This article provides a roadmap to assist graduate students and their advisors to engage in open science practices. We suggest eight open science practices that novice graduate students could begin adopting today. The topics we cover include journal clubs, project workflow, preprints, reproducible code, data sharing, transparent writing, preregistration, and registered reports. To address concerns about not knowing how to engage in open science practices, we provide a difficulty rating of each behavior (easy, medium, difficult), present them in order of suggested adoption, and follow the format of what , why , how , and worries . We give graduate students ideas on how to approach conversations with their advisors/collaborators, ideas on how to integrate open science practices within the graduate school framework, and specific resources on how to engage with each behavior. We emphasize that engaging in open science behaviors need not be an all or nothing approach, but rather graduate students can engage with any number of the behaviors outlined.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most widely used measure to assess automatic evaluations. One classic phenomenon that has been well established both using the IAT and self-report measures of liking is evaluative conditioning (EC), which refers to a change in the evaluation of a stimulus due to its pairing with another stimulus. Research has documented that EC can also occur when participants are merely informed about upcoming stimulus pairings. In a recent study, participants reported a more negative evaluation of non-words that were instructed to be followed by an unpleasant sound compared to non-words that would not to be followed by this sound (De Houwer, Mattavelli, & Van Dessel, 2019). Interestingly, however, an unexpected pattern was observed on an IAT, that is, a preference for the stimulus said to be followed by the sound. We report three pre-registered experiments ( N = 650) in which we manipulated different aspects of the procedure such as the stimuli, instructions, and the measure, but that still revealed the same dissociation. Based on three pilot experiments ( N = 92), we then conducted a registered report study (Experiment 4) testing whether the unexpected effect depends on how the USs are labelled in the instructions. Although describing the aversive sound as negative eliminated the unexpected IAT effect, the type of instruction only had a weak impact on IAT effects. These results are in line with prior evidence showing that IAT scores are malleable.

The past decade has seen rapid growth in research linking stable psychological characteristics (i.e., traits) to digital records of online behavior in Online Social Networks (OSNs) like Facebook and Twitter, which has implications for basic and applied behavioral sciences. Findings indicate that a broad range of psychological characteristics can be predicted from various behavioral residue online, including language used in posts on Facebook (Park et al., 2015) and Twitter (Reece et al., 2017), and which pages a person ‘likes’ on Facebook (e.g., Kosinski, Stillwell, & Graepel, 2013). The present study examined the extent to which the accounts a user follows on Twitter can be used to predict individual differences in self-reported anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and anger. Followed accounts on Twitter offer distinct theoretical and practical advantages for researchers; they are potentially less subject to overt impression management and may better capture passive users. Using an approach designed to minimize overfitting and provide unbiased estimates of predictive accuracy, our results indicate that each of the four constructs can be predicted with modest accuracy (out-of-sample R ’s of approximately .2). Exploratory analyses revealed that anger, but not the other constructs, was distinctly reflected in followed accounts, and there was some indication of bias in predictions for women (vs. men) but not for racial/ethnic minorities (vs. majorities). We discuss our results in light of theories linking psychological traits to behavior online, applications seeking to infer psychological characteristics from records of online behavior, and ethical issues such as algorithmic bias and users’ privacy.

The coronavirus pandemic represents a serious challenge for modern societies. Individuals’ perception of risk influences their choice of action, and their collective actions determine the societal impact of the pandemic. The current data paper presents descriptive statistics of a survey from a representative sample of Norwegian citizens ( N = 4,083), collected in the early phases of the pandemic (March 20-29, 2020). Most of the population considered the risk for being infected to be small and the risk for becoming seriously ill to be smaller still. On the other hand, most were worried that family members could be infected, and that their daily life could change drastically. The majority of participants were optimistic that they could handle the challenges that the virus would bring, and that they would receive good medical treatment if they were to become sick. Almost all stated that they intended to comply with the authorities’ advice for limiting the contagion. Most stated that following the advice would be effective in preventing themselves and others from becoming sick. Most stated being careful in how they gather information about the pandemic. The survey showed that the Norwegian population at the time had realistic perceptions of risks, optimistic attitudes and intentions for prosocial behaviour that would limit the pandemic spread.

A growing number of studies are using co-registration of eye movement (EM) and fixation-related potential (FRP) measures to investigate reading. However, the number of co-registration experiments remains small when compared to the number of studies in the literature conducted with EMs and event-related potentials (ERPs) alone. One reason for this is the complexity of the experimental design and data analyses. The present paper is designed to support researchers who might have expertise in conducting reading experiments with EM or ERP techniques and are wishing to take their first steps towards co-registration research. The objective of this paper is threefold. First, to provide an overview of the issues that such researchers would face. Second, to provide a critical overview of the methodological approaches available to date to deal with these issues. Third, to offer an example pipeline and a full set of scripts for data preprocessing that may be adopted and adapted for one’s own needs. The data preprocessing steps are based on EM data parsing via Data Viewer (SR Research), and the provided scripts are written in Matlab and R. Ultimately, with this paper we hope to encourage other researchers to run co-registration experiments to study reading and human cognition more generally.

Children and adolescents interact in peer groups, which are known to influence a range of psychological and behavioral outcomes. In developmental psychology and related disciplines, social cognitive mapping (SCM), as implemented with the SCM 4.0 software, is the most commonly used method for identifying peer groups from peer report data. However, in a series of four studies, we demonstrate that SCM has an unacceptably high risk of false positives. Specifically, we show that SCM will identify peer groups even when applied to random data. We introduce backbone extraction and community detection as one promising alternative to SCM, and offer several recommendations for researchers seeking to identify peer groups from peer report data.

Both humans and some non-human animals tend to respond more vigorously after failing to obtain rewards. Such response invigoration becomes more pronounced when individuals have increased expectations of obtaining rewards during reward pursuit (expectancy), and when they perceive the eventual loss to be proximal to reward receipt (proximity). However, it was unclear whether proximity and expectancy may have distinct influences on response vigor. To investigate this question, we developed a computerized ’scratch card’ task, in which participants turned three cards one by one and won points when all three cards matched (AAA). After each game, they pressed keys to confirm the outcome and start a new game. We included three types of losses: AAB, where participants had increased expectancy of winning as the game evolved, and the final outcome was proximal to winning; ABB and ABA, with reduced expectancy, but high proximity to winning; and ABC, with reduced expectancy and low proximity to winning. In three online studies, we consistently observed that participants confirmed losses more quickly than wins. Importantly, detailed analyses of the different types of losses revealed that proximity reduced vigor, whereas expectancy increased it. Together, these findings are in line with general appraisal theories: the adjustments of response vigor may be triggered by the appraised discrepancy between the current state and a reference state (e.g., attaining one’s goal), and serve to close the gap and facilitate goal pursuit. These findings may also have implications for the effect of ‘near miss’ on gambling persistence. Further exploring how reward omission impacts response vigor may help us better understand the goal pursuit process, and how it becomes maladaptive under certain circumstances.

The a priori impact of survey design and implementation tactics on score reliability is not well-understood. Using a two-by-two-by-two cluster randomized post-test only experimental design, the Cronbach’s coefficient alpha of internal consistency reliability of scores on three personality scales is calculated. The experimental conditions are presence versus absence of quality control items, anonymous versus confidential administration conditions, and randomly scrambled items versus grouped survey items. Alpha was calculated for each of the eight treatment groups. Hakstian and Whalen’s (1976) formulae were used to calculate the standard deviation of alpha. These summary data were then used in analysis of variance tests. The ANOVA results were mixed for the three personality scales. The use of quality control items had no impact on alpha on any scale, confidentiality improved alpha on one scale and decreased it on two others, and grouping items together improved alpha on two scales and decreased it on another. Although most of the exploratory interaction tests for each scale were statistically significant, none were in the direction implied by the confluence of main effect hypotheses. These mixed results suggest that a priori machinations by survey designers and administrators may often result in unwanted differences in score reliability.

This study assessed the effects of age, word frequency, and background noise on the time course of lexical activation during spoken word recognition. Participants (41 young adults and 39 older adults) performed a visual world word recognition task while we monitored their gaze position. On each trial, four phonologically unrelated pictures appeared on the screen. A target word was presented auditorily following a carrier phrase (“Click on ________”), at which point participants were instructed to use the mouse to click on the picture that corresponded to the target word. High- and low-frequency words were presented in quiet to half of the participants. The other half heard the words in a low level of noise in which the words were still readily identifiable. Results showed that, even in the absence of phonological competitors in the visual array, high-frequency words were fixated more quickly than low-frequency words by both listener groups. Young adults were generally faster to fixate on targets compared to older adults, but the pattern of interactions among noise, word frequency, and listener age showed that older adults’ lexical activation largely matches that of young adults in a modest amount of noise.

Emotion Induced Blindness (EIB) is characterized by an impairment in the detection of a neutral target image when it appears between 100-500ms after the presentation of an emotional image. EIB has been argued to be an early level perceptual impairment resulting from spatio-temporal competition between the neutral target and the emotional distractor. While the role of attentional processes is implied in EIB, there hasn’t been a systematic comparison between EIB and Attentional Blink (AB) concerning the locus of attentional control. That is, in most of the AB studies, participants are required to identify and report T1 while in EIB studies they are asked to ignore the emotional distractor. Hence, the differences between AB and EIB may stem from this difference in attentional control. In Expt. 1 and Expt. 2 participants were asked to report two targets in an RSVP stream and we found similar impairment in both the experiments, irrespective of the emotional nature of the target. However, in Expt. 3 and 4 where participants were required to report only one target, only the emotional distractor captured attention, leading to an impairment in target detection. Our result shows that target impairment in EIB is due to the exogenous attentional allocation to the emotional image. i.e., distractor image being emotionally salient captures attention in a bottom-up manner leading to the impairment in the less salient target.

Media headlines reporting scientific research frequently include generic phrases such as “Scientists believe x” or “Experts think y”. These phrases capture attention and succinctly communicate science to the public. However, by generically attributing beliefs to ‘Scientists’, ‘Experts’ or ‘Researchers’ the degree of scientific consensus must be inferred by the reader or listener (do all scientists believe x , most scientists, or just a few?). Our data revealed that decontextualized generic phrases such as “Scientists say…” imply consensus among a majority of relevant experts (53.8% in Study 1 and 60.7-61.8% in Study 2). There was little variation in the degree of consensus implied by different generic phrases, but wide variation between different participants. These ratings of decontextualized phrases will inevitably be labile and prone to change with the addition of context, but under controlled conditions people interpret generic consensus statements in very different ways. We tested the novel hypothesis that individual differences in consensus estimates occur because generic phrases encourage an intuitive overgeneralization (e.g., Scientists believe = All scientists believe ) that some people revise downwards on reflection (e.g., Scientists believe = Some scientists believe ). Two pre-registered studies failed to support this hypothesis. There was no significant relationship between reflective thinking and consensus estimates (Study 1) and enforced reflection did not cause estimates to be revised downwards (Study 2). Those reporting scientific research should be aware that generically attributing beliefs to ‘Scientists’ or ‘Researchers’ is ambiguous and inappropriate when there is no clear consensus among relevant experts.

Finding a bottle of milk in the bathroom would probably be quite surprising to most of us. Such a surprised reaction is driven by our strong expectations, learned through experience, that a bottle of milk belongs in the kitchen. Our environment is not randomly organized but governed by regularities that allow us to predict what objects can be found in which types of scene . These scene semantics are thought to play an important role in the recognition of objects. But when during development are the semantic predictions so far implemented that such scene-object inconsistencies would lead to semantic processing difficulties? Here we investigated how toddlers perceive their environments, and what expectations govern their attention and perception. To this aim, we used a purely visual paradigm in an ERP experiment and presented 24-month-olds with familiar scenes in which either a semantically consistent or an inconsistent object would appear. The scene-inconsistency effect has been previously studied in adults by means of the N400, a neural marker responding to semantic inconsistencies across many types of stimuli. Our results show that semantic object-scene inconsistencies indeed elicited an enhanced N400 over the left anterior brain region between 750 and 1150 ms post stimulus onset. This modulation of the N400 marker provides first indications that by the age of two toddlers have already established their scene semantics allowing them to detect a purely visual, semantic object-scene inconsistency. Our data suggest the presence of specific semantic knowledge regarding what objects occur in a certain scene category.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought in-person academic conferences to a halt. A current pressing question among researchers in our field is whether we should return to the pre-pandemic conference model when travel is safe again. We present evidence suggesting that the answer is no. We surveyed 489 researchers studying human behavior and cognition about their pre-pandemic conference attendance, what they value in conferencing, and their attitudes toward solutions for making conferences more sustainable. We found that researchers’ average carbon footprints from conference travel are unsustainable in light of recommendations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We also found that researchers are positively inclined towards a variety of changes that would make conferences more sustainable. Given these results, it will be essential for future conference organizers to provide more sustainable and accessible options, including a virtual option for participation at every conference. For attendees to choose virtual formats, it will be important for conference organizers to provide virtual experiences that are as fulfilling as possible, changes which can also be applied to in-person conferencing. We envision a future of conferencing that is more productive, accessible, and environmentally conscious.

For years, adult psychological research has benefitted from web-based data collection. There is growing interest in harnessing this approach to facilitate data collection from children and adolescents to address foundational questions about cognitive development. To date, however, few studies have directly tested whether findings from in-lab developmental psychology tasks can be replicated online, particularly in the domain of value-based learning and decision-making. To address this question, we set up a pipeline for online data collection with children, adolescents, and adults, and conducted a replication of Decker et al. (2016). The original in-lab study employed a sequential decision-making paradigm to examine shifts in value-learning strategies from childhood to adulthood. Here, we used the same paradigm in a sample of 151 children (N = 50; ages 8 - 12 years), adolescents (N = 50; ages 13 - 17 years), and adults (N = 51; ages 18 - 25 years) and replicated the main finding that the use of a “model-based” learning strategy increases with age. In addition, we adapted a new index of abstract reasoning (MaRs-IB; Chierchia et al. 2019) for use online, and replicated a key result from Potter et al. (2017), which found that abstract reasoning ability mediated the relation between age and model-based learning. Our re-analyses of two previous in-lab datasets alongside our analysis of our online dataset revealed few qualitative differences across task administrations. These findings suggest that with appropriate precautions, researchers can effectively examine developmental differences in learning computations through unmoderated, online experiments.

Machiavellianism (Mach) and subclinical psychopathy are two widely studied antagonistic personality traits with distinct theoretical conceptualizations. Mach is conceptualized by strategic deviousness, cynicism, and pragmatic morality, whereas subclinical psychopathy is conceptualized by impulsive antisocial tendencies, callousness, and rule-breaking. However, existing measures of the two traits are typically highly correlated and have very similar nomological networks. Notably, even though psychopathy scales should be more strongly positively associated with antisocial impulsivity and more strongly negatively associated with conscientiousness than Mach scales, existing Mach and psychopathy scales tend to be similarly related to these constructs. We created a new Mach scale, the M7, and a new psychopathy scale, the P7, by selecting items from existing Mach and psychopathy scales on the basis of the correlations of these items with antisocial impulsivity and conscientiousness. Across three studies (combined N = 4,607), the M7 and P7 showed acceptable to good psychometric properties in terms of closeness to unidimensionality, measurement precision, temporal stability, measurement invariance across language and gender groups, and convergent and discriminant validity (nomological network, self-other agreement, and interpersonal perceptions in group interactions). Most importantly, the new scales assess clearly distinct latent traits that are more in line with their theoretical conceptualizations than established scales are.

The personality of individuals is clustered by geographic regions; a resident of a region is more similar to another resident than to a random non-resident. Research in geographical psychology often has focused on this clustering effect in broad regions, such as countries and states, using broad domains of personality, such as the Big Five. We examined the extent to which (a) a narrower geographic unit, the U.S. ZIP Code, accounted for more variance explained in aggregating personality than a broader region, the U.S. state; and (b) progressively narrower personality traits (domains, facets, and nuances, respectively) provided more specificity in describing personality-demographic relationships. Results from this study ( n participants = 39,886, n zipcodes = 2,074) indicated that the variance explained by aggregating personality was multiple times as large for U.S. ZIP Codes than for states ( median = 4.4). At the level of personality domains, ZIP Code population density and income disparity were positively correlated with Openness and negatively correlated with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Facets within each domain were differentially correlated with each demographic, which demonstrated that facets added specificity to the personality-demographic relationships beyond that of domains. Item-level analysis revealed the most specific finding: higher population density and income disparity were associated with politically liberal attitudes and beliefs of self-exceptionalism, while lower density and income disparity were associated with authoritarian attitudes and concern for abiding by rules and laws. Findings suggest that future studies in geographical and personality psychology could benefit from using the narrowest feasible unit of analysis.

This commentary argues that while using popular franchises like Harry Potter can be a helpful tool to make research on personality and career choices salient and engaging to various audiences, results should not be overgeneralised. In particular, we argue that (1) conclusions should not be drawn uncritically from statistically significant relations, (2) capturing personality requires validated assessments and should not be reduced to a single item, and (3) in the specific case of the Harry Potter franchise, the mere preference for a House of the fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry rarely predicts meaningful aspects of personality traits. As such, caution is advised when such fictional elements are used, as they can quickly go viral and may provide potentially harmful advise if shared uncritically.

The amount of variance explained is widely reported for quantifying the model fit of a multiple linear regression model. The default adjusted R-squared estimator has the disadvantage of not being unbiased. The theoretically optimal Olkin-Pratt estimator is unbiased. Despite this, it is not being used due to being difficult to compute. In this paper, I present an algorithm for the exact and fast computation of the Olkin-Pratt estimator, which facilitates its use. I compare the Olkin-Pratt, the adjusted R-squared, and 18 alternative estimators using a simulation study. The metrics I use for comparison closely resemble established theoretical optimality properties. Importantly, the exact Olkin-Pratt estimator is shown to be optimal under the standard metric, which considers an estimator optimal if it has the least mean squared error among all unbiased estimators. Under the important alternative metric, which aims for the estimator with the lowest mean squared error, no optimal estimator could be identified. Based on these results, I provide careful recommendations on when to use which estimator, which first and foremost depends on the choice of which metric is deemed most appropriate. If such a choice is infeasible, I recommend using the exact Olkin-Pratt instead of the default adjusted R-squared estimator. To facilitate this, I provide the R package altR2, which implements the Olkin-Pratt estimator as well as all other estimators.

The perception and evaluation of environmental and architectural spaces is an important concern of environmental psychology. Various environments ranging in scope from landscapes to room interiors have been studied, but old buildings have seldom been studied. As historical buildings make way for modern buildings, preservation of historic buildings has often been a hot issue. Proponents for preservation argue for the beauty, harmony and character of these buildings and that people derive satisfaction from them. This study examined the perception and evaluation of old-style buildings (constructed in late 18 th to early 19 th century) and modern-style buildings on three dimensions: aesthetic evaluation, organization, and friendliness. In addition, the effect of frequency of exposure on the ratings of these buildings as stimuli was studied. Two hundred and thirty-six university students rated each of the three old-style and three modern-style buildings on a set of fifteen bipolar adjectives scales. The frequency of exposure of each building was manipulated within subject. Repeated-measures analyses of variance revealed significant differences between the ratings. The modern-style buildings were evaluated as more aesthetically appealing and perceived as less organized and more complex than the old-style buildings. The effect of frequency of exposure was significant on the aesthetic evaluation dimension only. The relationship was in the form of an inverted U-shape function. However, no interaction effect was found. The results could be explained by Berlyne’s hypothesis ( 1960 , 1970 ) and Zajonc’s mere exposure hypothesis ( 1968 ). Although the study was conducted in the 1980s, the psychological effects of perception and evaluation may remain the same. Given the scarcity and paucity of research on heritage buildings in the discipline of psychology, this paper reviews current research literature in the subject area, discusses if and to what extent the results still hold true, and proposes a way forward.

Early investigations of the neuroticism by conscientiousness interaction with regards to health have been promising, but to date, there have been no systematic investigations of this interaction that account for the various personality measurement instruments, varying populations, or aspects of health. The current study – the second of three – uses a coordinated analysis approach to test the impact of the neuroticism by conscientiousness interaction on the prevalence and incidence of chronic conditions. Using 15 pre-existing longitudinal studies ( N > 49,375), we found that conscientiousness did not moderate the relationship between neuroticism and having hypertension ( OR = 1.00,95% CI [0.98,1.02]), diabetes ( OR = 1.02[0.99,1.04]), or heart disease ( OR = 0.99[0.97,1.01]). Similarly, we found that conscientiousness did not moderate the prospective relationship between neuroticism and onset of hypertension ( OR = 0.98[0.95,1.01]), diabetes ( OR = 0.99[0.94,1.05]), or heart disease ( OR = 0.98[0.94,1.03]). Heterogeneity of effect sizes was largely nonsignificant, with one exception, indicating that the effects are consistent between datasets. Overall, we conclude that there is no evidence that healthy neuroticism, operationalized as the conscientiousness by neuroticism interaction, buffers against chronic conditions.