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Icebreaker: Replication Crisis

Instructions:

Divide people into small groups. Each group has to introduce themselves to each other, and then is given a psychology experiment and has to discuss whether they think it replicated or not.

At the end, reveal the answers and see how each group did.

Experiments:

Group 1:

When women are told they will be given preferential treatment in a competition — that is, their scores will be artificially boosted — more women choose to join the competition.

Group 2:

Reading a literary fiction short story improves one’s ability, immediately afterwards, to assess how people are really feeling, based on a photo of their facial expression.

Group 3:

People can tell how tennis players feel, during high intensity game moments, without seeing their face - just by looking at their body.

Group 4:

The likelihood of choosing a charity is higher when potential donors know that the overhead for that charity is already covered, compared to when the donors have to pay that overhead themselves.

Group 5:

Priming analytic thinking by getting people to look at a photo of ‘The Thinker’ makes people report less religious belief.

Group 6:

This experiment sets up a ‘cooperation game’ in which participants can produce wealth for one another by trusting the players next to them (inside the game) to reciprocate. The players begin with an unequal distribution of wealth. When the wealth of other players is made visible, this leads inequality in the game to rise more over time, than when wealth is invisible.

Group 7:

Students who spend 10 minutes immediately before a high-pressure math test writing down how they feel about the test improve their performance, relative to those who just sit quietly.

Group 8:

Hand-washing reduces how strongly people feel the need to justify a choice they made a few minutes before.

Group 9:

When holding and writing on a heavier clipboard, people assessing job applicants rate them as ‘better overall’, and ‘more seriously interested in the position’.

Group 10:

Imagining eating M&Ms 30 times makes people eat fewer M&Ms when offered them immediately afterwards

Answer Key

S

p

o

i

l

e

r

S

p

a

c

e

Group 1: Yes
Group 2: No
Group 3: Yes
Group 4: Yes
Group 5: No
Group 6: Yes
Group 7: No
Group 8: No
Group 9: No
Group 10: Yes

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