'Generosity and Status Conferral' (AsPredicted #56673)
Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has 3 authors.
Pre-registered on 01/26/2021 12:14 AM (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? No, no data have been collected for this study yet.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? Hypothesis: Group members’ generosity intentions positively predict their status conferral, following a jolt to the group.
This study is the second part of a yoked study – we are matching each participant in this study to actual responses from a different sample (part 1) that was subjected to one of the four conditions. For example, a participant that is randomly assigned to condition A (i.e., high initial status, jolt) will read responses made by another participant (who is not part of this study) who was also assigned to the same experimental condition.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. We have one dependent variable (status conferral) and other variables in the study, which are all measured on a scale of 1-7:
1. Status conferral (4 items) – e.g., I respect Bob as a group member
2. Manipulation checks for generosity (3 items) – e.g., Bob is generous
3. Manipulation checks for individual learning (3 items) – e.g., Bob is dedicated to learning
4. Manipulation checks for initial status (5 items) – e.g., Before the announcement, Bob was respected by the group members.
5. Manipulation checks for jolt (3 items) – e.g., disrupt how you and your team do your work
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? We manipulate jolt by telling participants in the jolt condition that the Head of the college has made the decision to move all classes online in the coming school semester. There will be no in-person classes. "When you compare their new requirement for online teaching to your previous experience in in-person teaching, you realize that you will need to make significant adjustments to the way you teach. You (and other team members) will probably need to develop new teaching expertise in the new semester".
We manipulate status by telling participants in the high status condition that "Bob is one of the higher status members of your teaching group. Bob has had higher teaching ratings than other members of your teaching group and Bob has won awards for this teaching effectiveness. Therefore, in the past, Bob has been more respected, admired, and regarded than other members of the group.”
Participants will read about Bob’s generosity and individual focus on learning (which are based on real responses from participants in another study) and then complete the status conferral measure.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We will run a regression analysis to test the relationship between generosity and status conferral, controlling for the jolt and status conditions.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. We will exclude participants who failed the two attention checks.
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. Since we are matching participants from this study to responses provided in another separate study (yoked design). Therefore, we will aim to collect 229 participants in this study.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) a. Attention check 1
b. Attention check 2
c. We will also explore how information about Bob’s individual focus on learning will influence status conferral.
