Are Women Less Likely to Ask than Men Partly Because They Work Fewer Hours? A Commentary on Artz et al. (2018)

A long debate in negotiation research concerns the question of whether gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations, in behaviors shown during negotiations, and in negotiation performance actually exist. Whereas past negotiation research suggested that women are less likely to initiate negotiations than men, a recent study by Artz et al. (2018) seems to suggest that women are as likely as men to “ask” for higher pay. However, this finding by Artz et al. (2018) was obtained once the number of weekly hours worked was added as a covariate in the statistical analysis. Following extant work, we suggest that the number of weekly hours worked could be—and, from a theoretical stand-point, perhaps should be—considered a mediator of gender differences. Conducting a Monte Carlo analysis based on the results and statistics provided by Artz et al. (2018) also yielded empirical evidence suggesting that weekly hours could be a mediator. Thus, women may be less likely than men to ask for higher pay, among other potential reasons, because they work fewer weekly hours. Based on this alternative conceptualization of the role of weekly hours, our commentary has theoretical implications for the understanding of gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations and practical implications for the effective reduction of gender inequalities.

Dissociation Between Speech and Emotion Effects in Short-Term Memory: A Data Reanalysis.

Performance in visual serial recall tasks is often impaired by irrelevant auditory distracters. The duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction states that if the distracters provide order cues, these interfere with the processing of the order cues in the serial recall task (interference by process). In contrast, the unitary account states that distracters capture only attention on a general level (attentional distraction) without interfering specifically withorder processing. Marsh et al. (2018, Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 44, 882-897) reported finding a dissociation between the effects of serial recall tasks and those of a missing-item task on the disruptive effects of speech and of emotional words, as predicted by the duplex-mechanism account. Critically, the reported analyses did not test specifically for the claimed dissociation. Therefore, I reanalyzed the Marsh et al. data and conducted the appropriate analyses. I also tested the dissociation more directly and added a Bayesian hypothesis test to measure the strength of the evidence for a dissociation. Results provided strong evidence for a dissociation (i.e., crossover interaction) between effects of speech and of emotion. Because the duplex-mechanism account predicts this dissociation between speech effects (interference by process) and emotion effects (attentionaldiversion) whereas the unitary account does not, Marsh et al.’s data support the duplex-mechanism account. However, to show that this dissociation is robust, researchers are advised to replicate this dissociation in an adversarial registered report.

Frequency estimation and semantic ambiguity do not eliminate ‎conjunction bias, when it ‎occurs: Replication and extension of ‎Mellers, Hertwig, and Kahneman (2001)‎

Mellers, Hertwig, and Kahneman (2001) conducted an adversarial collaboration to try and resolve Hertwig’s contested view that frequency formats eliminate conjunction effects, and that conjunction effects are largely due to semantic ambiguity. We conducted a pre-registered well-powered very close replication ‎(N = 1032), ‎testing two personality profiles (Linda and James) in a four conditions between-subject design comparing unlikely and likely items to "and" and "and are" conjunctions. Linda profile findings were in support of conjunction effect and consistent with Tversky and Kahneman’s (1983) arguments for a representative heuristic. We found no support for semantic ambiguity. Findings for James profile were a likely failed replication, with no conjunction effect. We provided additional tests addressing possible reasons, in line with later literature suggesting conjunction effects may be context-sensitive. We discuss implications for research on conjunction effect, and call for further well-powered pre-registered replications and extensions of classic findings in judgment and decision-making.

Comparing Bayesian Posterior Passing with Meta-analysis

Brand, von der Post, Ounsley, and Morgan (2019) introduced Bayesian posterior passing as an alternative to traditional meta-analyses. In this commentary I relate their procedure to traditional meta-analysis, showing that posterior passing is equivalent to fixed effects meta-analysis. To overcome the limitations of simple posterior passing, I introduce improved posterior passing methods to account for heterogeneity and publication bias. Additionally, practical limitations of posterior passing and the role that it can play in future research are discussed.

Does the privacy paradox exist? Comment on Yu et al.’s (2020) meta-analysis

In their meta-analysis on how privacy concerns and perceived privacy risk are related to online disclosure intentionand behavior, Yu et al. (2020) conclude that “the ‘privacy paradox’ phenomenon (...) exists in our research model” (p. 8). In this comment, we contest this conclusion and present evidence and arguments against it. We find five areas of problems: (1) Flawed logic of hypothesis testing; (2) erroneous and implausible results; (3) questionable decision to use only the direct effect of privacy concerns on disclosure behavior as evidence in testing the privacy paradox; (4) overinterpreting results from MASEM; (5) insufficient reporting and lack of transparency. To guide future research, we offer three recommendations: Going beyond mere null hypothesis significance testing, probing alternative theoretical models, and implementing open science practices. While we value this meta-analytic effort, we caution its readers that, contrary to the authors’ claim, it does not offer evidence in support of the privacy paradox.

Preregistration of secondary data analysis: A template and tutorial

Preregistration has been lauded as one of the solutions to the so-called ‘crisis of confidence’ in the social sciences and has therefore gained popularity in recent years. However, the current guidelines for preregistration have been developed primarily for studies where new data will be collected. Yet, preregistering secondary data analyses--- where new analyses are proposed for existing data---is just as important, given that researchers’ hypotheses and analyses may be biased by their prior knowledge of the data. The need for proper guidance in this area is especially desirable now that data is increasingly shared publicly. In this tutorial, we present a template specifically designed for the preregistration of secondary data analyses and provide comments and a worked example that may help with using the template effectively. Through this illustration, we show that completing such a template is feasible, helps limit researcher degrees of freedom, and may make researchers more deliberate in their data selection and analysis efforts.

Perceived morality of direct versus indirect harm: Replications of the preference for indirect harm effect

Royzman and Baron (2002) demonstrated that people prefer indirect harm to direct harm: they judge actions that produce harm as a by-product to be more moral than actions that produce harm directly. In two preregistered studies, we successfully replicated Study 2 of Royzman and Baron (2002) with a Hong Kong student sample (N = 46) and an online American Mechanical Turk sample (N = 314). We found con- sistent evidential support for the preference for indirect harm phenomenon (d = 0.46 [0.26, 0.65] to 0.47 [0.18, 0.75]), weaker than effects reported in the original findings of the target article (d = 0.70 [0.40, 0.99]). We also successfully replicated findings regarding reasons underlying a preference for indirect harm (di- rectness, intent, omission, probability of harm, and appearance of harm). All materials, data, and code are available at osf.io/ewq8g.

Reproduction of the Results of Onyike et al. (2003)

Onyike et al. (2003) analyzed data from a large-scale US-American data set, the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-III), and reported an association between obesity and major depression, especially among people with severe obesity. Here, we report the results of a detailed replication of Onyike et al.’s analyses. While we were able to reproduce the majority of these authors’ descriptive statistics, this took a substantial amount of time and effort, and we found several minor errors in the univariate descriptive statistics reported in their Tables 1 and 2. We were able to reproduce most of Onyike et al.’s bivariate findings regarding the relationship between obesity and depression (Tables 3 and 4), albeit with some small discrepancies (e.g., with respect to the magnitudes of standard errors). On the other hand, we were unable to reproduce Table 5, containing Onyike et al.’s findings with respect to the relationship between obesity and depression when controlling for plausible confounding variables—arguably the paper’s most important results—because some of the included predictor variables appear to be either unavailable, or not coded in the way reported by Onyike et al., in the public NHANES-III data sets. We discuss the implications of our findings for the transparency of reporting and the reproducibility of published results.

What to make of equivalence testing with a post-specified margin?

In order to determine whether or not an effect is absent based on a statistical test, the recommended frequentist tool is the equivalence test. Typically, it is expected that an appropriate equivalence margin has been specified before any data are observed. Unfortunately, this can be a difficult task. If the margin is too small, then the test's power will be substantially reduced. If the margin is too large, any claims of equivalence will be meaningless. Moreover, it remains unclear how defining the margin afterwards will bias one's results. In this short article, we consider a series of hypothetical scenarios in which the margin is defined post-hoc or is otherwise considered controversial. We also review a number of relevant, potentially problematic actual studies from the clinical trials research, with the aim of motivating a critical discussion as to what is acceptable and desirable in the reporting and interpretation of equivalence tests.

Revisiting status quo bias

Status quo bias refers to people’s general preference to stick to, or continue with, a previously chosen option. In two pre-registered experiments with U.S. participants recruited from the Amazon Mechanical Turk (n1 = 311, n2 = 316), we attempted to replicate four decision scenarios (Question 1, 2, 4, and 6) from Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988), the seminal article that provided the first experimental demonstration of the status quo bias. We found strong empirical support for the status quo bias in three decision scenarios out of the four, including budget allocation (Scenario 1/Question 1 in the original article), investment portfolios (Scenario 3/Question 2), and college jobs (Scenario 4/Ques- tion 4). However, we failed to find substantial support for the status quo bias in the wagon color choice scenario (Scenario 2/Question 6). We discuss the implications of our results and possible explanations using multiple accounts put forward in the status quo bias literature.