of information? How informed are we really? It turns out that our perceptions of our knowledge tends to overstate our actual knowledge of a topic. This “illusion of knowledge” effect has been studied across a wide variety of contexts, but is especially relevant for understanding how people learn about and interact with politicized topics.
In the current study, Ruzzante et al. (2023) propose to further our understanding of the illusion of knowledge effect in the context of news exposure on social media. They will use an online pre-post experimental design that assesses participants’ perceived knowledge of a number of topics prior to the manipulation, which involves exposure to different social media news feeds, coming two weeks later. Central to the study, participants will be randomized to news stories that differ in their degree of self-involvement, that is how emotionally involved the topics are. Ruzzante et al. will test the hypothesis that more highly self-involved topics (e.g., abortion) will lead to a greater illusion of knowledge effect than less self-involved topics (e.g., feline immunodeficiency).
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth peer review, the first consisting of substantial comments from three scholars with relevant expertise, and the second consisting of a close review by the recommender. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and was therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/qa7tb
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. Ruzzante, F., Cevolani, G., & Panizza, F. (2023). Scrolling to wisdom: The impact of social media news exposure on knowledge perception. In principle acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/qa7tb
| Scrolling to wisdom: the impact of social media news exposure on knowledge perception | Federica Ruzzante, Gustavo Cevolani, Folco Panizza | <p>The present study aims to test the effect of exposure to news in a social media environment on people’s perceived knowledge of selected topics and on the “illusion of knowledge” effect, i.e., the overestimation of one’s perceived knowledge rela... | Social sciences | Moin Syed | 2022-10-12 21:16:51 | |||
27 Mar 2024
STAGE 1
Revisiting the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior: Replication and extensions Registered Report of Barasch et al. (2014) Studies 3 and 6Understanding how motives and emotions driving prosocial actions impact the moral assessment of good doersRecommended by Romain Espinosa based on reviews by Thibaut Arpinon and Angela Sutan
Pro-social actions are often driven by emotional factors. For instance, emotions have been shown to play a decisive role in the way we judge the fairness of a situation (affect-as-information theory: e.g., Clore et al., 2001; Storbeck and Clore, 2008), and, thus, how we make decisions. Specific emotions like anger have also been shown to stimulate the motivation to fight injustice (Lerner et al., 2015). At the individual level, people might undertake altruistic actions as a way to relieve themselves from these negative emotions (what Cialdini (1991) calls ‘reflexive distress’) but also because these actions are expected by the social norms (‘normative distress’). Indeed, pro-social actions are usually taken in social contexts, and the perception of one’s behavior by third parties might hinder or facilitate the adoption of pro-social behaviors. Understanding the determinants of the perception of altruistic behaviors is thus a key research question to support pro-social actions in collective settings.
In the current study, Woo and Feldman (2024) aim to replicate the seminal work of Barasch et al. (2014), who showed that third parties hold more favorable views of agents undertaking pro-social actions when the latter are motivated by emotions. More precisely, the authors aim to replicate two studies of the original work by conducting a well-powered online experiment (US participants, Prolific, N=1,164). First, they will investigate whether donors who exhibit higher distress regarding the suffering of others are perceived as more moral and authentically concerned for others. Second, they will analyze whether individuals who expect material or reputational benefits from their altruistic deeds are perceived by third parties as less moral than those who act for emotional reasons. In addition to these two replication objectives, the authors propose extensions with pre-registered hypotheses that are inspired by Study 2 from the original work. They seek to investigate whether people are seen as more other-focused when they undertake a prosocial action (donation) and under different expected rewards (material, reputational, emotional benefits).
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by two external reviewers and the recommender. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' and the recommender’s 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/d5bmp
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. Barasch, A., Levine, E. E., Berman, J. Z., & Small, D. A. (2014). Selfish or selfless? On the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 393-413. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037207 2. Cialdini, R. B. (1991). Altruism or egoism? That is (still) the question. Psychological Inquiry, 2, 124-126. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1207/s15327965pli0202_3
3. Clore, G. L., Gasper, K., Garvin, E., & Forgas, J. P. (2001). Handbook of Affect and Social Cognition.
4. Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799-823. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115043
5. Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2008). Affective arousal as information: How affective arousal influences judgments, learning, and memory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1824-1843. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2008.00138.x
6. Woo, T. L. & Feldman, G. (2024). Revisiting the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior: Replication and extensions Registered Report of Barasch et al. (2014) Studies 3 and 6. In principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/d5bmp
| Revisiting the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior: Replication and extensions Registered Report of Barasch et al. (2014) Studies 3 and 6 | Tse Lyn (Rachael) Woo; Gilad Feldman | <p>[IMPORTANT: Abstract, method, and results were written using a randomized dataset produced by Qualtrics to simulate what these sections will look like after data collection. These will be updated following the data collection. For the purpose o... | Social sciences | Romain Espinosa | 2023-11-23 05:22:23 | |||
Revisiting the role of public exposure and moral beliefs on feelings of shame and guilt: Replication Registered Report of Smith et al. (2002)’s Study 1The effect of public exposure and moral beliefs on feelings of shame and guiltRecommended by Chris Chambers based on reviews by Uriel Haran
Shame and guilt are powerful negative emotions that are notable for their external vs. internal focus: while shame is generally experienced in response to public scrutiny, guilt arises from a self-directed, private evaluation. In a formative study, Smith et al. (2002) asked whether the level of public exposure influenced levels of shame and guilt arising from one's transgressions, and found that, compared to private situations, public exposure was more strongly associated with shame than with guilt. Since then, these findings have had significant implications for theories and applications of moral psychology.
In the current study, Zhang et al. (2023) directly replicated Smith et al. (2002) in a large online sample, revisiting two critical questions from Study 1: (a) whether public exposure affects the magnitude of shame and guilt over one’s misconduct, and (b) whether stronger moral belief increases guilt and shame over one’s misconduct. The results fail to confirm the original conclusions: both public exposure and manipulation of moral beliefs were found to influence shame and guilt, with no reliable evidence that shame was influenced more strongly than guilt. These findings thus constitute a non-replication and offer a challenge to theoretical models that hinge on the separability of shame and guilt as separate constructs.
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/j7kt2
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. Smith, R. H., Webster, J. M., Parrott, W. G., & Eyre, H. L. (2002). The role of public exposure in moral and nonmoral shame and guilt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 138-159. https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.83.1.138
2. Zhang, Y., Cheung, F. C., Wong, H.T., Yuen, L. Y., Sin, H. C., Chow, H. T. & Feldman, G. (2023). Revisiting the role of public exposure and moral beliefs on feelings of shame and guilt: Replication Registered Report of Smith et al. (2002)’s Study 1. Acceptance of Version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/jpx87
| Revisiting the role of public exposure and moral beliefs on feelings of shame and guilt: Replication Registered Report of Smith et al. (2002)’s Study 1 | Yikang Zhang, Fung Chit (Jack) Cheung, Hei Tung (Patrina) Wong, Lok Yee (Noel) Yuen, Hui Ching (Rachel) Sin, Hiu Tung Kristy Chow, Gilad Feldman | <p>Shame and guilt are unpleasant self-conscious emotions associated with negative evaluations of oneself or one’s behavior. Smith et al. (2002) demonstrated that shame and guilt are distinct and are impacted differently by public exposure, that i... | Social sciences | Chris Chambers | 2023-02-03 10:58:20 |
