Category Archives: Replicability Report

Fact-Checking Roy Baumeister

Roy Baumeister wrote a book chapter with the title “Self-Control, Ego Depletion, and Social Psychology’s Replication CrisisRoy” (preprint). I think this chapter will make a valuable contribution to the history of psychology and provides valuable insights into the minds of social psychologists.

I fact-checked the chapter and comment on 31 misleading or false statements.

https://replicationindex.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ego-depletion-and-replication-crisis.docx

Comments are welcome.

Dr. Ulrich Schimmack Blogs about Replicability

For generalization, psychologists must finally rely, as has been done in all the older sciences, on replication” (Cohen, 1994).

DEFINITION OF REPLICABILITYIn empirical studies with sampling error, replicability refers to the probability of a study with a significant result to produce a significant result again in an exact replication study of the first study using the same sample size and significance criterion (Schimmack, 2017). 

See Reference List at the end for peer-reviewed publications.

Mission Statement

The purpose of the R-Index blog is to increase the replicability of published results in psychological science and to alert consumers of psychological research about problems in published articles.

To evaluate the credibility or “incredibility” of published research, my colleagues and I developed several statistical tools such as the Incredibility Test (Schimmack, 2012); the Test of Insufficient Variance (Schimmack, 2014), and z-curve (Version 1.0; Brunner & Schimmack, 2020; Version 2.0, Bartos & Schimmack, 2021). 

I have used these tools to demonstrate that several claims in psychological articles are incredible (a.k.a., untrustworthy), starting with Bem’s (2011) outlandish claims of time-reversed causal pre-cognition (Schimmack, 2012). This article triggered a crisis of confidence in the credibility of psychology as a science. 

Over the past decade it has become clear that many other seemingly robust findings are also highly questionable. For example, I showed that many claims in Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking: Fast and Slow” are based on shaky foundations (Schimmack, 2020).  An entire book on unconscious priming effects, by John Bargh, also ignores replication failures and lacks credible evidence (Schimmack, 2017).  The hypothesis that willpower is fueled by blood glucose and easily depleted is also not supported by empirical evidence (Schimmack, 2016). In general, many claims in social psychology are questionable and require new evidence to be considered scientific (Schimmack, 2020).  

Each year I post new information about the replicability of research in 120 Psychology Journals (Schimmack, 2021).  I also started providing information about the replicability of individual researchers and provide guidelines how to evaluate their published findings (Schimmack, 2021). 

Replication is essential for an empirical science, but it is not sufficient. Psychology also has a validation crisis (Schimmack, 2021).  That is, measures are often used before it has been demonstrate how well they measure something. For example, psychologists have claimed that they can measure individuals’ unconscious evaluations, but there is no evidence that unconscious evaluations even exist (Schimmack, 2021a, 2021b). 

If you are interested in my story how I ended up becoming a meta-critic of psychological science, you can read it here (my journey). 

References

Brunner, J., & Schimmack, U. (2020). Estimating population mean power under conditions of heterogeneity and selection for significance. Meta-Psychology, 4, MP.2018.874, 1-22
https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2018.874

Schimmack, U. (2012). The ironic effect of significant results on the credibility of multiple-study articles. Psychological Methods, 17, 551–566
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0029487

Schimmack, U. (2020). A meta-psychological perspective on the decade of replication failures in social psychology. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 61(4), 364–376. 
https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000246

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2015 Replicability Ranking of 100+ Psychology Journals

Replicability rankings of psychology journals differs from traditional rankings based on impact factors (citation rates) and other measures of popularity and prestige. Replicability rankings use the test statistics in the results sections of empirical articles to estimate the average power of statistical tests in a journal. Higher average power means that the results published in a journal have a higher probability to produce a significant result in an exact replication study and a lower probability of being false-positive results.

The rankings are based on statistically significant results only (p < .05, two-tailed) because only statistically significant results can be used to interpret a result as evidence for an effect and against the null-hypothesis.  Published non-significant results are useful for meta-analysis and follow-up studies, but they provide insufficient information to draw statistical inferences.

The average power across the 105 psychology journals used for this ranking is 70%. This means that a representative sample of significant results in exact replication studies is expected to produce 70% significant results. The rankings for 2015 show variability across journals with average power estimates ranging from 84% to 54%.  A factor analysis of annual estimates for 2010-2015 showed that random year-to-year variability accounts for 2/3 of the variance and that 1/3 is explained by stable differences across journals.

The Journal Names are linked to figures that show the powergraphs of a journal for the years 2010-2014 and 2015. The figures provide additional information about the number of tests used, confidence intervals around the average estimate, and power estimates that estimate power including non-significant results even if these are not reported (the file-drawer).

Rank   Journal 2010/14 2015
1   Social Indicators Research   81   84
2   Journal of Happiness Studies   81   83
3   Journal of Comparative Psychology   72   83
4   International Journal of Psychology   80   81
5   Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology   78   81
6   Child Psychiatry and Human Development   75   81
7   Psychonomic Review and Bulletin   72   80
8   Journal of Personality   72   79
9   Journal of Vocational Behavior   79   78
10   British Journal of Developmental Psychology   75   78
11   Journal of Counseling Psychology   72   78
12   Cognitve Development   69   78
13   JPSP: Personality Processes
and Individual Differences
  65   78
14   Journal of Research in Personality   75   77
15   Depression & Anxiety   74   77
16   Asian Journal of Social Psychology   73   77
17   Personnel Psychology   78   76
18   Personality and Individual Differences   74   76
19   Personal Relationships   70   76
20   Cognitive Science   77   75
21   Memory and Cognition   73   75
22   Early Human Development   71   75
23   Journal of Sexual Medicine   76   74
24   Journal of Applied Social Psychology   74   74
25   Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition   74   74
26   Journal of Youth and Adolescence   72   74
27   Social Psychology   71   74
28   Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance   74   73
29   Cognition and Emotion   72   73
30   Journal of Affective Disorders   71   73
31   Attention, Perception and Psychophysics   71   73
32   Evolution & Human Behavior   68   73
33   Developmental Science   68   73
34   Schizophrenia Research   66   73
35   Achive of Sexual Behavior   76   72
36   Pain   74   72
37    Acta Psychologica   72   72
38   Cognition   72   72
39   Journal of Experimental Child Psychology   72   72
40   Aggressive Behavior   72   72
41   Journal of Social Psychology   72   72
42   Behaviour Research and Therapy   70   72
43   Frontiers in Psychology   70   72
44   Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders   70   72
45   Child Development   69   72
46   Epilepsy & Behavior   75   71
47   Journal of Child and Family Studies   72   71
48   Psychology of Music   71   71
49   Psychology and Aging   71   71
50   Journal of Memory and Language   69   71
51   Journal of Experimental Psychology: General   69   71
52   Psychotherapy   78   70
53   Developmental Psychology   71   70
54   Behavior Therapy   69   70
55   Judgment and Decision Making   68   70
56   Behavioral Brain Research   68   70
57   Social Psychology and Personality Science   62   70
58   Political Psychology   75   69
59   Cognitive Psychology   74   69
60   Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes   69   69
61   Appetite   69   69
62   Motivation and Emotion   69   69
63   Sex Roles   68   69
64   Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied   68   69
65   Journal of Applied Psychology   67   69
66   Behavioral Neuroscience   67   69
67   Psychological Science   67   68
68   Emotion   67   68
69   Developmental Psychobiology   66   68
70   European Journal of Social Psychology   65   68
71   Biological Psychology   65   68
72   British Journal of Social Psychology   64   68
73   JPSP: Attitudes & Social Cognition   62   68
74   Animal Behavior   69   67
75   Psychophysiology   67   67
76   Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines   66   67
77   Journal of Research on Adolescence   75   66
78   Journal of Educational Psychology   74   66
79   Clinical Psychological Science   69   66
80   Consciousness and Cognition   69   66
81   The Journal of Positive Psychology   65   66
82   Hormones & Behavior   64   66
83   Journal of Clinical Child and
Adolescence Psychology
  62   66
84   Journal of Gerontology: Series B   72   65
85   Psychological Medicine   66   65
86   Personalit and Social Psychology
Bulletin
  64   64
87   Infancy   61   64
88   Memory   75   63
89   Law and Human Behavior   70   63
90   Group Processes & Intergroup Relations   70   63
91   Journal of Social and Personal Relationships   69   63
92   Cortex   67   63
93   Journal of Abnormal Psychology   64   63
94   Journal of Consumer Psychology   60   63
95   Psychology of Violence   71   62
96   Psychoneuroendocrinology   63   62
97   Health Psychology   68   61
98   Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology
  59   61
99   JPSP: Interpersonal Relationships
and Group Processes
  60   60
100   Social Cognition   65   59
101   Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology   63   58
102   European Journal of Personality   72   57
103   Journal of Family Psychology   60   57
104   Social Development   75   55
105   Annals of Behavioral Medicine   65   54
106   Self and Identity   63   54