In a now-classic study by Srull and Wyer (1979), people who were exposed to phrases with hostile content subsequently judged a man as being more hostile. And this “hostile priming effect” has had a significant influence on the field of social cognition over the subsequent decades. However, a recent multi-lab collaborative study (McCarthy et al., 2018) that closely followed the methods described by Srull and Wyer (1979) found a hostile priming effect that was nearly zero, which casts doubt on whether these methods reliably produce an effect. To address some limitations with McCarthy et al. (2018), the current multi-site collaborative study included data collected from 29 labs. Each lab conducted a close replication (total N = 2,123) and a conceptual replication (total N = 2,579) of Srull and Wyer’s methods. The hostile priming effect for both the close replication (d = 0.09, 95% CI [-0.04, 0.22], z = 1.34, p = .16) and the conceptual replication (d = 0.05, 95% CI [-0.04, 0.15], z = 1.15, p = .58) were not significantly different from zero and, if the true effects are non-zero, were smaller than what most labs could feasibly and routinely detect. Despite our best efforts to produce favorable conditions for the effect to emerge, we did not detect a hostile priming effect. We suggest that researchers should not invest more resources into trying to detect a hostile priming effect using methods like those described in Srull and Wyer (1979).
Mccarthy, R., Gervais, W., Aczel, B., Al-Kire, R., Aveyard, M., Baraldo, S., Baruh, L., Basch, C., Baumert, A., Behler, A., Bettencourt, A., Bitar, A., Bouxom, H., Buck, A., Cemalcilar, Z., Chekroun, P., Chen, J., Del Fresno-Diaz, A., Ducham, A., Edlund, J., Elbassiouny, A., Evans, T., Ewell, P., Forscher, P., Fuglestad, P., Hauck, L., Hawk, C., Hermann, A., Hines, B., Irumva, M., Jordan, L., Joy-Gaba, J., Haley, C., Kacmar, P., Kezer, M., Korner, R., Kosaka, M., Kovacs, M., Lair, E., Legal, J., Leighton, D., Magee, M., Markman, K., Martoncik, M., Muller, M., Norman, J., Olsen, J., Oyler, D., Phills, C., Ribeiro, G., Rohain, A., Sakaluk, J., Schutz, A., Toribio-Florez, D., Tsang, J., Vezzoli, M., Williams, C., Willis, G., Young, J., Zogmaister, C., A multi-site collaborative study of the hostile priming effect, <<COLLABRA. PSYCHOLOGY>>, 2021; 7 (1): 1-16. [doi:10.1525/collabra.18738] [https://hdl.handle.net/10807/275043]
A multi-site collaborative study of the hostile priming effect
Vezzoli, MichelaInvestigation
;
2021
Abstract
In a now-classic study by Srull and Wyer (1979), people who were exposed to phrases with hostile content subsequently judged a man as being more hostile. And this “hostile priming effect” has had a significant influence on the field of social cognition over the subsequent decades. However, a recent multi-lab collaborative study (McCarthy et al., 2018) that closely followed the methods described by Srull and Wyer (1979) found a hostile priming effect that was nearly zero, which casts doubt on whether these methods reliably produce an effect. To address some limitations with McCarthy et al. (2018), the current multi-site collaborative study included data collected from 29 labs. Each lab conducted a close replication (total N = 2,123) and a conceptual replication (total N = 2,579) of Srull and Wyer’s methods. The hostile priming effect for both the close replication (d = 0.09, 95% CI [-0.04, 0.22], z = 1.34, p = .16) and the conceptual replication (d = 0.05, 95% CI [-0.04, 0.15], z = 1.15, p = .58) were not significantly different from zero and, if the true effects are non-zero, were smaller than what most labs could feasibly and routinely detect. Despite our best efforts to produce favorable conditions for the effect to emerge, we did not detect a hostile priming effect. We suggest that researchers should not invest more resources into trying to detect a hostile priming effect using methods like those described in Srull and Wyer (1979).
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