Achieving Testing Effects in an Authentic College Classroom

Background: Findings from the testing effect literature suggest several ways to achieve testing effects in an authentic classroom, but few consider instructor workload, equity, and resources that determine feasibility and sustainability of testing effect methods in practice. Objective: To determine elements and procedures from the testing effect literature for practical application, devise a method for feasibly and sustainably implementing testing effect methods in practice, and determine if a simple way to incorporate retrieval practice into an existing introduction to psychology course was sufficient to observe testing effects. Method: Quiz scores of Introductory Psychology sections with and without retrieval practice were compared. Sections with retrieval practice also compared the effects of repeated and new questions on quiz performance. Results: Students with retrieval practice performed significantly better on quizzes than those without. Repeated and new retrieval practice were equally superior. Conclusion: Retrieval practices can successfully be implemented, feasibly and sustainably, in an authentic classroom environment. Retrieval practice questions can be related to delayed practice questions, rather than exact repeats, to achieve a testing effect. Teaching Implications: Distributing low stakes multiple-choice questions throughout lectures is effective for increasing test performance. The current method was neither burdensome to workload, content, or resources.

Can Social Pressure Foster Responsiveness? An Open Records Field Experiment with Mayoral Offices

This paper examines the extent to which social pressures can foster greater responsiveness among public officials. I conduct a non-deceptive field experiment on 1400 city executives across all 50 states and measure their level of responsiveness to open records requests. I use two messages to prime social pressure. The first treatment centers on the norm and duty to be responsive to the public’s request for transparency. The second treatment is grounded in the peer effect literature, which suggests that individuals change their behavior in the face of potential social sanctioning and accountability. I find no evidence that mayors are affected by priming the officials’ duty to the public. The mayors who received the peer effects prime were 6–8 percentage points less likely to respond, which suggests a “backfire effect.” This paper contributes to the growing responsiveness literature on the local level and the potential detrimental impact of priming peer effects.

On Believing Conspiracy Theories We Remember: Analyses of Two Large-Scale Surveys of Conspiracism in the French General Public

Why individuals believe in conspiracy theories is a theoretical question with practical implications. Research has mostly focused on individual differences and motives, and we know little about the effects of exposure to conspiracy theories on believing in them. Based on the truth effect literature, which has demonstrated that usually neutral uncertain trivia statements already heard (or perceived as already heard) are more likely to be judged as true than new ones, we hypothesized that repeated exposure to conspiracy theories can increase their believability. As an initial test of the idea that people might agree more with conspiracy statements already heard, we analyzed data from two surveys conducted in representative samples of the French population in which participants indicated both their adherence to and recognition of conspiracy statements. Participants agreed more with conspiracy statements they recognized as already heard, even when they were asked to indicate whether they had already heard the statements before indicating whether they agreed or disagreed with those statements. This truth effect was positively associated with a conspiracy mentality. Individuals may form beliefs in conspiracy theories through the truth effect, suggesting that the effect might generalize beyond unemotional and non-social plausible but uncertain trivia statements.

Role-Model-In-Chief: Understanding a Michelle Obama Effect

Because of the national conversation about her status as a role model, the former First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) presents an opportunity to analyze an Obama effect—particularly, the idea that Michelle Obama's prominence as a political figure can influence, among other things, citizens’ impressions of black women in America. Using evidence from the 2011 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post survey, we demonstrate that Michelle Obama's status as a role model operates as a “moderated mediator”: it transmits the effect of the former FLOTUS’ media activities to respondents’ racial attitudes, and the degree to which role model status functions as a mediating variable differs by race (and, to a lesser degree, by gender). Thus, our research provides both a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the Obama-effect literature.

It’s cold and there’s something to do: The changing geography of Canadian National Hockey League players’ hometowns

Set within the framework of the birthplace effect literature and the seminal work of Curtis and Birch, this paper draws information from the publicly available database www.hockeydb.com and from the Census to examine the hometowns of Canadian National Hockey League (NHL) players from 1970 to 2015. It found that from a regional perspective, the distribution of players’ hometowns remained fairly stable over the 46-year period with Ontario and the three Prairie provinces being prominent. Players from small centres have been well represented in the NHL. While larger urban areas have historically produced the most players, there has been a marked increase in ‘big city’ players while the odds of making it are low. However, when the analysis is adjusted according to the population aged 10-19, boys growing up in small and mid-sized centres were at advantage in reaching the NHL until 2009. Finally, we discuss whether the growing presence of big city players in the NHL will affect the image of hockey as a national sport, as for many, small-town hockey remains at the heart of Canadian sporting culture.

Beliefs about error rates and human judgment in forensic science

Forensic science techniques are often used in criminal trials to infer the identity of theperpetrator of crime and jurors often find this evidence very persuasive. Unfortunately, two of the leading causes of wrongful convictions are forensic science testing errors and false or misleading forensic testimony (Saks & Koehler, 2005). Therefore, it is important to understand jurors pre- existing beliefs about forensic science, as these beliefs may impact how they evaluate forensic evidence in the courtroom. In this study, we examine people’s perceptions of the likelihood of error and human judgment involved at each stage of the forensic science process (i.e., collection, storage, testing, analysis, reporting, and presenting). In addition, we examine peoples’ perceptions of the accuracy of — and human judgment involved in — 16 different forensic techniques. We find that, in contrast to what would be expected by the CSI effect literature, participants believed that the process of forensic science involved considerable human judgment and was relatively error-prone. In addition, participants had wide-ranging beliefs about the accuracy of various forensic techniques, ranging from 65.18% (document analysis) up to 89.95% (DNA). For some forensic techniques, estimates were lower than that found in experimental proficiency studies, suggesting that our participants are more skeptical of certain forensic evidence than they need to be. Keywords: Forensic science, forensic evidence, accuracy, error rate, CSI effect.

Critique on the “Manager Effects” Research and Implications for Management Accounting Research

ABSTRACT Management accounting researchers have been slow to explore the empirical implications of the “manager effect” on management control choices. We critique the “manager effect” literature and identify research opportunities for management accounting researchers. Since the publication of Bertrand and Schoar's (2003) seminal paper, which shows that individual managers have an effect on firm behavior, a large and growing body of accounting and finance research has used publicly available data to identify individual manager effects on a variety of firm outcomes. Management accounting researchers can add significant value to this research; for example, by exploring the control choices that a firm makes to mitigate the adverse consequences associated with some managerial characteristics. In this critique we first identify some of the theoretical and methodological challenges associated with the “manager effects” research and second identify opportunities for management accounting researchers to explore these effects while overcoming some of the limitations.

Effects of Weapons on Aggressive Thoughts, Angry Feelings, Hostile Appraisals, and Aggressive Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Weapons Effect Literature

A landmark 1967 study showed that simply seeing a gun can increase aggression—called the “weapons effect.” Since 1967, many other studies have attempted to replicate and explain the weapons effect. This meta-analysis integrates the findings of weapons effect studies conducted from 1967 to 2017 and uses the General Aggression Model (GAM) to explain the weapons effect. It includes 151 effect-size estimates from 78 independent studies involving 7,668 participants. As predicted by the GAM, our naïve meta-analytic results indicate that the mere presence of weapons increased aggressive thoughts, hostile appraisals, and aggression, suggesting a cognitive route from weapons to aggression. Weapons did not significantly increase angry feelings. Yet, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis indicated that not all naïve mean estimates were robust to the presence of publication bias. In general, these results suggest that the published literature tends to overestimate the weapons effect for some outcomes and moderators.