Registered Replication Report on Srull and Wyer (1979)
Randy J. McCarthy, John J. Skowronski, Bruno Verschuere, Ewout H. Meijer, Ariane Jim, Katherine Hoogesteyn, Robin Orthey, Oguz A. Acar, Balazs Aczel, Bence E. Bakos, Fernando Barbosa, Ernest Baskin, Laurent Bègue, Gershon Ben-Shakhar, Angie R. Birt, Lisa Blatz, Steve D. Charman, Aline Claesen, Samuel L. Clay, Sean P. Coary, Jan Crusius, Jacqueline R. Evans, Noa Feldman, Fernando Ferreira-Santos, Matthias Gamer, Coby Gerlsma, Sara Gomes, Marta González-Iraizoz, Felix Holzmeister, Juergen Huber, Rafaele J. C. Huntjens, Andrea Isoni, Ryan K. Jessup, Michael Kirchler, Nathalie klein Selle, Lina Koppel, Marton Kovacs, Tei Laine, Frank Lentz, David D. Loschelder, Elliot A. Ludvig, Monty L. Lynn, Scott D. Martin, Neil M. McLatchie, Mario Mechtel, Galit Nahari, Asil Ali Özdoğru, Rita Pasion, Charlotte R. Pennington, Arne Roets, Nir Rozmann, Irene Scopelliti, Eli Spiegelman, Kristina Suchotzki, Angela Sutan, Peter Szecsi, Gustav Tinghög, Jean-Christian Tisserand, Ulrich S. Tran, Alain Van Hiel, Wolf Vanpaemel, Daniel Västfjäll, Thomas Verliefde, Kévin Vezirian, Martin Voracek, Lara Warmelink, Katherine Wick, Bradford J. Wiggins, Keith Wylie, Ezgi Yıldız
Srull and Wyer (1979) demonstrated that exposing participants to more hostility-related stimuli caused them subsequently to interpret ambiguous behaviors as more hostile. In their Experiment 1, participants descrambled sets of words to form sentences. In one condition, 80% of the descrambled sentences described hostile behaviors, and in another condition, 20% described hostile behaviors. Following the descrambling task, all participants read a vignette about a man named Donald who behaved in an ambiguously hostile manner and then rated him on a set of personality traits. Next, participants rated the hostility of various ambiguously hostile behaviors (all ratings on scales from 0 to 10). Participants who descrambled mostly hostile sentences rated Donald and the ambiguous behaviors as approximately 3 scale points more hostile than did those who descrambled mostly neutral sentences. This Registered Replication Report describes the results of 26 independent replications (N = 7,373 in the total sample; k = 22 labs and N = 5,610 in the primary analyses) of Srull and Wyer’s Experiment 1, each of which followed a preregistered and vetted protocol. A random-effects meta-analysis showed that the protagonist was seen as 0.08 scale points more hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% confidence interval, CI = [0.004, 0.16]). The ambiguously hostile behaviors were seen as 0.08 points less hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% CI = [−0.18, 0.01]). Although the confidence interval for one outcome excluded zero and the observed effect was in the predicted direction, these results suggest that the currently used methods do not produce an assimilative priming effect that is practically and routinely detectable.
Keywords: hostility, priming, impression formation, replication, Many Labs, open data, open materials, preregistered
Citation: McCarthy, R. J., Skowronski, J. J., Verschuere, B., Meijer, E. H., Jim, A., Hoogesteyn, K., . . . Yıldız, E. (2018). Registered Replication Report on Srull and Wyer (1979). Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 321-336. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918777487
Randy J. McCarthy, John J. Skowronski, Bruno Verschuere, Ewout H. Meijer, Ariane Jim, Katherine Hoogesteyn, Robin Orthey, Oguz A. Acar, Balazs Aczel, Bence E. Bakos, Fernando Barbosa, Ernest Baskin, Laurent Bègue, Gershon Ben-Shakhar, Angie R. Birt, Lisa Blatz, Steve D. Charman, Aline Claesen, Samuel L. Clay, Sean P. Coary, Jan Crusius, Jacqueline R. Evans, Noa Feldman, Fernando Ferreira-Santos, Matthias Gamer, Coby Gerlsma, Sara Gomes, Marta González-Iraizoz, Felix Holzmeister, Juergen Huber, Rafaele J. C. Huntjens, Andrea Isoni, Ryan K. Jessup, Michael Kirchler, Nathalie klein Selle, Lina Koppel, Marton Kovacs, Tei Laine, Frank Lentz, David D. Loschelder, Elliot A. Ludvig, Monty L. Lynn, Scott D. Martin, Neil M. McLatchie, Mario Mechtel, Galit Nahari, Asil Ali Özdoğru, Rita Pasion, Charlotte R. Pennington, Arne Roets, Nir Rozmann, Irene Scopelliti, Eli Spiegelman, Kristina Suchotzki, Angela Sutan, Peter Szecsi, Gustav Tinghög, Jean-Christian Tisserand, Ulrich S. Tran, Alain Van Hiel, Wolf Vanpaemel, Daniel Västfjäll, Thomas Verliefde, Kévin Vezirian, Martin Voracek, Lara Warmelink, Katherine Wick, Bradford J. Wiggins, Keith Wylie, Ezgi Yıldız
Srull and Wyer (1979) demonstrated that exposing participants to more hostility-related stimuli caused them subsequently to interpret ambiguous behaviors as more hostile. In their Experiment 1, participants descrambled sets of words to form sentences. In one condition, 80% of the descrambled sentences described hostile behaviors, and in another condition, 20% described hostile behaviors. Following the descrambling task, all participants read a vignette about a man named Donald who behaved in an ambiguously hostile manner and then rated him on a set of personality traits. Next, participants rated the hostility of various ambiguously hostile behaviors (all ratings on scales from 0 to 10). Participants who descrambled mostly hostile sentences rated Donald and the ambiguous behaviors as approximately 3 scale points more hostile than did those who descrambled mostly neutral sentences. This Registered Replication Report describes the results of 26 independent replications (N = 7,373 in the total sample; k = 22 labs and N = 5,610 in the primary analyses) of Srull and Wyer’s Experiment 1, each of which followed a preregistered and vetted protocol. A random-effects meta-analysis showed that the protagonist was seen as 0.08 scale points more hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% confidence interval, CI = [0.004, 0.16]). The ambiguously hostile behaviors were seen as 0.08 points less hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% CI = [−0.18, 0.01]). Although the confidence interval for one outcome excluded zero and the observed effect was in the predicted direction, these results suggest that the currently used methods do not produce an assimilative priming effect that is practically and routinely detectable.Keywords: hostility, priming, impression formation, replication, Many Labs, open data, open materials, preregistered
Citation: McCarthy, R. J., Skowronski, J. J., Verschuere, B., Meijer, E. H., Jim, A., Hoogesteyn, K., . . . Yıldız, E. (2018). Registered Replication Report on Srull and Wyer (1979). Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1, 321-336. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918777487
