In research, replication means what?

Repeating a study to see whether the same result appears again

Publishing one study in more than one journal

Repeating a study with a much larger budget

Translating a study for another country

The power posing claim was that adopting an expansive posture would do what?

Change hormone levels and increase risk-taking

Improve long-term memory for faces

Ego depletion is the proposal that self-control does what?

Draws on a limited resource that gets used up by earlier effort

Improves steadily throughout the day

Is fixed at birth and never changes

Operates only in the presence of others

The 1971 Stanford prison study is now criticised chiefly for what?

Guards were steered toward harsh behaviour and there was no control condition

It tested only volunteers over sixty

It was never actually carried out

Its participants were all professional actors

Trying analysis after analysis until a result crosses the significance threshold

Stealing another laboratory's raw data

Rounding figures to fewer decimal places

Pre-registration means researchers do what?

Record their hypothesis and analysis plan publicly before collecting data

Register their participants with a national body

Send results to journals before writing them up

Pay a fee to reserve space in a journal

The file drawer problem describes what?

Studies with null results going unpublished, which skews the visible record

Laboratories physically losing their paper records

Journals refusing to share data files

The same paper being submitted to several journals

In criticism of psychological samples, what does WEIRD stand for?

Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic

Wide, empirical, indexed, replicated and documented

Weighted, estimated, indirect, ranked and derived

Well-evidenced, independent, robust and durable

A study's effect size tells you what?

How large the difference is, not merely whether one exists

How often the paper has been cited

Whether the study was pre-registered

Research on social priming, where a subtle cue is said to change later behaviour, has met which problem?

Many of its best-known results have not replicated reliably

The effects turned out far larger than first claimed

The studies were never published anywhere

The technique only ever worked on infants

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Psychology Hard ⚡ 10 Questions ⏱️ ~8 Mins +100 XP

When the Findings Did Not Hold

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Several results that reached the textbooks have not survived larger, stricter retesting. This is about how that was found out.

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About this topic

From about 2011 onward, psychology went through an uncomfortable public audit. Attempts to repeat well-known experiments at greater scale kept producing smaller effects, or none at all, and the pattern was too consistent to blame on unlucky laboratories. Attention turned to the ordinary research practices that could inflate results without anyone intending to deceive: flexible analysis choices, small samples, and journals that preferred a clean positive finding to a null one. The response reshaped the field. Pre-registration, open data, multi-laboratory replication projects and the routine reporting of effect sizes are now normal in a way they were not fifteen years earlier. This quiz is about that process rather than about scoring points off individual studies — the useful lesson is which features of a result make it worth trusting, not which names ended up embarrassed.

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When the Findings Did Not Hold: all 10 questions and answers

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1In research, replication means what?
- A Publishing one study in more than one journal
- B Repeating a study with a much larger budget
- C Translating a study for another country
- D Repeating a study to see whether the same result appears again Correct
Answer: D. Repeating a study to see whether the same result appears again

Why: A direct replication copies the original method as closely as it can, while a conceptual one tests the same idea a different way. The two can disagree sharply, which is part of why arguments about replication get heated.
2The power posing claim was that adopting an expansive posture would do what?
- A Reduce the need for sleep
- B Raise scores on reading tests
- C Change hormone levels and increase risk-taking Correct
- D Improve long-term memory for faces
Answer: C. Change hormone levels and increase risk-taking

Why: Larger and better-controlled attempts have not found the hormonal effects. One of the original authors publicly withdrew her confidence in the claim in 2016.
3Ego depletion is the proposal that self-control does what?
- A Operates only in the presence of others
- B Draws on a limited resource that gets used up by earlier effort Correct
- C Improves steadily throughout the day
- D Is fixed at birth and never changes
Answer: B. Draws on a limited resource that gets used up by earlier effort

Why: A pre-registered replication run across many laboratories found an effect close to zero. The idea is now treated as unsettled rather than established.
4The 1971 Stanford prison study is now criticised chiefly for what?
- A Guards were steered toward harsh behaviour and there was no control condition Correct
- B It tested only volunteers over sixty
- C It was never actually carried out
- D Its participants were all professional actors
Answer: A. Guards were steered toward harsh behaviour and there was no control condition

Why: Audio recordings released decades later capture the experimenters encouraging particular conduct. It has never been repeated as a controlled experiment.
5What is p-hacking?
- A Stealing another laboratory's raw data
- B Publishing without peer review
- C Rounding figures to fewer decimal places
- D Trying analysis after analysis until a result crosses the significance threshold Correct
Answer: D. Trying analysis after analysis until a result crosses the significance threshold

Why: It usually happens with no intent to deceive, because researchers face dozens of small choices about exclusions and measures. Deciding those choices in advance is what removes the wiggle room.
6Pre-registration means researchers do what?
- A Send results to journals before writing them up
- B Pay a fee to reserve space in a journal
- C Record their hypothesis and analysis plan publicly before collecting data Correct
- D Register their participants with a national body
Answer: C. Record their hypothesis and analysis plan publicly before collecting data

Why: It stops an after-the-fact explanation being presented as a prediction. Pre-registered studies report null results far more often than unregistered ones.
7The file drawer problem describes what?
- A The same paper being submitted to several journals
- B Studies with null results going unpublished, which skews the visible record Correct
- C Laboratories physically losing their paper records
- D Journals refusing to share data files
Answer: B. Studies with null results going unpublished, which skews the visible record

Why: It inflates the apparent size of genuine effects, because what gets printed is a filtered sample of what was tried. Registered reports, accepted before results are known, were designed to counter it.
8In criticism of psychological samples, what does WEIRD stand for?
- A Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic Correct
- B Wide, empirical, indexed, replicated and documented
- C Weighted, estimated, indirect, ranked and derived
- D Well-evidenced, independent, robust and durable
Answer: A. Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic

Why: Undergraduates in a handful of wealthy countries have supplied most published participants. Claims about how people think often rest on a narrow slice of them.
9A study's effect size tells you what?
- A How many people took part
- B How often the paper has been cited
- C Whether the study was pre-registered
- D How large the difference is, not merely whether one exists Correct
Answer: D. How large the difference is, not merely whether one exists

Why: A large enough sample can make a trivial difference statistically significant. Reporting size alongside significance is now standard for exactly that reason.
10Research on social priming, where a subtle cue is said to change later behaviour, has met which problem?
- A The studies were never published anywhere
- B The technique only ever worked on infants
- C Many of its best-known results have not replicated reliably Correct
- D The effects turned out far larger than first claimed
Answer: C. Many of its best-known results have not replicated reliably

Why: Simpler perceptual and semantic priming effects remain solid and are used routinely in laboratories. It is the broader behavioural claims that have proved fragile.

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