'Children's perceptions of group-based and non-group-based transgressions' (AsPredicted #25,023)
Author(s) Vivian Liu (New York University) - vl845@nyu.edu Andrei Cimpian (New York University) - andrei.cimpian@nyu.edu
Pre-registered on 2019/06/19 20:41 (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? It's complicated. We have already collected some data but explain in Question 8 why readers may consider this a valid pre-registration nevertheless.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? This study evaluates children’s perceptions of harm when done to different groups (ingroup vs. outgroup) and for different reasons (group membership reason vs. personal reason). Children will be told about three transgressions (e.g. taking someone’s eraser or knocking over someone’s block tower) that vary on 1) the group membership of the victim (same vs. different from that of the transgressor), and 2) the reason for harm (group vs. personal). Children will then be asked to evaluate each transgression on a set of measurements (detailed below). We hypothesize that younger children will consider outgroup harm as less serious than ingroup harm, particularly when done for group-based reasons. We expect that, with age, children will see outgroup harm done for group-based reasons as increasingly problematic.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. 1. Act: How bad is what A did to B? (1-4 scale)
2. Rating of Aggressor: Is A a good person or a bad person? (1-4 scale)
3. Rating of Victim: Is B a good person or a bad person? (1-4 scale)
4. Punishment: Should A be punished? (1-3 scale)
5. Victim-Blaming: Did B do something bad to A before this? (1-4 scale)
6. Future Ingroup Harm: The next day A was playing with another ingroup member. Will A do the same thing? (1-4 scale)
7. Future Outgroup Harm: The next day B was playing with another ingroup member. Will A do the same thing? (1-4 scale)
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? There are 3 within-subject conditions:
1. Outgroup/Group: script describes someone harming an outgroup member because of their group membership (i.e. “You’re a [group name]”)
2. Outgroup/Person: script describes someone harming an outgroup member because of a personal reason (i.e. “I don’t like you”)
3. Ingroup/Person: script describes someone harming an ingroup member because of a personal reason (i.e. “I don’t like you”)
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We will investigate the effects of condition on a battery of measures (see above) using a series of mixed effects regression models (one per measure). The mixed effects models will include crossed random intercepts for participant and type of transgression described. We may also include a random slope for condition. We will factor in age (continuous), condition (categorical), and their interaction as predictor variables to explore developmental changes; children’s gender, race, and socioeconomic status may be included as moderators. We will also investigate if there are any significant correlations between the 7 DVs, and potentially aggregate across subsets of DVs and/or include some DVs as covariates.
These analyses will be conducted on the dataset as a whole on the basis of a within-subjects design, but we may also look at the data as a between-subjects design by analyzing the first trial only.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. Participants will be excluded if (1) they needed the script to be repeated two times or more for any comprehension check question, (2) they did not finish the entire study, or (3) their parents or another person (e.g., a sibling) intervened/interrupted.
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. We will collect a total of 116 participants. Because (1) we don’t have an a priori sense of the magnitude of the differences and (2) we are testing a broad age range (4- to 9-year-olds), we may decide to boost the sample size by 50% (to N = 174) after finishing the originally planned sample (N = 116).
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) We will conduct additional analyses involving (1) demographic moderators (gender, race, SES, etc.), and (2) some of the DVs as moderators (depending on the results of preliminary reliability analyses and inspection of correlation matrices).
We have collected some of the data already, but we have not analyzed them after the 25th participant.
