Low replicability can support robust and efficient science

There is a broad agreement that psychology is facing a replication crisis. Even some seemingly well-established findings have failed to replicate. Numerous causes of the crisis have been identified, such as underpowered studies, publication bias, imprecise theories, and inadequate statistical procedures. The replication crisis is real, but it is less clear how it should be resolved. Here we examine potential solutions by modeling a scientific community under various different replication regimes. In one regime, all findings are replicated before publication to guard against subsequent replication failures. In an alternative regime, individual studies are published and are replicated after publication, but only if they attract the community's interest. We find that the publication of potentially non-replicable studies minimizes cost and maximizes efficiency of knowledge gain for the scientific community under a variety of assumptions. Provided it is properly managed, our findings suggest that low replicability can support robust and efficient science.

Clock Walking and Gender: How Circular Movements Influence Arithmetic Calculations

Starting from a rich body of evidence on the strict bidirectional relationship between numerical cognition and action processes, the present study aims at deepening the existing knowledge of the influence of body movement on arithmetic calculation. Numerous studies have shown that moving the body along the vertical or the horizontal axis could facilitate calculations such as additions and subtractions. More specifically, results showed an effect of congruence between the type of operation (additions vs. subtractions) and the direction of the movement performed (up/right or down/left). While this congruence effect is present for both additions and subtractions when the axis of action is vertical, when the axis of action is horizontal, the effect appears only for additions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of circular motion, which has so far not been explored, on counting. Participants were asked to count by adding or subtracting “three,” while performing a circular motion (i.e., a clockwise or counterclockwise movement), in an active (i.e., walking) or passive mode (i.e., being pushed on a wheelchair). Results showed a congruence effect for additions calculated in the active modality and only for male participants. Implications of the results for theories of embodied cognition and for the debate on gender differences in mathematical skills are discussed in this paper.

Bayesian inference for psychology. Part II: Example applications with JASP

Bayesian hypothesis testing presents an attractive alternative to p value hypothesis testing. Part I of this series outlined several advantages of Bayesian hypothesis testing, including the ability to quantify evidence and the ability to monitor and update this evidence as data come in, without the need to know the intention with which the data were collected. Despite these and other practical advantages, Bayesian hypothesis tests are still reported relatively rarely. An important impediment to the widespread adoption of Bayesian tests is arguably the lack of user-friendly software for the run-of-the-mill statistical problems that confront psychologists for the analysis of almost every experiment: the t-test, ANOVA, correlation, regression, and contingency tables. In Part II of this series we introduce JASP ( http://www.jasp-stats.org ), an open-source, cross-platform, user-friendly graphical software package that allows users to carry out Bayesian hypothesis tests for standard statistical problems. JASP is based in part on the Bayesian analyses implemented in Morey and Rouder's BayesFactor package for R. Armed with JASP, the practical advantages of Bayesian hypothesis testing are only a mouse click away.

A processing fluency-account of funniness: running gags and spoiling punchlines

Earlier theories on humour assume that funniness stems from the incongruity resolution of the surprising punchline and thus an insight into the joke's meaning. Applying recent psychological theorising that insight itself draws on processing fluency being the ease and speed with which mental content is processed, it is predicted that increasing the fluency of processing the punchline of a joke increases funniness. In Experiments 1 and 2, significant nouns from the punchlines or from the beginnings of jokes were presented before a joke was rated in funniness. Pre-exposing punchline words 15 minutes and even only 1 minute before the eventual joke led to increased funniness ratings. In contrast, pre-exposing punchline words directly before a joke led to decreased funniness ratings. Furthermore, pre-exposing the beginning of a joke 1 minute before the joke had no effects on funniness. Experiment 3 ruled out exposure-facilitated punchline anticipation as alternative mechanism, and Experiment 4 replicated this fluency effect with typing font as manipulation. These findings also show that pre-exposing a punchline, which in common knowledge should spoil a joke, can actually increase funniness under certain conditions.

Fluid Movement and Fluid Social Cognition

Rigid social categorization can lead to negative social consequences such as stereotyping and prejudice. The authors hypothesized that bodily experiences of fluidity would promote fluidity in social-categorical thinking. Across a series of experiments, fluid movements compared with nonfluid movements led to more fluid lay theories of social categories, more fluidity in social categorization, and consequences of fluid social-categorical thinking, decreased stereotype endorsement, and increased concern for social inequalities. The role of sensorimotor states in fluid social cognition, with consequences for social judgment and behavior, is discussed.