Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has 4 authors.
Pre-registered on 2018/04/05 - 08:51 PM (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? Across numerous datasets, a robust association has been observed between two Big Five personality aspects: Compassion and Openness [as measured by the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS; DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007)]. This association has been noted within (i) unpublished datasets collected by the present research team, and (ii) datasets published within a seminal paper by DeYoung et al. (2007).
In two previous samples, we computed a composite measure of these two personality aspects (labelled ‘C/O’ throughout this document), and examined relations between this C/O composite and a suite of conceptually relevant variables as part of a construct validity exercise. Note that hypotheses from the first of these two previous samples were also pre-registered via AsPredicted [refer to ‘Trait Compassion/Openness/Enthusiasm Relations, Melbourne, July 2017’; created on 07/08/2017 06:56 PM (PT)].
Our GOAL in the current study is to REPLICATE the statistically significant associations that were observed in at least one of our two previous samples. Specifically, we predict that C/O will be (i) positively associated with moral expansiveness (as measured by the Moral Expansiveness Scale; MES; Crimston et al., 2016), moral imagination (as measured by the Moral Imagination Inventory; MII; Kingsley, 2011), intellectual humility (as measured by the Intellectual Humility Scale; IHS; Leary et al., 2017), and social mindfulness (as measured by the Social Mindfulness Paradigm; Van Doesum, Van Lange, & Van Lange, 2013), and (ii) negatively associated with the dark triad (as measured by The Dirty Dozen; DD; Jonason & Webster, 2010).
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. This is a correlational design and thus, strictly speaking, there is no dependent (or independent) variable.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? There aren’t any ‘conditions’ per se. However, each participant will be randomly assigned to one of two ‘survey flows’, whereby the relative position of selected measures will differ between each flow. These flows will be ignored in analyses unless there is clear evidence of problematic order-effects.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. Bivariate correlations will be used to test our hypotheses (support/non-support for our predictions will be ascertained through null-hypothesis significance testing). Where appropriate, these analyses may be supplemented with additional techniques (e.g., multiple regression).
Several methods will be used to measure C/O. These may include using (1) the average of BFAS Compassion and BFAS Openness scores, (2) a latent factor extracted from BFAS Compassion and BFAS Openness items, and/or (3) a novel researcher-designed scale explicitly designed to target the theorised content of C/O. In relation to the latter, an initial item pool of 72 items was developed by the current research team and administered to our previous two samples (see the aforementioned ‘Trait Compassion/Openness/Enthusiasm Relations, Melbourne, July 2017’ pre-registration for details). This item pool will be refined pending further analyses of these previous two samples. Because this scale refinement exercise is still ongoing, the full item pool will again be administered in the current study, but only the (yet to be determined) refined set of items will be analysed.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. Participants may be excluded for incomplete data or failure to correctly respond to all 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. Gignac & Szodorai (2016) recently reported that personality effect-sizes typically range from r = .15 ('small') to r = .35 ('large'), with r = .20 approximating a 'medium' correlation (see also Fraley & Marks, 2007). To detect a correlation of r = .15 or r = .20 at 80% power, the current study would require a sample-size of N = 347 or N = 194 respectively. Based on previous experience, we expect ~10% of recruited participants to fail our attention checks. Thus, we aim to recruit a sample of between N = 216 and 386 participants (resources will determine the final number) to ensure adequate power following the exclusion of inattentive participants.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) This dataset may also be used to perform a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the refined researcher-designed C/O items.
The Honesty-Humility and Altruism scales from the HEXACO Personality Inventory (Revised; HEXACO-PI-R; Lee & Ashton, in press) will also be administered for comparative analysis purposes.
A novel moral problem-solving task, Affirmative Action at Work, will be administered for exploratory purposes. In this task, participants must list as many solutions as possible (Part A) and describe in detail their preferred solution (Part B) to a hypothetical scenario involving a dilemma between selecting the best candidate and promoting diversity during a workplace recruitment round. This task is included to investigate whether C/O will be positively associated with indices of moral problem-solving ability, including fluency, flexibility, originality, acceptability, feasibility, and contemplation.
