Search

In contrast to the truncated view that replications have only a little to offer beyond what is already known, we suggest a broader understanding of replications: We argue that replications are better conceptualized as a process of conducting consecutive studies that increasingly consider alternative explanations, critical contingencies, and real-world relevance. To reflect this understanding, we collected and summarized the existing literature on replications and combined it into a comprehensive overall typology that simplifies and restructures existing approaches. The resulting typology depicts how multiple, hierarchically structured replication studies guide the integration of laboratory and field research and advance theory. It can be applied to (a) evaluate a theory's current status, (b) guide researchers' decisions, (c) analyze and argue for the necessity of certain types of replication studies, and (d) assess the added value of a replication study at a given state of knowledge. We conclude with practical recommendations for different protagonists in the field (e.g., authors, reviewers, editors, and funding agencies). Together, our comprehensive typology and the related recommendations will contribute to an enhanced replication culture in social psychology and to a stronger real-world impact of the discipline.

Objectives Although sports team members often value their teams highly, they sometimes make mistakes and thereby unintentionally put their teams at a disadvantage. Thus, they should be motivated to compensate for their mistake to resolve this discrepancy. To test this hypothesis, we studied whether professional soccer players compensate for their own goals by scoring regular goals in the same game (Study 1) and possible processes underlying such compensation efforts (Study 2). Design In Study 1, we compared how frequently prior own goal scorers scored a regular goal in the same game to (a) their expected goal scoring frequencies and (b) their probabilities to score a regular goal following a regular goal by the opposing team. In Study 2, we investigated four possible processes underlying the expected compensatory efforts. Method We analyzed all own goals from the first fifty years of the German Bundesliga (N = 889) and possible ensuing regular goals by the own goal scorer. Moreover, we surveyed amateur soccer players about four motives: group performance, individual performance, individual public image, and group public image. Results Following their own goals, professional soccer players are particularly likely to score regular goals in the same game (i.e., a compensatory own goal effect). Presumably, they primarily do so to secure a good group performance, but the other motives also play a role. Conclusions Group members who make highly visible mistakes are motivated to compensate for the disadvantage they caused. Presumably, they mainly do so to secure a good team performance.

Research on escalation of commitment suggests that decision-makers make use of additional information when confronted with a potentially losing course of action. Veridical information is a helpful tool when deciding whether to continue or de-escalate commitment. However, field data suggests that one primary source of information, namely information provided by experts, is often biased toward the continuation of projects. This bias is partly the result of attempts to influence decision-makers to escalate their commitment. Previous research has, so far, not addressed the question of how decision-makers in an escalation context utilize meta-information that makes them aware of such biases. In three experiments, we show that decision-makers act in accordance with expert advice: they further escalate their commitment when the experts suggest continuation of a failing project, and they de-escalate their commitment when the experts argue in favor of withdrawal (Experiment 1). When participants are made aware of the possibility that the expert advice is biased, the impact of this advice is reduced (Experiment 2). Most importantly, when decision-makers were made aware beyond doubt that the experts aimed to manipulate them, they also relied on the information less, but they failed to fully ignore it (Experiment 3). In sum, our data suggest that decision-makers in an escalation context are prone to attempts at manipulation as they cannot fully ignore biased advice even when the deceptive motive of their advisors is disclosed to them.

One prominent finding in research on group judgment is that groups often outperform the average of their members’ individual judgments. Previous research attributed this finding to groups weighting their more competent members more strongly (differential weighting explanation). We postulate an alternative explanation, namely that groups outperform individuals due to group-to-individual (G–I) transfer, which denotes group members becoming more accurate individually during group interaction. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that individual accuracy in an estimation task strongly increases due to interaction, leading to high accuracy at the group level. Experiment 2 replicates this finding and shows that G–I transfer can be enhanced by expertise feedback. In both experiments, when controlling for G–I transfer during group interaction, group judgments were not better than the average model. The findings imply that previously observed superior performance by groups compared to individuals may have been due to G–I transfer and not necessarily due to differential weighting.