Psychologists update their beliefs about effect sizes after replication studies

Alex D. McDiarmid (), Alexa M. Tullett (), Cassie M. Whitt, Simine Vazire, Paul E. Smaldino and Jeremy E. Stephens
Additional contact information
Alex D. McDiarmid: University of Alabama
Alexa M. Tullett: University of Alabama
Cassie M. Whitt: University of Alabama
Simine Vazire: University of Melbourne
Paul E. Smaldino: University of California, Merced
Jeremy E. Stephens: University of Alabama

Nature Human Behaviour, 2021, vol. 5, issue 12, 1663-1673

Abstract: Abstract Self-correction—a key feature distinguishing science from pseudoscience—requires that scientists update their beliefs in light of new evidence. However, people are often reluctant to change their beliefs. We examined belief updating in action by tracking research psychologists’ beliefs in psychological effects before and after the completion of four large-scale replication projects. We found that psychologists did update their beliefs; they updated as much as they predicted they would, but not as much as our Bayesian model suggests they should if they trust the results. We found no evidence that psychologists became more critical of replications when it would have preserved their pre-existing beliefs. We also found no evidence that personal investment or lack of expertise discouraged belief updating, but people higher on intellectual humility updated their beliefs slightly more. Overall, our results suggest that replication studies can contribute to self-correction within psychology, but psychologists may underweight their evidentiary value.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01220-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:5:y:2021:i:12:d:10.1038_s41562-021-01220-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01220-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().