Abstract
A crowdsourced project from 23 university participant pools, including NSU (total N = 2,696; NSU N = 131), examined variation in 10 well known psychological findings and 8 individual difference measures over the course of the academic semester. Undergraduate psychology participant pools serve as a major resource for behavioral research studies. Many researchers have hypothesized that the traits and attentiveness of student research participants vary across an academic term (e.g., students who participate later in the semester may be lower in conscientiousness and higher in openness to experience). However, there is very little systematic evidence regarding the magnitude of such differences across the academic term, as well as whether such differences might influence experimental or correlational research findings. A secondary purpose of the “Many Labs” collaborative research is to replicate well known scientific findings on a large scale, an endeavor that editors of Nature have called essential and sorely lacking throughout most of the sciences. Preliminary analyses from NSU indicate that the point in the semester when individuals participated in these experiments and their “Big 5” personality traits (extraversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability) were uncorrelated. Of note, we did replicate two well-known effects: the Stroop effect and the availability heuristic. However, two highly publicized findings that have raised some skepticism recently, the “warmer hearts, warmer room” effect and the “weight as an embodiment of importance” effect, both failed to replicate. These results underscore the importance of large-scale replications of scientific findings.
Faculty Sponsors
Leanne Boucher, Ph.D., Weylin Sternglanz, Ph.D.
Project Type
Event
Location
Alvin Sherman Library
Start Date
4-10-2015 1:00 PM
End Date
4-10-2015 5:30 PM
Nova Southeastern University's Participation in Many Labs 3: Evaluating Participant Pool Characteristics Across the Semester via Replication
Alvin Sherman Library
A crowdsourced project from 23 university participant pools, including NSU (total N = 2,696; NSU N = 131), examined variation in 10 well known psychological findings and 8 individual difference measures over the course of the academic semester. Undergraduate psychology participant pools serve as a major resource for behavioral research studies. Many researchers have hypothesized that the traits and attentiveness of student research participants vary across an academic term (e.g., students who participate later in the semester may be lower in conscientiousness and higher in openness to experience). However, there is very little systematic evidence regarding the magnitude of such differences across the academic term, as well as whether such differences might influence experimental or correlational research findings. A secondary purpose of the “Many Labs” collaborative research is to replicate well known scientific findings on a large scale, an endeavor that editors of Nature have called essential and sorely lacking throughout most of the sciences. Preliminary analyses from NSU indicate that the point in the semester when individuals participated in these experiments and their “Big 5” personality traits (extraversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability) were uncorrelated. Of note, we did replicate two well-known effects: the Stroop effect and the availability heuristic. However, two highly publicized findings that have raised some skepticism recently, the “warmer hearts, warmer room” effect and the “weight as an embodiment of importance” effect, both failed to replicate. These results underscore the importance of large-scale replications of scientific findings.
