A number of authors have recently proposed that (i) psychological research is highly unpredictable, with identical studies obtaining surprisingly different results, (ii) the presence of heterogeneity decreases the replicability of psychological findings. In this post we provide evidence that contradicts both propositions. Consider these quotes: "heterogeneity persists, and to a reasonable degree, even in […]…
Category: Replication
[54] The 90x75x50 heuristic: Noisy & Wasteful Sample Sizes In The “Social Science Replication Project”
An impressive team of researchers is engaging in an impressive task: Replicate 21 social science experiments published in Nature and Science in 2010-2015 (.htm). The task requires making many difficult decisions, including what sample sizes to use. The authors' current plan is a simple rule: Set n for the replication so that it would have 90%…
[51] Greg vs. Jamal: Why Didn’t Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) Replicate?
Bertrand & Mullainathan (2004, .htm) is one of the best known and most cited American Economic Review (AER) papers [1]. It reports a field experiment in which resumes given typically Black names (e.g., Jamal and Lakisha) received fewer callbacks than those given typically White names (e.g., Greg and Emily). This finding is interpreted as evidence of racial discrimination…
[47] Evaluating Replications: 40% Full ≠ 60% Empty
Last October, Science published the paper “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science” (htm), which reported the results of 100 replication attempts. Today it published a commentary by Gilbert et al. (.htm) as well as a response by the replicators (.htm). The commentary makes two main points. First, because of sampling error, we should not expect all of…
[43] Rain & Happiness: Why Didn’t Schwarz & Clore (1983) ‘Replicate’ ?
In my “Small Telescopes” paper, I introduced a new approach to evaluate replication results (SSRN). Among other examples, I described two studies as having failed to replicate the famous Schwarz and Clore (1983) finding that people report being happier with their lives when asked on sunny days. Figure and text from Small Telescopes paper (SSRN) I…
[38] A Better Explanation Of The Endowment Effect
It’s a famous study. Give a mug to a random subset of a group of people. Then ask those who got the mug (the sellers) to tell you the lowest price they’d sell the mug for, and ask those who didn’t get the mug (the buyers) to tell you the highest price they’d pay for…
[37] Power Posing: Reassessing The Evidence Behind The Most Popular TED Talk
A recent paper in Psych Science (.pdf) reports a failure to replicate the study that inspired a TED Talk that has been seen 25 million times. [1] The talk invited viewers to do better in life by assuming high-power poses, just like Wonder Woman’s below, but the replication found that power-posing was inconsequential. If an…
[23] Ceiling Effects and Replications
A recent failure to replicate led to an attention-grabbing debate in psychology. As you may expect from university professors, some of it involved data. As you may not expect from university professors, much of it involved saying mean things that would get a child sent to the principal's office (.pdf). The hostility in the debate has obscured an interesting…
[11] “Exactly”: The Most Famous Framing Effect Is Robust To Precise Wording
In an intriguing new paper, David Mandel suggests that the most famous demonstration of framing effects – Tversky & Kahneman's (1981) “Asian Disease Problem” – is caused by a linguistic artifact. His paper suggests that eliminating this artifact eliminates, or at least strongly reduces, the framing effect. Does it? This is the perfect sort of paper…
[7] Forthcoming in the American Economic Review: A Misdiagnosed Failure-to-Replicate
In the paper “One Swallow Doesn't Make A Summer: New Evidence on Anchoring Effects”, forthcoming in the AER, Maniadis, Tufano and List attempted to replicate a classic study in economics. The results were entirely consistent with the original and yet they interpreted them as a “failure to replicate.” What went wrong? This post answers that…