'Negativity Bias * Psychological Distance Study 2' (AsPredicted #29593)
Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has 2 authors.
Pre-registered on 10/22/2019 03:21 AM (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? Studies 1a and 1b provide preliminary, yet weak support for a negativity bias in the conditions of psychological proximity, but a reversal in conditions of psychological distance, consistent with the theoretical tenets of Construal Level Theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010). However, this pattern was dependent on the existence of a negativity bias in conditions of psychological proximity. Although this precondition makes sense from a logical perspective (something that is not existent cannot be reduced), it does not necessarily follow from the more general theorizing that positively (compared to negatively) framed information is more likely to be judged as true with increasing psychological distance. In Study 2 we therefore aim at testing the general connection between the framing of information and psychological distance irrespective of the existence of a negativity bias in conditions of close proximity.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. Perceived veracity over 56 items, grouped according to the within-participants manipulations, will serve as the dependent variable.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? Our study builds on a 2 (valence, within factor, random assignment) x 2 (distance, between factor, random assignment) mixed design. In addition to the two design factors we counterbalance across participants the positioning of the question labels on the horizontal axis (true left, false right vs. true right, false left). This counterbalancing is not analyzed.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. To investigate whether the negativity bias attenuates or reverses in conditions of psychological distance, we will calculate a 2 * 2 ANOVA with average judgment of truth as dependent variable (mean across binary truth ratings) and valence as well as psychological distance as independent variables. With this analysis we can investigate the main effects of valence and distance and analyze whether a negativity bias occurs. Furthermore, we will investigate the interaction effect between valence and distance to test our hypothesis. We will use simple main effect analyses to disentangle this expected interaction effect.
In addition to this analysis based on aggregated indices, we will calculate a mixed logistic model with judgment of truth as dependent variable. Valence and psychological distance as well as the interaction will be included into the model as fixed factors, and both participants and items will be treated as random factors. With the help of this analysis we can determine to what extent our findings likely generalize to other samples of participants and statements.
Based on our hypothesis, we anticipate a significant interaction between valence and distance on average judgment of truth. We expect that simple main effects in the condition of proximity will indicate a negativity bias in conditions of proximity, but an attenuated or reversed bias in conditions of psychological distance. This is because with increasing psychological distance, positively framed items should be judged as more likely true.
In an exploratory fashion, we will investigate whether perceived similarity between the two countries, country familiarity, and how much participants cared about the content of the statements influences the results. To this end, we will include these variables as covariates into the ANOVA. Furthermore, we will investigate their impact with a focus on the distant condition (statements about Ireland). Within the “Irish” group, we will investigate whether the weighting of positive compared to negative information and the resulting judgments of truth is moderated by (a) perceived similarity in comparison to Germany; (b) familiarity with Ireland, and (c) caring about the statements’ content. All three aspects may potentially impact perceived psychological distance and therefore the effectiveness of our manipulation.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. As prescreening criteria, we will require all participants to live in Germany. Participants who do not give consent will be screened out from the survey. Additionally, eligible participants will be asked to indicate whether they see any reason as to why their data should not be used for statistical analyses at the end of the study. If they ask for exclusion, we will not use their data for the analysis.
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. Our a-priori power analysis with an α-level of .05, a desired power of .95 (resulting in an equally high alpha and beta-error), and a small to medium effect size (f = 0.17; as conservative estimate for the interaction effect, given that we use new and untested statements), indicates a required sample size of 116 participants. We will increase this number by 20% to reach the required sample size even if participants need to be excluded due to prescreening criteria described below, while keeping groups balanced. The resulting sample should therefore consist of 140 participants, with half of the participants reading statements about Germany (psychologically proximal for German participants) and the other half participants reading the same statements about Ireland (psychologically more distant for German participants).
As we also plan to analyze our data with mixed models, we recalculated our power with PANGEA (Westfall, 2016) to analyze our setup that consists of a sample size of 116 participants (58 per distance condition) and 56 statements (28 replicates per valence condition). The analysis indicated that this setup would result in sufficient power of > .95.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) The study has been submitted as registered report to the Journal "Experimental Psychology". An In Principal Acceptance (IPA) has been received on March 27, 2019. The texts copied as replies to the different answers have been taken from the manuscript that has received the IPA.
The study has then been conducted after the receipt of the IPA. Data collection was conducted on October 16, 2019.
