High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable

Failures to replicate evidence of new discoveries have forced scientists to ask whether this unreliability is due to suboptimal implementation of methods or whether presumptively optimal methods are not, in fact, optimal. This paper reports an investigation by four coordinated laboratories of the prospective replicability of 16 novel experimental findings using rigour-enhancing practices: confirmatory tests, large sample sizes, preregistration and methodological transparency. In contrast to past systematic replication efforts that reported replication rates averaging 50%, replication attempts here produced the expected effects with significance testing (P < 0.05) in 86% of attempts, slightly exceeding the maximum expected replicability based on observed effect sizes and sample sizes. When one lab attempted to replicate an effect discovered by another lab, the effect size in the replications was 97% that in the original study. This high replication rate justifies confidence in rigour-enhancing methods to increase the replicability of new discoveries.

Volume Estimation Through Mental Simulation

Although mental simulation underlies many day-to-day judgments, we identified a new domain influenced by simulation: volume estimation. Previous research has identified various ways in which volume estimates are biased but typically has not presented a psychological process by which such judgments are made. Our simulation-informs-perception account proposes that people often estimate a container's size by simulating filling it. First, this produces an orientation effect: The same container is judged larger when right side up than when upside down because of the greater ease of imagining filling an upright container. Second, we identified a cavern effect: Imagining pouring water through a narrow opening toward a relatively wide base produces a sense that the container is cavernous and large (compared with identically sized, wide-topped, narrow-based containers). By testing for and demonstrating the importance of simulation to these effects, we showed how complex perceptual judgments can be distorted by higher level cognitive influences even when they are necessarily informed by modularly processed perceptual input.

Rejecting a bad option feels like choosing a good one

Across 4,151 participants, the authors demonstrate a novel framing effect, attribute matching, whereby matching a salient attribute of a decision frame with that of a decision's options facilitates decision-making. This attribute matching is shown to increase decision confidence and, ultimately, consensus estimates by increasing feelings of metacognitive ease. In Study 1, participants choosing the more attractive of two faces or rejecting the less attractive face reported greater confidence in and perceived consensus around their decision. Using positive and negative words, Study 2 showed that the attribute's extremity moderates the size of the effect. Study 3 found decision ease mediates these changes in confidence and consensus estimates. Consistent with a misattribution account, when participants were warned about this external source of ease in Study 4, the effect disappeared. Study 5 extended attribute matching beyond valence to objective judgments. The authors conclude by discussing related psychological constructs as well as downstream consequences. (PsycINFO Database Record