In 2015, as part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, we published a Registered Report (Chroscinski et al., 2014) that described how we intended to replicate selected experiments from the paper "Melanoma genome sequencing reveals frequent PREX2 mutations" (Berger et al., 2012). Here we report the results of those experiments. We regenerated cells stably expressing ectopic wild-type and mutant phosphatidylinositol-3,4,5-trisphosphate-dependent Rac exchange factor 2 (PREX2) using the same immortalized human NRASG12D melanocytes as the original study. Evaluation of PREX2 expression in these newly generated stable cells revealed varying levels of expression among the PREX2 isoforms, which was also observed in the stable cells made in the original study (Figure S6A; Berger et al., 2012). Additionally, ectopically expressed PREX2 was found to be at least 5 times above endogenous PREX2 expression. The monitoring of tumor formation of these stable cells in vivo resulted in no statistically significant difference in tumor-free survival driven by PREX2 variants, whereas the original study reported that these PREX2 mutations increased the rate of tumor incidence compared to controls (Figure 3B and S6B; Berger et al., 2012). Surprisingly, the median tumor-free survival was 1 week in this replication attempt, while 70% of the control mice were reported to be tumor-free after 9 weeks in the original study. The rapid tumor onset observed in this replication attempt, compared to the original study, makes the detection of accelerated tumor growth in PREX2 expressing NRASG12D melanocytes extremely difficult. Finally, we report meta-analyses for each result.

In 2015, as part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, we published a Registered Report (Chroscinski et al., 2015) that described how we intended to replicate selected experiments from the paper “The CD47-signal regulatory protein alpha (SIRPa) interaction is a therapeutic target for human solid tumors “(Willingham et al., 2012). Here we report the results of those experiments. We found that treatment of immune competent mice bearing orthotopic breast tumors with anti-mouse CD47 antibodies resulted in short-term anemia compared to controls, consistent with the previously described function of CD47 in normal phagocytosis of aging red blood cells and results reported in the original study (Table S4; Willingham et al., 2012). The weight of tumors after 30 days administration of anti-CD47 antibodies or IgG isotype control were not found to be statistically different, whereas the original study reported inhibition of tumor growth with anti-CD47 treatment (Figure 6A,B; Willingham et al., 2012). However, our efforts to replicate this experiment were confounded because spontaneous regression of tumors occurred in several of the mice. Additionally, the excised tumors were scored for inflammatory cell infiltrates. We found IgG and anti-CD47 treated tumors resulted in minimal to moderate lymphocytic infiltrate, while the original study observed sparse lymphocytic infiltrate in IgG-treated tumors and increased inflammatory cell infiltrates in anti-CD47 treated tumors (Figure 6C; Willingham et al., 2012). Furthermore, we observed neutrophilic infiltration was slightly increased in anti-CD47 treated tumors compared to IgG control. Finally, we report a meta-analysis of the result.

This paper examines the effect of political uncertainty on stock returns, exploiting an exogenous shock to political stability in Brazil. In May 2017, a conversation between Brazil's President and a businessman was bugged by Brazilian Police and leaked to the media. This led to sudden political instability and a collapse in the equity market. We decompose the cross-sectional variation of abnormal returns around this event and investigate whether corporate political connections and exposure to foreign capital were factors in the price falls. Our results show that firms connected with the Brazilian state-owned development bank, BNDES, and firms cross-listed via ADRs (American Depositary Receipts) were most affected by this shock. The evidence suggests that political connections and foreign capital exposure are factors in channeling political risk to asset prices, increasing the cost of equity capital during periods of political instability.

As part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, we published a Registered Report (Li et al., 2015), that described how we intended to replicate selected experiments from the paper ‘The microRNA miR-34a inhibits prostate cancer stem cells and metastasis by directly repressing CD44’ (Liu et al., 2011). Here we report the results. We found the microRNA, miR-34a, was expressed at twice the level in CD44+ prostate cancer cells purified from xenograft tumors (LAPC4 cells) compared to CD44- LAPC4 cells, whereas the original study reported miR-34a was underexpressed in CD44+ LAPC4 cells (Figure 1B; Liu et al., 2011). When LAPC4 cells engineered to express miR-34a were injected into mice, we did not observe changes in tumor growth or CD44 expression; however, unexpectedly miR-34a expression was lost in vivo. In the original study, LAPC4 cells expressing miR-34a had a statistically significant reduction in tumor regeneration and reduced CD44 expression compared to control (Figure 4A and Supplemental Figures 4A,B and 5C; Liu et al., 2011). Furthermore, when we tested if miR-34a regulated CD44 through binding sites in the 3’UTR we did not find a statistically significant difference, whereas the original study reported miR-34a decreased CD44 expression that was partially abrogated by mutation of the binding sites in the CD44 3’UTR (Figure 4D; Liu et al., 2011). Finally, where possible, we report meta-analyses for each result.

As part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology we published a Registered Report (Evans et al., 2015), that described how we intended to replicate selected experiments from the paper ‘Wnt activity defines colon cancer stem cells and is regulated by the microenvironment’ (Vermeulen et al., 2010). Here, we report the results. Using three independent primary spheroidal colon cancer cultures that expressed a Wnt reporter construct we observed high Wnt activity was associated with the cell surface markers CD133, CD166, and CD29, but not CD24 and CD44, while the original study found all five markers were correlated with high Wnt activity (Figure 2F; Vermeulen et al., 2010). Clonogenicity was highest in cells with high Wnt activity and clonogenic potential of cells with low Wnt activity were increased by myofibroblast-secreted factors, including HGF. While the effects were in the same direction as the original study (Figure 6D; Vermeulen et al., 2010) whether statistical significance was reached among the different conditions varied. When tested in vivo, we did not find a difference in tumorigenicity between high and low Wnt activity, while the original study found cells with high Wnt activity were more effective in inducing tumors (Figure 7E; Vermeulen et al., 2010). Tumorigenicity, however, was increased with myofibroblast-secreted factors, which was in the same direction as the original study (Figure 7E; Vermeulen et al., 2010), but not statistically significant. Finally, we report meta-analyses for each results where possible.

We conducted a replication and extension of Driscoll, Davis, and Lipetz’s (1972) classic longitudinal survey of the Romeo and Juliet effect, wherein they found that increases in parental interferen...

This study tested whether EI (conceptualized as a performance-based ability) predicted economic and relational outcomes in an employee-recruiter negotiation above general mental ability (GMA) and whether a novel measure of emotion recognition ability (ERA; a central component of EI) predicted these outcomes better than an established broad ability EI test. Results showed that GMA was unrelated to negotiation outcomes. Higher scores on the ERA test and the emotional understanding subtest of the broad EI measure were associated with higher dyadic gains and higher individual gains for participants’ counterparts. Negotiators with high ERA were also perceived as more cooperative and likable and showed higher self-ratings of cooperativeness. Overall, the ERA test predicted outcomes more consistently than the broad ability EI test.

Researchers are strongly divided as to whether abrupt onsets capture spatial attention in a purely stimulus-driven fashion or contingent on their search goals. Recently, Gaspelin, Ruthruff and Lien (2016) offered a resolution of this debate by showing that whether spatial capture by abrupt onsets is observed in a spatial cueing search task critically depends on search difficulty. To account for these findings, they proposed an “attentional dwelling” hypothesis, according to which, following capture by a cue, attention dwells at the cued location until the object subsequently appearing at that location is identified as the target or rejected as a distractor. A critical prediction of this account is that the more similar to the target the distractor at the cued location, the longer attention should dwell at its location. Yet, Gaspelin et al. (2016) did not test this prediction because they manipulated overall search difficulty rather than the difficulty of rejecting a specific distractor. The present study provides a critical test of the attentional dwelling hypothesis, by also varying target-distractor similarity within a trial rather than only between trials. Although we closely replicated these authors’ findings, the dwelling hypothesis passed the critical test in one of our two experiments. To accommodate the entire pattern of results observed here, we tentatively suggest a priority-accumulation framework, according to which cue validity effects do not necessarily index spatial shifts of attention, but instead, how much the cue speeds the resolution of the competition between the target and distractors in the search display. A correction article related to this work can be found here: 10.5334/joc.60

We study the introduction of a wealth-management robo-adviser that constructs portfolios tailored to investors’ holdings and preferences. Adopters are similar to non-adopters in terms of demographics and prior interactions with human advisers but tend to be more active and have greater assets under management. Investors adopting robo-advising experience diversification benefits. Ex ante undiversified investors increase stock holdings and hold portfolios with less volatility and better returns. Already well-diversified investors hold fewer stocks, yet see some reduction in volatility, and trade more after adoption. All investors increase attention based on online account logins. We find that adopters exhibit declines in prominent behavioral biases, including the disposition, trend chasing, and rank effect. Our results emphasize the promises and pitfalls of robo-advising tools, which are becoming ubiquitous all over the world.Received May 31, 2017; editorial decision August 21, 2018 by Editor Wei Jiang.

Technology-based (“FinTech”) lenders increased their market share of U.S. mortgage lending from 2% to 8% from 2010 to 2016. Using loan-level data on mortgage applications and originations, we show that FinTech lenders process mortgage applications 20% faster than other lenders, controlling for observable characteristics. Faster processing does not come at the cost of higher defaults. FinTech lenders adjust supply more elastically than do other lenders in response to exogenous mortgage demand shocks. In areas with more FinTech lending, borrowers refinance more, especially when it is in their interest. We find no evidence that FinTech lenders target borrowers with low access to finance.Received June 1, 2017; editorial decision November 5, 2018 by Editor Wei Jiang. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

In a series of four experiments, Topolinski and Sparenberg (2012) found support for the conjecture that clockwise movements induce psychological states of temporal progression and an orientation toward the future and novelty. Here we report the results of a preregistered replication attempt of Experiment 2 from Topolinski and Sparenberg (2012). Participants turned kitchen rolls either clockwise or counterclockwise while answering items from a questionnaire assessing openness to experience. Data from 102 participants showed that the effect went slightly in the direction opposite to that predicted by Topolinski and Sparenberg (2012), and a preregistered Bayes factor hypothesis test revealed that the data were 10.76 times more likely under the null hypothesis than under the alternative hypothesis. Our findings illustrate the theoretical importance and practical advantages of preregistered Bayes factor replication studies, both for psychological science and for empirical work in general.

Competing in today’s workforce increasingly requires earning a college degree, yet almost half of all enrolled undergraduates do not graduate. As the costs of dropping out of college continue to rise, instructor-student relationships may be a critical yet underexplored avenue for improving college student outcomes. The present study attempts to replicate and extend a prior study that improved teacher-student relationships at the high school level in a college setting. In this registered report, we test whether an intervention that highlights instructor-student commonalities improves similarity, instructor-student relationships, academic achievement, and persistence for undergraduate students in a large, diverse public university. We found that the intervention increased perceptions of similarity but not downstream relational or academic outcomes. Our exploratory analyses provide one of the first investigations suggesting that instructor-student relationships predict an array of consequential student outcomes in college. These findings show a notable relationship gap: instructors perceived less positive relationships with certain student groups, but on average, students perceived equally positive relationships with their instructors.

Although numerous survey-based studies have found that students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ) have elevated risk for many negative academic, disciplinary, psychological, and health outcomes, the validity of the types of data on which these results rest have come under increased scrutiny. Over the past several years, a variety of data-validity screening techniques have been used in attempts to scrub data sets of “mischievous responders,” youth who systematically provide extreme and untrue responses to outcome items and who tend to falsely report being LGBQ. We conducted a preregistered replication of Cimpian et al. with the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey to (1) estimate new LGBQ-heterosexual disparities on 20 outcomes; (2) test a broader, mechanistic theory relating mischievousness effects with a feature of items (i.e., item response-option extremity); and (3) compare four techniques used to address mischievous responders. Our results are consistent with Cimpian et al.’s findings that potentially mischievous responders inflate LGBQ-heterosexual disparities, do so more among boys than girls, and affect outcomes differentially. For example, we find that removing students suspected of being mischievous responders can cut male LGBQ-heterosexual disparities in half overall and can completely or mostly eliminate disparities in outcomes including fighting at school, driving drunk, and using cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy. Methodologically, we find that some methods are better than others at addressing the issue of data integrity, with boosted regressions coupled with data removal leading to potentially very large decreases in the estimates of LGBQ-heterosexual disparities, but regression adjustment having almost no effect. While the empirical focus of this article is on LGBQ youth, the issues discussed are relevant to research on other minority groups and youth generally, and speak to survey development, methodology, and the robustness and transparency of research.

Blockchains are distributed ledgers, operated within peer-to-peer networks. We model the proof-of-work blockchain protocol as a stochastic game and analyze the equilibrium strategies of rational, strategic miners. Mining the longest chain is a Markov perfect equilibrium, without forking, in line with Nakamoto (2008). The blockchain protocol, however, is a coordination game, with multiple equilibria. There exist equilibria with forks, leading to orphaned blocks and persistent divergence between chains. We also show how forks can be generated by information delays and software upgrades. Last we identify negative externalities implying that equilibrium investment in computing capacity is excessive.Received May 31, 2017; editorial decision July 6, 2018 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

Handwriting practice is the most time-consuming activity for learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). CFL instructors report allocating at least one third of their course time to handwriting practice although it prevents students from engaging in meaningful communication, especially in the earliest stages of learning. Given the amount of time students spend in a college course is relatively fixed, the preregistered study presented herein examines the best use of students’ time when primary goals are word acquisition and communication. This work replicates a pilot study examining CFL word recognition in an online learning environment (ASSISTments) and the effects of supplemental handwriting practice. We examined word acquisition and recognition while manipulating condition (no-handwriting practice and with-handwriting practice), and posttest test point (1 [immediate], 2 [1 day delay], and 3 [1 week delay]). Two-way repeated measures analyses of variance revealed significant main effects for both condition and posttest test point in online and on-paper measures of word recognition and handwriting. Potential implications for CFL instruction and directions for future work are discussed.

The congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to the finding that the effect of cognitive conflict is smaller following conflicting, incongruent trials than after non-conflicting, congruent trials in conflict tasks, such as the Stroop, Simon, and flanker tasks. This is typically interpreted as an upregulation of cognitive control in response to conflict. Weissman, Jiang, & Egner (2014) investigated whether the CSE appears in these three tasks and a further variant where task-irrelevant distractors precede the target (prime-probe task), in the absence of learning and memory confounds in samples collected online. They found significant CSEs only in the prime-probe and Simon tasks, suggesting that the effect is more robust in tasks where the distractor can be translated into a response faster than the target. In this Registered Replication Report we collected data online from samples approx. 2.5 times larger than in the original study for each of the four tasks to investigate whether the task-related differences in the magnitude of the CSE are replicable (Nmin = 115, Nmax = 130). Our findings extend but do not contradict the original results: Bayesian analyses suggested that the CSE was present in all four tasks in RT but only in the Simon task in accuracy. The size of the effect did not differ between tasks, and the size of the congruency effect was not correlated with the size of the CSE across participants. These findings suggest it might be premature to conclude that the difference in the speed of distractor- vs target-related response activation is a determinant of the size of cross-trial modulations of control. The practical implications of our results for online data collection in cognitive control research are also discussed.

We investigate two questions, (1) the relevance of memory for evaluative conditioning (EC) effects based on smell-taste pairings, and (2) the potential preparedness of smell-taste combinations for yielding EC effects. The relevance of memory for EC effects is a subject of intense research. The majority of studies that investigate the memory-EC relation use visual stimuli and typically show no or relatively small EC effects without memory. For smell-taste combinations, only a few studies exist, with mixed results regarding the role of memory in EC. The idea that there might be a preparedness of smell and taste pairings comes from classical conditioning studies showing preparedness in food aversion and from research on joint processing of smells and tastes. In Experiment 1, we report a conceptual replication of previous studies with smell-taste and picture-taste pairings. In this experiment, we found no evidence for memory-independent EC overall. In a pre-registered Experiment 2, we used a design with smells, pictures, tastes, and sounds to test the role of memory more conclusively and test the preparedness hypothesis for smell-taste pairings. The results support the preparedness hypothesis for smell-taste pairings in EC. Furthermore, as in Experiment 1, we did not find evidence for memory-independent EC.

Heightened experience of disgust is a feature of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), particularly contamination-related OCD (C-OCD). Previous studies of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) reported that the sense of body ownership is related to the interaction between vision, touch, and proprioception. One recent study demonstrated a link between the RHI and disgust, suggesting that there is an interaction between these three perceptual modalities and disgust (Jalal et al., PLOS ONE 10:e0139159, 2015). However, there have been no direct replications of this initial study. We therefore performed a direct replication of Jalal et al.’s (PLOS ONE 10:e0139159, 2015) study. We examined 133 participants (based on a power analysis) to determine whether placing contamination-related stimuli on a rubber hand causes OCD-like disgust among healthy participants experiencing the RHI. That is, we tested whether Japanese participants experience more intense disgust when the rubber hand and the participant’s hidden hand are stroked synchronously than when stroked asynchronously, in order to replicate and examine the cross-cultural validity of this effect. The main finding of the original study by Jalal and colleagues was successfully replicated in a large sample. Some inconsistencies in one of the control procedures exploring coldness sensations during the RHI were found, which could possibly be due to cross-cultural differences or the improved statistical power of the present study. Based on the present replication study, we conclude that an intervention using the RHI as proposed by Jalal et al. (PLOS ONE 10:e0139159, 2015) might potentially be useful for the treatment of OCD following replications in clinical OCD populations.

When you lack the facts, how do you decide what is true and what is not? In the absence of knowledge, we sometimes rely on non-probative information. For example, participants judge concretely worded trivia items as more likely to be true than abstractly worded ones (the linguistic truth effect;Hansen & Wänke, 2010). If minor language differences affect truth judgements, ultimately they could influence more consequential political, legal, health, and interpersonal choices. This Registered Report includes two high-powered replication attempts of Experiment 1 from Hansen and Wänke (2010). Experiment 1a was a dual-site, in-person replication of the linguistic concreteness effect in the original paper-and-pencil format (n = 253, n = 246 in analyses). Experiment 1b replicated the study with an online sample (n = 237,n = 220 in analyses). In Experiment 1a, the effect of concreteness on judgements of truth (Cohen’sdz = 0.08; 95% CI: [–0.03, 0.18]) was smaller than that of the original study. Similarly, in Experiment 1b the effect (Cohen’s dz = 0.11; 95% CI [–0.01, 0.22]) was smaller than that of the original study. Collectively, the pattern of results is inconsistent with that of the original study.

We report an effort to replicate and extend Levelt and Kelter’s (1982) Experiment 3. In their study, experimenters phoned businesses and asked, At what time does your shop close? or What time does your shop close? Participants were more likely to produce prepositional responses (At 7 o’clock) to questions containing a preposition than to questions that did not. Across three experiments, we replicated Levelt and Kelter’s method, and included a number of other communicative contexts (asking questions by phone, in person, or by text message, and asking people both known and unknown to the experimenter). Our efforts produced mixed results. Across experiments, and within each communicative context, we found the predicted pattern of results (more prepositional responses following prepositional questions). Although this pattern was not statistically reliable in our individual experiments, it was significant in an analysis conducted across all of our experiments. Overall, our results suggest that the structural repetition effect observed by Levelt and Kelter is replicable, but is weaker than the effect reported in the original paper.

Research suggests that emerging adults (EAs) with a disabling impairment experience poor psychosocial outcomes and delayed markers of adulthood. Given the numbers of EA with a disabling impairment who do not self-identify as having a disability, we examine a multigroup structural model of positive disability identity based on disability self-identification. Participants (n = 2,016) completed assessments of positive disability identity, psychosocial outcomes, and markers of adulthood. Most participants with a disabling impairment did not self-identify as having a disability (68%). Positive disability identity, maintaining a positive view of disability, was associated with increased life satisfaction, regardless of whether EA self-identify as having a disability. Exploratory analyses suggest that EA with psychiatric disabilities experience the most negative psychosocial outcomes. Findings suggest that maintaining a positive view of disability is associated with favorable outcomes. However, intervention with EA who do not self-identify is challenging, as they may not seek support services.

Recent research reveals that some variability in personality differences can be explained by contextual factors such as location. Although little research has systematically evaluated how such variables predict individual differences in Emerging Adulthood, Fosse and Toyokawa (2016) revealed that characteristics of one’s university such as selectivity and liberal arts classification did predict respondents’ perceived importance and attainment of milestones associated with adulthood. As a close replication of Fosse and Toyokawa (2016), the present findings supported our preregistered hypotheses that liberal arts status predicted decreased perceived importance and lower attainment of some constructs of markers of adulthood but did not support predictions that selectivity would also predict such differences. Our findings provide further evidence of the institutional effects that emerge in multisample individual difference studies and extend those findings with a broader and more diverse sample than was considered previously.

For humans, visual tracking of moving stimuli often triggers catch-up saccades during smooth pursuit. The switch between these continuous and discrete eye movements is a trade-off between tolerating sustained position error (PE) when no saccade is triggered or a transient loss of vision during the saccade due to saccadic suppression. de Brouwer et al. (2002b) demonstrated that catch-up saccades were less likely to occur when the target re-crosses the fovea within 40–180 ms. To date, there is no mechanistic explanation for how the trigger decision is made by the brain. Recently, we proposed a stochastic decision model for saccade triggering during visual tracking (Coutinho et al., 2018) that relies on a probabilistic estimate of predicted PE (PEpred). Informed by model predictions, we hypothesized that saccade trigger time length and variability will increase when pre-saccadic predicted errors are small or visual uncertainty is high (e.g., for blurred targets). Data collected from human participants performing a double step-ramp task showed that large pre-saccadic PEpred (>10°) produced short saccade trigger times regardless of the level of uncertainty while saccade trigger times preceded by small PEpred (<10°) significantly increased in length and variability, and more so for blurred targets. Our model also predicted increased signal-dependent noise (SDN) as retinal slip (RS) increases; in our data, this resulted in longer saccade trigger times and more smooth trials without saccades. In summary, our data supports our hypothesized predicted error-based decision process for coordinating saccades during smooth pursuit.

Researchers have shown an interest in the aggregated Big Five personality of U.S. states, but typically they have relied on scores from a single sample (Rentfrow, Gosling, & Potter, 2008). We examine the replicability of U.S. state personality scores from two studies (Rentfrow et al., 2008; Rentfrow, Gosling, Jokela, & Stillwell, 2013) across a total of seven samples, two of them new. Same-trait correlations across samples are, on average, positive for all five traits, indicating score agreement. Additionally, three traits (Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness) show strongly consistent patterns of correlations with sociodemographic variables across samples. We find rank order stability in state personality scores for a 16-year period (1999–2015).

Neuropsychological studies indicate that healthy aging is associated with a decline of inhibitory control of attentional and behavioral systems. A widely accepted measure of inhibitory control is the antisaccade task that requires both the inhibition of a reflexive saccadic response toward a visual target and the initiation of a voluntary eye movement in the opposite direction. To better understand the nature of age-related differences in inhibitory control, we evaluated antisaccade task performance in 78 younger (20–35 years) and 78 older (60–80 years) participants. In order to provide reliable estimates of inhibitory control for individual subjects, we investigated test–retest reliability of the reaction time, error rate, saccadic gain, and peak saccadic velocity and further estimated latent, not directly observable processed contributing to changes in the antisaccade task execution. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for an older group of participants emerged as good to excellent for most of our antisaccade task measures. Furthermore, using Bayesian multivariate models, we inspected age-related differences in the performances of healthy younger and older participants. The older group demonstrated higher error rates, longer reaction times, significantly more inhibition failures, and late prosaccades as compared with young adults. The consequently lower ability of older adults to voluntarily inhibit saccadic responses has been interpreted as an indicator of age-related inhibitory control decline. Additionally, we performed a Bayesian model comparison of used computational models and concluded that the Stochastic Early Reaction, Inhibition and Late Action (SERIA) model explains our data better than PRO-Stop-Antisaccade (PROSA) that does not incorporate a late decision process.

. Screening measures for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are important tools for clinicians and researchers. However, where a measure developed and validated for one population is used with another, its performance in this new context must be carefully examined. The RAADS-14, a brief ASD screen developed in Sweden, was evaluated with a sample of New Zealand adults (N = 387), 41 of whom self-reported a prior diagnosis of ASD. The convergent validity of the RAADS-14 (Hypothesis 2) was supported by a strong positive correlation with the AQ-10 (short version of the Autism Spectrum Quotient), r = .81. Discriminant validity (Hypothesis 3) was also supported by a strong negative correlation with the EQ-Short (short version of the Empathy Quotient), r = −.75. However, the measure did not meet inferential criteria for internal consistency (Hypothesis 1), and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) found a poor fit of the proposed three-factor model (Hypothesis 4) to the data. A cut-off score of 14/42 provided adequate sensitivity (95%) to detect participants with self-reported ASD diagnoses, but not adequate specificity (70%), suggesting a very high rate of false positives should be expected if relying on RAADS-14 scores alone to interpret presence of ASD. In sum, our results do not provide sufficient evidence of reliability and validity to support the use of the RAADS-14 with the New Zealand population. We provide suggestions for refinement of the RAADS-14 that may lead to increased reliability and validity.

. Language comprehenders have been arguing to mentally represent the implied orientation of objects. However, compared to the effects of shape, size, and color, the effect of orientation is rather small. We examined a potential explanation for the relatively low magnitude of the orientation effect: Object size moderates the orientation effect. Theoretical considerations led us to predict a smaller orientation effect for small objects than for large objects in a sentence–picture verification task. We furthermore investigated whether this pattern generalizes across languages (Chinese, Dutch, and English) and tasks (picture-naming task). The results of the verification task show an orientation effect overall, which is not moderated by object size (contrary to our hypothesis) and language (consistent with our hypothesis). Meanwhile, the preregistered picture–picture verification task showed the predicted interaction between object size and orientation effect. We conducted exploratory analyses to address additional questions.

According to a recent meta-analysis, religious priming has a positive effect on prosocial behavior (Shariff et al., 2015). We first argue that this meta-analysis suffers from a number of methodological shortcomings that limit the conclusions that can be drawn about the potential benefits of religious priming. Next we present a re-analysis of the religious priming data using two different meta-analytic techniques. A Precision-Effect Testing–Precision-Effect-Estimate with Standard Error (PET-PEESE) meta-analysis suggests that the effect of religious priming is driven solely by publication bias. In contrast, an analysis using Bayesian bias correction suggests the presence of a religious priming effect, even after controlling for publication bias. These contradictory statistical results demonstrate that meta-analytic techniques alone may not be sufficiently robust to firmly establish the presence or absence of an effect. We argue that a conclusive resolution of the debate about the effect of religious priming on prosocial behavior – and about theoretically disputed effects more generally – requires a large-scale, preregistered replication project, which we consider to be the sole remedy for the adverse effects of experimenter bias and publication bias.

Performance-monitoring event-related brain potentials (ERPs), such as the error-related negativity (ERN) and reward positivity (RewP), are advocated as biomarkers of depression symptoms and risk. However, a recent meta-analysis indicated effect size heterogeneity in the ERN and RewP literatures. Hence, advocating these ERPs as biomarkers of depression might be premature or possibly misguided due to the selective reporting of significant analyses on the part of researchers (e.g., p-hacking or omission of non-significant findings). The present study quantified the degree of selective reporting and the evidential value for a true relationship between depression and ERN and RewP using a p-curve analysis. We predicted that the ERN and RewP literatures would fail to show evidential value for a relationship between each ERP and depression. Contrary to expectations, both literatures showed evidential value, albeit weak. The statistical power of the included ERN studies was between 20% and 25%, and the statistical power of the RewP was around 27%. Taken together, these findings provide support for a relationship between these ERPs and depression, which strengthens claims that these ERPs represent candidate biomarkers of depression symptoms and risk. In light of the evidence for these relationships being weak, some recommendations moving forward include conducting a priori power analyses, increasing sample sizes to improve statistical power, assessing the internal consistency of ERP scores, and carefully planning statistical approaches to maximize power.

Individuals who score high in Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) have a tendency to find uncertainty and the unknown aversive. However, there is a dearth of literature on the extent to which the known vs. the unknown during threatening contexts induce fear and anxiety in individuals with high IU. In the following registered report we attempted to address this question by manipulating the known and unknown in the threat of predictable and unpredictable aversive events task. Throughout the task, we measured a variety of self-report (ratings of valence and arousal) and physiological indices (skin conductance, pupil dilation, orbicularis oculi, corrugator supercilii). We collected data from 93 participants. Higher IU, relative to lower IU was associated with: (1) less discriminatory orbicularis oculi activity between cue and interstimulus interval periods across conditions, and (2) larger corrugator supercilii activity to the known predictable shock condition and smaller corrugator supercilii activity to the known unpredictable shock condition, compared to the other conditions. These findings provide evidence that IU-related biases manifest differently depending on the physiological marker of fear and anxiety and the type of known-unknown threat i.e. orbicularis oculi activity was related to generalisation across conditions, whilse corrugator supercilii activity reflected distress/relief during conditions with known threat. Ultimately, this research will inform future models of IU in relation to anxiety and stress disorders.

This study tests an important and appealing hypothesis that has been around in the fields of cognitive psycho logy and neuroscience for over 40 years, but that lacks a conclusive empirical test. According to this hypothesis, there is a direct relationship between speed and capacity in working memory. Working memory refers to the ability to retain a small amount of information in a highly accessible state for a short period of time. Across different fields, it has been proposed that the limited capacity of working memory can be understood in terms of time instead of space, such that the amount of information that can be actively maintained corresponds to the amount of information through which one can cycle in a constant and relatively short time-window. Here, we present a study that explicitly and directly tests the speed-capacity hypothesis. In particular, we test (1) the speed-capacity hypothesis in verbal working memory, (2) the speed-capacity hypothesis in visuospatial working memory, and most importantly, (3) whether the sam speed-capacity relation holds across verbal and visuospatial working memory, reflecting a domain-general, time-based law of human working memory capacity and, as such, of the complexity of human thought. Overall, our results do not provide any evidence for the existence of a domain-general law. However, unexpected findings related to measuring memory speed (i.e., high prevalence of negative search slopes in the Sternberg task) prevent us from drawing firm conclusions.

The self-concept maintenance theory holds that many people will cheat in order to maximize self-profit, but only to the extent that they can do so while maintaining a positive self-concept. Mazar, Amir, and Ariely (2008, Experiment 1) gave participants an opportunity and incentive to cheat on a problem-solving task. Prior to that task, participants either recalled the Ten Commandments (a moral reminder) or recalled 10 books they had read in high school (a neutral task). Results were consistent with the self-concept maintenance theory. When given the opportunity to cheat, participants given the moral-reminder priming task reported solving 1.45 fewer matrices than did those given a neutral prime (Cohen’s d = 0.48); moral reminders reduced cheating. Mazar et al.’s article is among the most cited in deception research, but their Experiment 1 has not been replicated directly. This Registered Replication Report describes the aggregated result of 25 direct replications (total N = 5,786), all of which followed the same preregistered protocol. In the primary meta-analysis (19 replications, total n = 4,674), participants who were given an opportunity to cheat reported solving 0.11 more matrices if they were given a moral reminder than if they were given a neutral reminder (95% confidence interval = [−0.09, 0.31]). This small effect was numerically in the opposite direction of the effect observed in the original study (Cohen’s d = −0.04).

In 2015, as part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, we published a Registered Report (Kandela et al., 2015) that described how we intended to replicate selected experiments from the paper "BET bromodomain inhibition as a therapeutic strategy to target c-Myc" (Delmore et al., 2011). Here we report the results of those experiments. We found that treatment of human multiple myeloma (MM) cells with the small-molecular inhibitor of BET bromodomains, (+)-JQ1, selectively downregulated MYC transcription, which is similar to what was reported in the original study (Figure 3B; Delmore et al., 2011). Efficacy of (+)-JQ1 was evaluated in an orthotopically xenografted model of MM. Overall survival was increased in (+)-JQ1 treated mice compared to vehicle control, similar to the original study (Figure 7E; Delmore et al., 2011). Tumor burden, as determined by bioluminescence, was decreased in (+)-JQ1 treated mice compared to vehicle control; however, while the effect was in the same direction as the original study (Figure 7C-D; Delmore et al., 2011), it was not statistically significant. The opportunity to detect a statistically significant difference was limited though, due to the higher rate of early death in the control group, and increased overall survival in (+)-JQ1 treated mice before the pre-specified tumor burden analysis endpoint. Additionally, we evaluated the (−)-JQ1 enantiomer that is structurally incapable of inhibiting BET bromodomains, which resulted in a minimal impact on MYC transcription, but did not result in a statistically significant difference in tumor burden or survival distributions compared to treatment with (+)-JQ1. Finally, we report meta-analyses for each result.

In 2015, as part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, we published a Registered Report (Kandela et al., 2015) that described how we intended to replicate selected experiments from the paper “Discovery and Preclinical Validation of Drug Indications Using Compendia of Public Gene Expression Data“ (Sirota et al., 2011). Here we report the results of those experiments. We found that cimetidine treatment in a xenograft model using A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells resulted in decreased tumor volume compared to vehicle control; however, while the effect was in the same direction as the original study (Figure 4C; Sirota et al., 2011), it was not statistically significant. Cimetidine treatment in a xenograft model using ACHN renal cell carcinoma cells did not differ from vehicle control treatment, similar to the original study (Supplemental Figure 1; Sirota et al., 2011). Doxorubicin treatment in a xenograft model using A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells did not result in a statistically significant difference compared to vehicle control despite tumor volume being reduced to levels similar to those reported in the original study (Figure 4C; Sirota et al., 2011). Finally, we report a random effects meta-analysis for each result. These meta-analyses show that the inhibition of A549 derived tumors by cimetidine resulted in a statistically significant effect, as did the inhibition of A549 derived tumors by doxorubicin. The effect of cimetidine on ACHN derived tumors was not statistically significant, as predicted.

As part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology we published a Registered Report (Lesnik et al., 2016) that described how we intended to replicate selected experiments from the paper ‘Melanoma exosomes educate bone marrow progenitor cells toward a pro-metastatic phenotype through MET’ (Peinado et al., 2012). Here we report the results. We regenerated tumor cells stably expressing a short hairpin to reduce Met expression (shMet) using the same highly metastatic mouse melanoma cell line (B16-F10) as the original study, which efficiently downregulated Met in B16F10 cells similar to the original study (Supplementary Figure 5A; Peinado et al., 2012). Exosomes from control cells expressed Met, which was reduced in exosomes from shMet cells; however, we were unable to reliably detect phosphorylated Met in exosomes. We tested the effect of exosome-dependent Met signaling on primary tumor growth and metastasis. Similar to the results in the original study, we did not find a statistically significant change in primary tumor growth. Measuring lung and femur metastases, we found a small increase in metastatic burden with exosomes from control cells that was diminished when Met expression was reduced; however, while the effects were in the same direction as the original study (Figure 4E; Peinado et al., 2012), they were not statistically significant. Differences between the original study and this replication attempt, such as level of knockdown efficiency, cell line genetic drift, sample sizes, study endpoints, and variability of observed metastatic burden, are factors that might have influenced the outcomes. Finally, we report meta-analyses for each result.

When processing an object, the human cognitive system instantaneously produces a latent experience of processing fluency that has been shown to influence a wide variety of judgments (e.g., liking, beauty, truth, safety, trustworthiness, etc.). The majority of findings revolve around the idea that fluent processing is hedonically positive and shifts evaluative judgments in the positive direction (the “Hedonic Fluency Model”). However, other findings indicate that fluency can intensify existing judgmental tendencies in the positive and negative directions (the “Fluency Amplification Model”). In two exploratory studies and three confirmatory studies submitted as a registered report, the present paper examines whether fluency hedonically upshifts evaluative judgments or whether it bidirectionally amplifies them. All five studies indicate that both mechanisms seem to be at work simultaneously. These findings challenge the previously assumed unidimensional nature of fluency and call for an advancement of the current theories of processing fluency.

We investigate the effects of perceivers’ impressions of others’ personality traits on their social attraction, after a brief encounter face-to-face or via Facebook. We first examine the main effects of perceived personality traits. Next, we compare and contrast the effects of perceived- and actual- personality similarity through polynomial regressions with response surface analysis (RSA) accounting for dyads’ respective levels of personality traits. Results suggest that RSA yield estronger effects of perceived similarity (vs. actual) on attraction. Perceivers are more attracted to targets who are “better versions” of themselves, yet too much discrepancy impede attraction, more so when face-to-face.

This paper explores the measurement of individual music feature preference using human- and computer-rated music excerpts. In the first of two studies, we correlated human ratings of song excerpts with computer-extracted music features and found good accordance, as well as similar criterion validity with preference for musical styles (the MUSIC model, mean r = 0.88). In a second online study (N = 2118), using PCA and Procrustes analysis, we found that measured music preference showed the same established three-component structure from previous research (Arousal, Valence, Depth), regardless of whether the music pieces were rated by humans or the ESSENTIA music analysis software. Our results suggest that computer-extracted music features can be used to assess individual music preference.

The primary goal of the current article is to “take stock” of the “other” relationships of self-assessed intelligence (SAI). The current article groups the relationships of SAI into four categories: constructs associated with intelligence (openness, emotional intelligence), tendencies and opportunities to develop intelligence (conscientiousness, education, age, SES, prior IQ test experience), constructs associated with biased self-assessments (extraversion, neuroticism, narcissism, honesty-humility, race), and positive states and life achievements (positive self-regard, psychological well-being, academic achievement). The meta-analytic results demonstrate that almost all variables from these four categories significantly relate to SAI, with the exception of prior IQ test experience. These relationships are also consistent when accounting for psychometric intelligence, and no studied moderator variables consistently influence the magnitude of these results.

People with higher levels of executive control, relative to low levels, should be more capable of responding to the problems and stressors of their lives, yet we know very little concerning this lab-to-life interface. Two studies (total N=254) sought to speak to questions of this type using the Stroop task, a classic measure of executive control. Individual differences in Stroop costs were assessed in the laboratory, following which the same people completed daily diary protocols for two weeks. Consistent with neurocognitive theories of executive control, both studies found that people capable of overriding the Stroop effect tended to recruit self-control in response to the stressful circumstances of their lives. By contrast, people with high Stroop costs did not exhibit this problem-focused form of recruitment. The findings extend our knowledge of individual differences in executive control and the manner in which they operate in daily life.

Personality traits such as conscientiousness and impulsivity correlate with temporal discounting, the degree to which individuals discount the value of future relative to present rewards. These variables have, in turn, been hypothesized to relate to income inequality in the United States. A key but untested assumption of this hypothesis is that the association among these variables is distinct across socioeconomic classes. The purpose of the present research is to test that assumption. N = 1100 adults with annual income ranging from at or below the poverty line ($0–$20,000) to upper-middle class ($200,000+) completed personality measures and a measure of temporal discounting. The results of our preregistered analyses indicated a positive association of income with trait planfulness, and a negative association with trait impulsivity and one parameter of temporal discounting that captures a bias to prefer sooner rewards to a greater degree if they are delivered that day. Our results can inform psychological theories of inequality and a broader conversation about effective public policy.

In the present report, we describe two planned direct replications of studies on the relationship between social class and prosocial behavior. In the original studies, individuals with higher socioeconomic status have been shown to behave less prosocially across a variety of domains. This finding continues to influence both research and the public debate on the psychological correlates of social class. At the same time, the validity of the original findings has been contested. Against this background, pre-registered direct replication studies with sufficient statistical power are warranted to test the robustness of these influential findings. We conducted two replication studies to provide valuable diagnostic information with regard to the relationship between social class and prosocial behavior. Our results indicate that the generalizability of the original findings may be much more limited than suggested. In addition, they highlight the need for an increased reliance on psychometrically established measures to facilitate cumulative research on the relationship between social class and prosocial behavior.

Is the subjective well-being (SWB) of high-achieving students generally higher compared to low achieving students? In this meta-analysis, we investigated the association between SWB and academic achievement by synthesizing 151 effect sizes from 47 studies with a total of 38,946 participants. The correlation between academic achievement and SWB was small to medium in magnitude and statistically significant at r = 0.164, 95% CI [0.113, 0.216]. The correlation was stable across various levels of demographic variables, different domains of SWB, and was stable across alternative measures of academic achievement or SWB. Overall, the results suggest that low-achieving students do not necessarily report low well-being, and that high-achieving students do not automatically experience high levels of well-being.

Neuroticism has been linked to typical levels of affect, affect reactivity to negative events, and variability in affect over time. However, the intercorrelations among these characteristics make it unclear whether neuroticism reflects unique variance in each of these aspects of emotional life. Data from two daily-diary samples revealed that neuroticism was associated with average levels and variability of positive and negative affect and reactivity of negative affect to stressors, but was only uniquely related to mean levels of positive and negative affect. Findings highlight the substantial overlap in affect indices, suggesting that mean levels of affect, at the very least, are at the core of neuroticism, and reveal the need for further research using more nuanced approaches.

Forgetting involves the loss of information over time; however, we know little about what form this information loss takes. Do memories become less precise over time, or do they instead become less accessible? Here we assessed memory for word–location associations across four days, testing whether forgetting involves losses in precision versus accessibility and whether such losses are modulated by learning a generalizable pattern. We show that forgetting involves losses in memory accessibility with no changes in memory precision. When participants learned a set of related word–location associations that conformed to a general pattern, we saw a strong trade-off; accessibility was enhanced, whereas precision was reduced. However, this trade-off did not appear to be modulated by time or confer a long-term increase in the total amount of information maintained in memory. Our results place theoretical constraints on how models of forgetting and generalization account for time-dependent memory processes.

Self-objectification has been claimed to induce numerous detrimental consequences for women at the individual level (e.g., sexual dysfunction, depression, eating disorders). Additionally, at the collective level, it has been proposed that self-objectified women might themselves contribute to the maintenance of the patriarchal status quo, for instance, by participating less in collective action. In 2013, Calogero found a negative link between self-objectification and collective action, which was mediated by the adoption of gender-specific system justification. Here, we report two preregistered direct replications (PDRs) of Calogero’s original study. We conducted these PDRs after three failures to replicate the positive relation between self-objectification and gender-specific system-justification belief in correlational studies. Results of the two PDRs, in which we used a Bayesian approach, supported the null hypothesis. This work has important theoretical implications because it challenges the role attributed to self-objectified women in the maintenance of patriarchy.

Shalvi, Eldar, and Bereby-Meyer (2012) found across two studies (N = 72 for each) that time pressure increased cheating. These findings suggest that dishonesty comes naturally, whereas honesty requires overcoming the initial tendency to cheat. Although the study’s results were statistically significant, a Bayesian reanalysis indicates that they had low evidential strength. In a direct replication attempt of Shalvi et al.’s Experiment 2, we found that time pressure did not increase cheating, N = 428, point biserial correlation (rpb) = .05, Bayes factor (BF)01 = 16.06. One important deviation from the original procedure, however, was the use of mass testing. In a second direct replication with small groups of participants, we found that time pressure also did not increase cheating, N = 297, rpb = .03, BF01 = 9.59. These findings indicate that the original study may have overestimated the true effect of time pressure on cheating and the generality of the effect beyond the original context.

Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) reported that participants primed with a category associated with intelligence (“professor”) subsequently performed 13% better on a trivia test than participants primed with a category associated with a lack of intelligence (“soccer hooligans”). In two unpublished replications of this study designed to verify the appropriate testing procedures, Dijksterhuis, van Knippenberg, and Holland observed a smaller difference between conditions (2%–3%) as well as a gender difference: Men showed the effect (9.3% and 7.6%), but women did not (0.3% and −0.3%). The procedure used in those replications served as the basis for this multilab Registered Replication Report. A total of 40 laboratories collected data for this project, and 23 of these laboratories met all inclusion criteria. Here we report the meta-analytic results for those 23 direct replications (total N = 4,493), which tested whether performance on a 30-item general-knowledge trivia task differed between these two priming conditions (results of supplementary analyses of the data from all 40 labs, N = 6,454, are also reported). We observed no overall difference in trivia performance between participants primed with the “professor” category and those primed with the “hooligan” category (0.14%) and no moderation by gender.

How did anxiety influence vote choice in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when both major candidates faced substantial voter disapproval? Drawing from the model of affective intelligence (Marcus et al. 2000), I argue that anxious voters will base their vote choice more strongly on issues and candidate qualities and less on partisanship relative to non-anxious voters. This study uses a registered report as part of the 2016 Election Research Preacceptance Competition, wherein a complete analysis plan was submitted for review prior to the 2016 American National Election Study’s release. In so doing, it serves as a model for other preregistered and potentially preaccepted research. Consistent with past findings, this study shows that anxious voters in 2016 were less likely to rely on past partisanship and more likely to base decisions on personal qualities. However, anxiety did not condition the effect of issues in the election. Further, Donald Trump faced no more anxiety among Republican voters than Mitt Romney did in 2012 due to a rise of in-party enthusiasm. The non-conditional effect of issues and a relatively narrow gap in partisan anxiety served as unique features of the 2016 election.

Prior research has provided initial evidence that thinking about being excluded by God lowers self-reported well-being in a Dutch sample of Christian students. The current research sought to replicate this finding in two studies. The first experiment recruited a USA sample of Christian students from a secular and religious school. The second experiment recruited a USA online sample of Christians contacted via Mechanical Turk. Results of these two studies replicated the initial finding that thinking about being excluded by God lowers self-reported well-being relative to thinking about being included by God, or contemplating that God created the earth. Overall, these results show how people’s perceived relationship with God may influence their quality of life.