Science Correcting Itself | Replication Failures
Replication Failures
Correction is an important element of scientific progress. In the history of scientific investigations, it has been common for widely-accepted ideas to be overturned. Literature contains many instances of such self-correction, though the corrections are sometimes not as widely known as the original findings. Here, we catalog some corrections, all of which are instances science can be proud of. Investigators are invited to submit to us more such examples to be listed here and to illustrate more instances in which science was successfully self-correcting.
Affirmation Effects and the Ethnic Achievement Gap
Cohen et. al. argue that having students affirm their sense of self adequacy through a brief in class assignment led to improved grades among minority students, reducing the ethnic achievement gap by 40%. The ethnic achievement gap is a major concern in the United States, and Cohen et. al argues that the targeted use of social-psychological interventions could work to address this concern. Protzko and Aronson attempted to replicate Cohen et. al.’s study in both an inner-city school and a more wealthy suburban school but found no effect of the affirmation intervention on academic performance.
Original Article
Cohen, G.L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N. & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: a social-psychological intervention. Science, 313(5791), 1307-1310.
Corrections
Protzko, J. & Aronson, J. (2016). Context Moderates Affirmation Effects on theEthnic Achievement Gap. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(6), 500-507.
Ambient Scents and Book Sales
Doucé et al argue that diffusing a subtle chocolate scent in a bookstore increases customers’ general approach behavior, reduces goal-directed browsing, and boosts sales (especially for book genres thematically congruent with the scent). Doucé et al show that ambient scents can shape consumer behavior through automatic affective and cognitive responses. McGrath et al attempted to replicate this effect in a different bookstore that had a coffee shop already inside. They found no effect of chocolate scent on total sales, book sales, or congruent genre sales. Their replication results indicate that the original findings may not generalize across retail contexts.
Original Article
Doucé, L., Poels, K., Janssens, W., & De Backer, C. (2013). Smelling the books: The effect of chocolate scent on purchase-related behavior in a bookstore. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36 65-69
Corrections
McGrath, M. C., Aronow, P. M., & Shotwell, V. (2016). Chocolate scents and product sales: A randomized controlled trial in a Canadian bookstore and café. SpringerPlus, 5, 670.
Analytic Thinking & Reduced Religiosity
Gervais and Norenzayan’s 2012 study tested a dual-process account of religious belief, proposing that analytic thinking can suppress intuitive religious beliefs. Across several experiments, participants were subtly primed to engage in analytic thinking by viewing images associated with reflection, such as Rodin’s The Thinker, and then reported their religious beliefs. The authors found that participants exposed to analytic primes expressed weaker belief in God compared to control participants, and they interpreted these results as evidence that even minimal activation of analytic thinking can promote religious disbelief across individuals with varying baseline religiosity.
However, a later direct replication by Sanchez and colleagues failed to reproduce these findings. Using similar materials and procedures, the replication found little to no effect of exposure to The Thinker on religious belief, with effect sizes near zero and confidence intervals excluding the original estimate. The authors suggested that the original priming manipulation may have lacked construct validity and may not have reliably induced analytic thinking, and they raised concerns about potential confounds and publication bias.
Original Article
Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336(6080), 493–496.
Correction
Sanchez C, Sundermeier B, Gray K, Calin-Jageman RJ (2017) Direct replication of Gervais & Norenzayan (2012): No evidence that analytic thinking decreases religious belief. PLoS ONE 12(2): e0172636.
Automaticity and Social Behavior
Bargh et al argue that priming can subconsciously affect subjects’ subsequent social behavior. Hull et al, however, qualify those findings, arguing that self-consciousness is a crucial variable in determining whether or not subjects will respond to primes intended to affect their social behavior. Cesario et al argue that the automatic social behavior found by Bargh et al is in fact really preparation to interact with certain social groups. Doyen et al attempt to replicate Bargh et al’s study but find that a prime from the original study only has its intended effect when the experimenters are aware of the expected outcome.
Original Article
Bargh, J.A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230-244.
Corrections
Hull, J., Slone, L., Metayer, K., & Matthews, A. (2002). The nonconsciousness of self-consciousness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 406-4254.
Cesario, J., Plaks, J., & Higgins, E. T. (2006). Automatic social behavior as motivated preparation to interact. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 893-910.
Doyen, S., Klein, O., Pichon, C., Cleeremans, A. (2012). Behavioral priming: It’s all in the mind, but whose mind? PLoS One, 7(1): e29081. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029081.
Ego Depletion
Ego depletion is the idea that self-control relies on a limited mental resource that can be used up, a concept popularized by a 1998 study led by Dr. Roy Baumeister, which argued that acts of self-regulation, such as resisting temptation or making difficult choices, reduce people’s ability to persist on later tasks. In classic experiments, participants who resisted eating chocolates in favor of radishes, or who completed demanding self-control tasks, subsequently showed less persistence and greater passivity, findings interpreted as evidence that self-control had been depleted. However, later large-scale replication efforts, including a preregistered multilab study led by Dr. Martin Hagger, failed to consistently reproduce these effects, finding much smaller effect sizes with confidence intervals that included zero. These results suggest that ego depletion, if it exists, may be weaker and less reliable than originally proposed, leading to ongoing debate about whether self-control truly operates like a limited resource.
Original Article
Baumeister RF, Bratslavsky E, Muraven M, Tice DM. Ego depletion: is the active self a limited resource? J Pers Soc Psychol. 1998 May;74(5):1252-65.
Correction
Hagger, M. S., Chatzisarantis, N. L. D., Alberts, H., Anggono, C. O., Batailler, C., Birt, A. R., Brand, R., Brandt, M. J., Brewer, G., Bruyneel, S., Calvillo, D. P., Campbell, W. K., Cannon, P. R., Carlucci, M., Carruth, N. P., A Multilab Preregistered Replication of the Ego-Depletion Effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546–573.
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
Strack et al. (1988) found that facial expressions have the potential to influence our moods, positing that the more people smile, the happier they will be, and vice versa. In it, researchers asked participants to read The Far Side comics by artist Gary Larson, with either a pen held between their teeth (forcing a smile) or between their lips (replicating a pout). Results found that people who smiled reported the comics to be funnier than those made to pout, leading researchers to conclude that changing a facial expression can change mood, and termed this phenomenon the facial feedback hypothesis. But when a team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands conducted the same experiment, using the identical '80s comics from Strack et al.’s study, the results failed to replicate "in a statistically compelling fashion".
Original Article
Strack F, Martin LL, Stepper S. Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a non obtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1988 May;54(5):768-77.
Correction
Wagenmakers, E.-J., Beek, T., Dijkhoff, L., Gronau, Q. F., Acosta, A., Adams, R. B., Albohn, D. N., Allard, E. S., Benning, S. D., Blouin-Hudon, E.-M., Bulnes, L. C., Caldwell, T. L., Calin-Jageman, R. J., Capaldi, C. A., Carfagno, N. S., Chasten, K. T., Cleeremans, A., Connell, L., DeCicco, J. M., ... Zwaan, R. A. (2016). Registered Replication Report: Strack, Martin, & Stepper (1988). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), 917–928.
False Memories
False memory refers to the formation of memories for events that did not occur, often following suggestion or misleading information. The phenomenon gained prominence with Loftus and Pickrell’s 1995 “lost-in-the-mall” study, which reported that some participants came to recall a fabricated childhood event. This work generated substantial interest in psychology and cognitive science and influenced discussions about the reliability of memory in applied contexts, including the legal system.
However, the original study has since been criticized for methodological limitations, including a small sample size, unclear criteria for what constituted a “false memory,” and limited transparency in coding procedures. More recent preregistered replications and extensions using larger samples have found that while some participants report false memories, these accounts are typically less vivid, expressed with uncertainty, and often reconsidered. Additional research shows that false memories are more likely to form for plausible events (e.g. getting lost in a shopping mall) than implausible ones (e.g. receiving a rectal enema in early childhood), suggesting important boundary conditions and indicating that the implantation of rich, confident false memories may be more limited than early interpretations implied.
Original Article
Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric annals, 25(12), 720-725.
Corrections
Ruth A. Blizard & Morgan Shaw (2019) Lost-in-the-mall: False memory or false defense?, Journal of Child Custody,16:1, 20-41
Gillian Murphy, Caroline A. Dawson, Charlotte Huston, Lisa Ballantyne, Elizabeth Barrett, Conor S. Cowman, Christopher Fitzsimons, Julie Maher, Katie M. Ryan & Ciara M. Greene (2023) Lost in the mall again: a preregistered replication and extension of Loftus & Pickrell (1995), Memory, 31:6, 818-830.
Growth Mindset
Psychologist Carol Dweck's growth mindset theory has become a popularized solution and intervention technique in schools of all ages. As described in her well-referenced book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dr. Dweck defines growth mindset as “the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, strategies and help from others.” Dr. Dweck claims the consequences of having a growth mindset include higher achievement in academic situations and later success in various life endeavors. However, some emerging literature has found little to no correlation between the implementation of growth mindset-focused interventions and higher academic achievement.
Original Article
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random house.
Corrections
Li, Y., & Bates, T. C., Ph.D. (2017). Does growth mindset improve children’s IQ, educational attainment or response to setbacks? Active-control interventions and data on children’s own mindsets. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/tsdwy (Study done in China, students aged 9-13 years, N = 624)
Bahník, Štěpán, and Marek A. Vranka (2017). Growth mindset is not associated with scholastic aptitude in a large sample of university applicants. Personality and Individual Differences 117: 139-143. (Study of university students taking an admissions test in the Czech Republic, N = 5653).
Foliano, F., Rolfe, H., Buzzeo, J., Runge, J., & Wilkinson, D. (2019). Changing mindsets: Effectiveness trial. National Institute of Economic and Social Research. (Study in England, Year 6 students, N = 4584.)
Caitlin Brez, Eric M. Hampton, Linda Behrendt, Liz Brown & Josh Powers (2020) Failure to Replicate: Testing a Growth Mindset Intervention for College Student Success, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 42:6, 460-468. (U.S. study, university math & psychology students, N = 2607).
Hand-Washing and Decision-Making
Lee and Schwarz (2010) examined whether physical cleansing influences postdecisional cognitive dissonance, specifically whether washing one’s hands after making a choice reduces the tendency to justify that choice. Participants first ranked a set of CD albums and then chose between two similarly preferred options. After the decision, one group washed their hands with soap while a control group did not, and all participants then ranked the albums again. As expected, control participants showed choice justification by increasing their preference for the selected album and decreasing preference for the rejected one, whereas participants who washed their hands showed little to no change in preferences. The authors interpreted this pattern as evidence that physical cleansing attenuates postdecisional dissonance by reducing the psychological need to rationalize prior choices. A later large-scale replication effort failed to observe the same effect, though the original authors argued that an unintended methodological deviation, keeping the album order constant across rankings, may have reduced sensitivity to detect changes in preference.
Original Article
Lee SW, Schwarz N. Washing away postdecisional dissonance. Science. 2010 May 7;328(5979):709.
Correction
Camerer, C.F., Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F. et al. Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015. Nat Hum Behav 2, 637–644 (2018).
Response
Lee, S.W.S., Schwarz, N. Methodological deviation from the original experiment. Nat Hum Behav 2, 605 (2018).
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
The Implicit Association Test (IAT), introduced by Greenwald et al. (1998), was developed to measure implicit attitudes by assessing reaction-time differences when individuals categorize concepts and attributes. Although initially presented as a tool that could reveal individual-level biases from a single administration, subsequent research has emphasized that the IAT is not well suited for this purpose. Instead, meaningful interpretation requires averaging scores across multiple test administrations for an individual, or across many individuals to detect group-level patterns. While the IAT has demonstrated some ability to capture broad population trends, its ability to predict individual behavior is modest.
In fact, more recent psychometric critiques have raised concerns about the test’s validity. Schimmack’s analyses show that many IAT variants lack construct validity and show limited predictive validity, with little evidence that they reliably measure distinct “implicit” constructs such as implicit self-esteem or racial bias. Even where some valid variance is observed, such as for political orientation, much of it appears to reflect group differences or overlap with explicit self-report measures.
Original Article
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of personality and social psychology, 74(6), 1464.
Correction
Schimmack U. Invalid Claims About the Validity of Implicit Association Tests by Prisoners of the Implicit Social-Cognition Paradigm. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2021 Mar;16(2):435-442.
Name-Letter Effect
Nelson and Simmons argue that people’s initials can subconsciously lead them to desire negative outcomes for themselves if those outcomes are associated with their initials. In baseball, strikeouts are represented by the letter K, and Nelson and Simmons claim that baseball players with the letter K in their initials are more likely to strike out. Nelson and Simmons also show that students with the letters C or D in their initials are more likely to earn lower grades and attend lower-quality graduate schools. McCollough and McWilliams dispute Nelson and Simmon’s first finding, arguing that they used the wrong test when analyzing baseball players’ performances and test their hypothesis erroneously. McCollough and McWilliams find that there is no Name-Letter Effect for baseball players.
Original Article
Nelson, L. D., & Simmons, J. P. (2007). Moniker maladies: When names sabotage success. Psychological Science, 18(12), 1106-1112.
Corrections
McCullough, B. D., & McWilliams, T. P. (2010). Baseball players with the initial “K” do not strike out more often. Journal of Applied Statistics, 37(6), 881-891.
On Being Sane in Insane Places
A 1973 study by Dr. Rosenhan published in Science questioned the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Rosenhan and seven pseudopatients presented to psychiatric hospitals reporting a single auditory hallucination while otherwise providing accurate life histories and showing no additional symptoms. After admission, they stopped feigning symptoms, yet were diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis and were typically prescribed antipsychotic medication. The pseudopatients remained hospitalized for an average of 19 days and were not identified as impostors by staff, leading Rosenhan to argue that psychiatric diagnoses were strongly influenced by situational context rather than patients’ actual mental states, though the study lacked a formal control group.
Subsequent replications and critiques have challenged both Rosenhan’s conclusions and later pseudopatient studies. Lauren Slater described a similar experience in emergency rooms and argued that diagnoses were arbitrary and medication-driven, but later evaluations questioned her methodology and interpretation. Scribner (2001) modified replication, which included a control group and reflected modern clinical practice, suggested that the dominant problem had shifted from overdiagnosis to difficulty accessing care. Spitzer et al. (2005) further found that psychiatrists responding to standardized case vignettes showed diagnostic caution and rarely prescribed medication, contradicting Slater’s claims. More recently, archival analyses by Susannah Cahalan (2019) identified inconsistencies and potential misrepresentation in Rosenhan’s original data.
Original Article
ROSENHAN, D.L. “On being sane in insane places." Perspectives in Abnormal Behavior, 1974, pp. 509–524
Corrections
Slater L (2004) Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. New York: WW Norton.
Scribner, C. M. (2001). Rosenhan revisited. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 32(2), 215–216.
Spitzer RL, Lilienfeld SO, Miller MB. Rosenhan revisited: the scientific credibility of Lauren Slater's pseudopatient diagnosis study. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2005 Nov;193(11):734-9.
Cahalan, Susannah. The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness. Grand Central Publishing, 2019.
Scull, A. (2023). Rosenhan revisited: successful scientific fraud. History of Psychiatry, 34, 180 - 195.
Precognition
In 2011, psychologist Daryl Bem published a paper claiming evidence for “precognition”, which he termed “retroactive facilitation of recall”, suggesting that practicing words after a recall test could reach back in time to improve memory for those words; across nine experiments with over 1,000 participants, Bem reported a mean effect size of 0.22, with all but one experiment reaching statistical significance, and proposed that such “psi” abilities might have evolved due to survival or reproductive advantages, a claim that received substantial attention in both academic and mainstream media. However, subsequent replication efforts led by Richard Wiseman and colleagues attempted to reproduce Bem’s findings using the same procedures, comparable sample sizes, and preregistered methods, but failed to observe the predicted effects.
Original Article
Bem, D. J. (2011, January 31). Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication.
Corrections
Galak, J., LeBoeuf, R.A., Nelson, L.D., & Simmons, J.P. (2012). Correcting the past: Failures to replicate Psi. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 933-948.
Ritchie SJ, Wiseman R, French CC. Failing the future: three unsuccessful attempts to replicate Bem's 'retroactive facilitation of recall' effect. PLoS One. 2012;7(3).
Priming & Cognitive Performance
Bargh et al. (2001) studied the influence of subtle priming on behavior, arguing that goals can be unconsciously activated through priming. The researchers conducted two experiments, in which participants were presented with a matrix of thirteen words, seven of which were neutral and six were achievement-associated. In the control condition, participants were only shown neutral words. They were then instructed to perform a demanding word-search puzzle. They found that performance on the word-search was enhanced after exposure to the achievement related words. Bargh concluded that better performance was due to the achievement words having activated a "high-performance goal" unconsciously. However, more recent literature by Harris et al. (2012) has failed to replicate the same results.
Orignal Article
Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A., Barndollar, K., & Trötschel, R. (2001). The automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1014–1027.
Correction
Harris CR, Coburn N, Rohrer D, Pashler H. Two failures to replicate high-performance-goal priming effects. PLoS One. 2013 Aug 16; 8(8).
Sexual Prejudice and Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Rios argues that Right-Wing Authoritarianism predicts discrimination against social groups that are associated with “deviance,” meaning that a Right-Wing Authoritarian attitude will be more strongly correlated with prejudice against the term “homosexual” than against the words “gay” or lesbian,” as the first term is more indicative of “deviance.” Crawford et al, however, take issue with some parts of Rios’s studies. They attempt to replicate the original studies and find that while Right-Wing Authoritarianism does predict discrimination against gay men and lesbians, that discrimination does not change with differences in language.
Original Article
Rios, K. (2013). Right-wing authoritarianism predicts prejudice against “homosexuals” but not “gay men and lesbians.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(6), 1177-1183.
Correction
Crawford, J.T., Brandt, M.J., Inbar, Y., & Mallinas, S.R. (2015). Right-wing authoritarianism predicts prejudice equally toward “gay men and lesbians” and “homosexuals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in press.
Social Labels and Expectancy Effects
Darley and Gross claim that stereotypes, while not definitively determining social perceptions of others, lead people to test those perceptions in a biased way, which in turn leads to confirmation of expectations in line with stereotypes. Other researchers, however, have found that traits and behaviors of subjects influence judgments much more than preconceived stereotypes.
Original Article
Darley, J. M., & Gross, P. H. (1983). A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 20-33.
Corrections
Locksley, A., Borgida, E., Brekke, N., & Hepburn, C. (1980). Sex stereotypes and social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 821-831.
Locksley, A., Hepburn, C., & Ortiz, V. (1982). Social stereotypes and judgments of individuals: An instance of the base-rate fallacy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 23-42.
Krueger, J., & Rothbart, M. (1988). Use of categorical and individuating information in making inferences about personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 187-195.
Baron, R. M., Albright, L., & Malloy, T. E. (1995). The effects of behavioral and social class information on social judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 308-315.
Social Priming (Age Stereotype)
In 1996, social psychologist John Bargh published the widely cited “elderly-walking” study, which reported that participants primed with an elderly stereotype subsequently walked more slowly down a hallway than control participants, a finding interpreted as evidence that exposure to stereotype-related words can nonconsciously influence behavior; this experiment was part of a series of three studies that became a staple in psychology textbooks, university courses, and inspired numerous conceptual replications. Bargh and colleagues argued that elderly-related primes activated stereotype representations in memory, leading participants to behave in ways consistent with those activated traits. However, later direct replication attempts, including a study by Doyen and colleagues using a larger sample than the original experiment, were unable to reproduce the automatic effect of stereotype priming on walking speed.
Original Article
Bargh JA, Chen M, Burrows L (August 1996). Automaticity of social behavior: direct effects of trait construct and stereotype-activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 71 (2): 230–244.
Correction
Doyen S, Klein O, Pichon CL, Cleeremans A (18 January 2012). Lauwereyns J (ed.). Behavioral priming: it's all in the mind, but whose mind?. PloS One. 7 (1): e29081.
Spatial Distance Cues & Priming
Williams and Bargh (2008) found that using spatial distance cues primes participants' feelings of emotional closeness with their families. Participants were asked to plot points on graph paper and told to plot them either close together or far apart. They were then asked to rate how close they were to their immediate family members. Although Williams and Bargh demonstrated that those instructed to plot points close together on graph paper report being closer to their families, a subsequent study suggests that these findings may not replicate.
Original Article
Williams, L. E., & Bargh, J. A. (2008). Keeping one's distance: The influence of spatial distance cues on affect and evaluation. Psychological Science, 19, 302-308.
Correction
Joy-Gaba, J. A., Clay, R., & Cleary, H. (2016, August 19). Replication of Williams & Bargh (2008, PS, Study 4). Retrieved from OSF Pre Report & Post Report
Stanford Prison Experiment
Haney and Zimbardo’s original study demonstrated the power of situational forces in determining behavior by simulating a prison; the power dynamic between the guards and prisoners led the former group to oppress and mistreat the latter group, and individual personality differences could not explain the vast majority of the behavior of subjects. The BBC conducted a replication of the study and found almost the opposite result; the prisoners ended up overpowering the guards. The BBC argues that the outcome of the Stanford Prison Experiment was not produced by the prison setting but by the expectations set by researcher and Prison Superintendent, Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo has responded to the BBC’s replication attempt, maintaining that his original experiment still stands and emphasizing the myriad differences between the two studies that could have induced such disparate conclusions.
Original Article
Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69-97.
Corrections
The BBC ran a replication attempt of the Stanford Prison Experiment and reported a failure to replicate the original findings.
Zimbardo’s responses to the BBC findings can be found here.
Stereotype Priming Effects on Academic Performance
Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg (1998) use a set of four experiments to demonstrate that priming participants with the stereotypes associated with “professors” or the trait “intelligent” heightens performance on a general knowledge test (basic trivia game). Conversely, priming participants with the stereotypes associated with “soccer hooligans” or the trait “stupid” decreases scores on the same general knowledge test. Moreover, the authors find that the magnitude of the priming effects “simply mirror the magnitude of the perceptual input”. When participants are primed for 9 minutes, their behavioral effects are stronger than participants primed for only 2 minutes. However, in a follow-up study aiming to replicate Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg’s findings, priming effects were null.
Original Article
Dijksterhuis, A., & van Knippenberg, A. (1998). The relation between perception and behavior, or how to win a game of Trivial Pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(4), 865–877.
Correction
Shanks, D. R., Newell, B. R., Lee, E. H., Balakrishnan, D., Ekelund, L., Cenac, Z., Kavvadia, F. `, & Moore, C. (2013). Priming intelligent behavior: An elusive phenomenon. PLoS ONE, 8(4), Article e56515.
Stereotypes as Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Snyder et al argue that people form judgments about others before meeting them based on their level of physical attractiveness, and in interacting with those subjects, induce them to behave in accordance with those expectations. Andersen and Bem find that condition holds true for sex-typed individuals, who are more responsive to physically attractive subjects, but that androgynous individuals exhibit no social preference for physically attractive subjects.
Original Article
Snyder, M., Tanke, E. D., & Berscheid, E. (1977). Social perception and interpersonal behavior: On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 656-666.
Correction
Andersen, S.M., & Bem, S.L. (1981). Sex-typing and androgyny in dyadic interaction: Individual differences in responsiveness to physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 74-86.
Marshmallow Test
Over the last three decades, developmental researchers and children’s caregivers have turned to the ‘Marshmallow Test’ to attempt to gain insights into children’s long-term outcomes based on their ability to delay gratification measured by this particular test. The experiment gained popularity after its original creator, Dr. Walter Mischel, began publishing longitudinal follow-up studies of a cohort of Stanford Bing Nursery School preschoolers he tested between 1967 and 1973, demonstrating strong correlations between delay time and positive life outcomes in adulthood. For example, strong correlations were found between seconds of delay time in preschool and high school SAT scores. New literature revisiting Dr. Mischel’s work, however, has found little association between delay of gratification results on the marshmallow test and future behavioral outcomes in adolescence.
Original Article
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Peake, P. K. (1990). Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions. Developmental psychology, 26(6), 978.
Corrections
Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159–1177.
Daniel J. Benjamin, David Laibson, Walter Mischel, Philip K. Peake, Yuichi Shoda, Alexandra Steiny Wellsjo, Nicole L. Wilson, Predicting mid-life capital formation with pre-school delay of gratification and life-course measures of self-regulation, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 179, 2020.