Interdisciplinary lessons and recommendations for the evaluation of replicability in behavioral sciences.

As the scientific community becomes aware of low replicability rates in the extant literature, peer-reviewed journals have begun implementing initiatives with the goal of improving replicability. Such initiatives center around various rules to which authors must adhere to demonstrate their engagement in best practices. Preliminary evidence in the psychological science literature demonstrates a degree of efficacy in these initiatives.

Preliminary Evidence for an Association between Journal Submission Requirements and Reproducibility of Published Findings: A Pilot Study.

Systemic efforts have been employed to improve the reproducibility of published findings in psychology. To date, little research has been conducted evaluating how well these efforts work. In an effort to bridge this gap, the current study looked at journal submission requirements intended to encourage authors to engage in best practices for facilitating reproducible science and offers preliminary evidence for their potential efficacy.

Crowd Salience Reduces Aversion to Facially Communicated Psychopathy but Not Narcissism.

Despite the adaptive advantages of social affiliation in humans, the benefits of interpersonal contact are nonetheless bounded. The experience of crowding can emerge from an oversaturation of social affiliation, fostering avoidant behaviors and heightening vigilance toward interpersonal threats. Among these features indicative of threat includes facial structures connoting dark personality traits associated with a proclivity toward exploitative behavior.

Competing motives in a pandemic: Interplays between fundamental social motives and technology use in predicting (Non)Compliance with social distancing guidelines.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals were advised to adhere to social distancing guidelines limiting physical interpersonal contact. Humans have a suite of adaptations to satisfy belonging needs while avoiding diseased conspecifics. Competition between motivational systems may explain adherence and resistance to social distancing guidelines and how technologically mediated interactions further shape these decisions.

Crowd Salience Heightens Tolerance to Healthy Facial Features.

Objective: Recent findings suggest crowd salience heightens pathogen-avoidant motives, serving to reduce individuals' infection risk through interpersonal contact. Such experiences may similarly facilitate the identification, and avoidance, of diseased conspecifics. The current experiment sought to replicate and extend previous crowding research.

The Effect of Workplace Gender Composition on Investment Interest in Hypothetical Companies.

The current study extends previous work on gendered workplace attitudes by manipulating the workplace gender composition (CEO gender, employee gender) of traditional male and female employment sectors. Participants reported general financial investment interest in purported male-role congruent (science laboratory) and female-role congruent (daycare) start-up companies, where CEO gender and employee gender were orthogonally manipulated. Participants had more favorable investment attitudes toward daycares when the CEO was a woman, and especially favorable investment attitudes when both the CEO and employees were women.

Cross-race responses to mental illness cues.

Much research suggests mental health diagnoses elicit stigmatization of individuals. The current study builds upon this literature at the intersection of same- and cross-race perceptions. Black and White participants viewed Black and White targets paired with either a mental health diagnosis (e.

Noncompliance with Masking as a Coalitional Signal to US Conservatives in a Pandemic.

Humans have evolved perceptual acuity toward environmental cues heuristically associated with communicable disease that elicits an aversion. One heuristic cue that humans utilize to infer contamination threat is ingroup-outgroup status, with prejudices arising toward outgroup members due to potential novel pathogen exposure. The current study sought to investigate how disease responses in the US population have been modulated by the COVID-19 pandemic, given its origins in China, an outgroup population.

Demonstrate values: Behavioral displays of moral outrage as a cue to long-term mate potential.

Recent findings suggest that moral outrage signals trustworthiness to others, and such perceptions play a uniquely important role in identifying social opportunities. We conducted four studies (N = 870) investigating how displays of moral outrage are perceived in the specific context of mating. Results indicated participants, particularly women, found prospective mates describing outrage-signaling activism to be more desirable for long-term mating (Study 1), and this perception of desirability was similarly inferred among same-sex raters (Study 2).

Not Taking a Joke: The Influence of Target Status, Sex, and Age on Reactions to Workplace Humor.

The current study tasked undergraduates with serving as hypothetical human resource workers to evaluate complaints of offensive and inoffensive humor used by male and female employees in a fictitious company who varied in employment status and age. Offensive humor was deemed more problematic in its usage, particularly among female perceivers. Contrary to hypotheses, its usage was more problematic for male and older employees than for female and younger employees.

Skin in the Game: Personal Accountability and Journal Peer Review.

Two preregistered studies explored the likelihood paper reviewers would request clarification from authors regarding potential questionable research practices (QRPs). Study 1 participants were instructed to imagine reviewing a journal manuscript as either a coauthor or peer reviewer and rate the extent to which they would request clarification from the author when encountering potential QRPs. Participants reported greater likelihood of requesting clarification when assigned to the coauthor relative to the peer reviewer role.

Personal Motivations and Systemic Incentives: Scientists on Questionable Research Practices.

As concern over the use of questionable research practices (QRPs) in academic science has increased over the last couple of decades, some reforms have been implemented and many others have been debated and recommended. While many of these proposals have merit, efforts to improve scientific practices are more likely to succeed when they are responsive to the prevailing views and concerns of scientists themselves. To date, there have been few efforts to solicit wide-ranging input from researchers on the topic of needed reforms.

Ethical Consistency and Experience: An Attempt to Influence Researcher Attitudes Toward Questionable Research Practices Through Reading Prompts.

Over the past couple of decades, the apparent widespread occurrence of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) in scientific research has been widely discussed in the research ethics literature as a source of concern. Various ways of reducing their use have been proposed and implemented, ranging from improved training and incentives for adopting best practices to systematic reforms. This article reports on the results of two studies that investigated the efficacy of simple, psychological interventions aimed at changing researcher attitudes toward QRPs.

Political Orientation and Belief in Science in a U.S. College Sample.

Lay skepticism toward empirically supported scientific research has increased significantly in recent years. Given that part of the social contract of science is the betterment of society, it is critical for the scientific community to identify factors underlying public dismissal versus support of scientific evidence. The current study explores how individual differences in political ideology influence acceptance of factual and nonfactual information, with differences in truth-seeking values as a potential mediating variable.

Assessing the Efficacy of a Training Intervention to Reduce Acceptance of Questionable Research Practices in Psychology Graduate Students.

We designed and tested the efficacy of a 1-hr training session to mitigate endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs), research practices that raise ethical concerns and are detrimental to reproducible science, in psychology graduate students. We assessed attitudes toward QRPs 1 week prior to the training, 1 week following the training, and at 2-month follow-up. Participants reported QRPs as less ethically defensible 1 week following the intervention compared with 1 week prior, with attitudes at 2-month follow-up falling in between these time points.

Grounds for Ambiguity: Justifiable Bases for Engaging in Questionable Research Practices.

The current study sought to determine research scientists' sensitivity to various justifications for engaging in behaviors typically considered to be questionable research practices (QRPs) by asking them to evaluate the appropriateness and ethical defensibility of each. Utilizing a within-subjects design, 107 National Institutes of Health principal investigators responded to an invitation to complete an online survey in which they read a series of research behaviors determined, in prior research, to either be ambiguous or unambiguous in their ethical defensibility. Additionally, each behavior was paired with either an ostensibly sound or unsound reason for the behavior.

In Defense of the Questionable: Defining the Basis of Research Scientists' Engagement in Questionable Research Practices.

National Institutes of Health principal investigators reported their perceptions of the ethical defensibility, prevalence in their field, and their personal willingness to engage in questionable research practices (QRPs). Using ethical defensibility ratings, an exploratory factor analysis yielded a two-factor solution: behaviors considered unambiguously ethically indefensible and behaviors whose ethical defensibility was more ambiguous. In addition, increasing perceptions that QRPs affect science predicted reduced acceptability of QRPs, whereas increasing beliefs that QRPs are normative or necessary for career success predicted increased acceptability of QRPs.

Put a (Limbal) Ring on It: Women Perceive Men's Limbal Rings as a Health Cue in Short-Term Mating Domains.

Limbal rings are dark annuli encircling the iris that fluctuate in visibility based on health and age. Research also indicates their presence augments facial attractiveness. Given individuals' prioritization of health cues in short-term mates, those with limbal rings may be implicated as ideal short-term mates.

Financial Conflicts of Interest, Disclosure, and Academic Discipline.

Peer assessments of researchers' financial conflicts of interest (FCOIs) are crucial to effective FCOI management. We sought to determine how academics perceive FCOI disclosure and whether their perceptions vary depending on discipline and educational backgrounds. Participants (faculty and staff members from a multi-disciplinary academic medical center) responded to a questionnaire involving 10 hypothetical scenarios in which researchers either disclosed or failed to disclose a financial conflict (between-participants manipulation).

Callous-unemotional traits and empathy deficits: Mediating effects of affective perspective-taking and facial emotion recognition.

Although empathy deficits are thought to be associated with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, findings remain equivocal and little is known about what specific abilities may underlie these purported deficits. Affective perspective-taking (APT) and facial emotion recognition may be implicated, given their independent associations with both empathy and CU traits. The current study examined how CU traits relate to cognitive and affective empathy and whether APT and facial emotion recognition mediate these relations.

Verbal compliments as a differential source of mate poaching threat for men and women.

Two studies tested whether people feel threatened by another individual verbally complimenting their romantic partner. Such compliments may indicate that the other person is a potential rival who will try to "poach" their mate. Across two studies, women were more threatened than men when imagining another person complimenting their partner's physical appearance.

Balancing competing motives: adaptive trade-offs are necessary to satisfy disease avoidance and interpersonal affiliation goals.

The current research provides novel evidence for motivational trade-offs between the two fundamental human goals of pursuing social affiliation and avoiding disease. In Study 1, participants completed a writing prime that manipulated inclusionary status and found that socially excluded participants indicated lower feelings of current disease susceptibility compared with control and socially included participants. In Study 2, participants were included or excluded via Cyberball and then indicated their preferences for symmetrical versus asymmetrical faces.

Overgeneralizing belonging: limited exposure to baby-faced targets increases the feeling of social belonging.

We tested the hypothesis that exposure to babyish faces can serve a social surrogacy function, such that even limited exposure to babyish faces can fulfill social belongingness needs. We manipulated the sex and facial maturity of a target face seen in an imagined social interaction, on a between-participants basis. Regardless of target sex, individuals indicated greater satisfaction of social belongingness needs following an imagined interaction with a babyish face, compared to a mature adult face.

The Influence of Disclosure and Ethics Education on Perceptions of Financial Conflicts of Interest.

This study explored how disclosure of financial conflicts of interest (FCOI) influences naïve or "lay" individuals' perceptions of the ethicality of researcher conduct. On a between-subjects basis, participants read ten scenarios in which researchers disclosed or failed to disclose relevant financial conflicts of interest. Participants evaluated the extent to which each vignette represented a FCOI, its possible influence on researcher objectivity, and the ethics of the financial relationship.

Never let them see you cry: self-presentation as a moderator of the relationship between exclusion and self-esteem.

A debate exists concerning whether exclusion harms self-esteem. We hypothesized that social exclusion does harm self-esteem, but that this effect is evident only when self-presentational concerns to "appear fine" are minimal or people are unable to alter their report of self-esteem. In the first three studies, participants' explicit and implicit self-esteem were measured following an exclusion or comparison condition where self-presentational pressures were likely high.