'Fluid intelligence, need for cognition and the continued influence effect'
(AsPredicted #77345)


Author(s)
Benjamin Schätzlein (Universität Würzburg) - benjamin.schaetzlein@stud-mail.uni-wuerzburg.de
Christoph Mengelkamp (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) - christoph.mengelkamp@uni-wuerzburg.de
Pre-registered on
10/19/2021 01:26 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?
H1: Even after reading the correction message, participants who have read the misinformation have a worse attitude compared to those who did not read the misinformation.
H2: (a) After reading the correction message, the attitude is more positive compared to directly after reading the misinformation. (b) This correction effect is moderated by fluid intelligence: The more intelligent a person, the more their attitude changes positively by reading the correction message.
Research question: (a) Does need for cognition moderate the continued influence effect, and (b) does fluid intelligence moderate the continued influence effect beyond the effect of need for cognition?

3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured.
Dependent variable will be the attitude towards trust-based working time, measured using eight questions with 7-point-scales (1= don't agree at all, 7= fully agree). It will be measured two times (experimental condition: after reading the news text including the misinformation and after reading the correction message; control group: after reading the news text and after having completed the fluid intelligence test), allowing to calculate attitude change as well.

4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to?
Participants will be randomly assigned to two experimental conditions: The experimental group will be presented a news text including misinformation about trust-based working time, and will later be presented a correction message. The control group will be presented the news text, but with the misinformation excluded. The control group won't read the correction text.

5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis.
We will calculate a mixed-ANOVA using time as the within-participant factor and the condition as the between-participant factor and attitude as the dependent variable followed by simple effect analyses to test Hypotheses 1 and 2a. A moderated regression using the condition, fluid intelligence and the interaction between these two variables as predictors and attitude change as dependent variable will be conducted to test whether fluid intelligence moderates the continued influence effect (Hypothesis 2b). To examine whether need for cognition moderates the continued influence, a moderated regression using condition, need for cognition and the 1st order interactions of both variables with the condition as predictors and attitude change as dependent variable will be carried out.

6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations.
Subjects who do not agree to participate in the study or who have not reached the age of 16 years cannot participate in the study. Subjects who indicate that they are no native speakers of German and do not speak German well or very well will be screened out. Furthermore, participants who have answered one of the control questions incorrectly will be excluded from analysis, as well as participants taking 2 minutes or less for the fluid intelligence test or indicated that they made notes during the test, participants taking less than 10 seconds for reading each text, participants taking 4 minutes or less for completing the study, participants that failed the attention check, and participants who indicate in a control question that they have not thoroughly worked on the study.
Outliers will be identified using boxplots and corrected to the largest/smallest non-outlier plus/minus one unit.

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 data until 400 participants have completed the experiment (i.e. have reached the last site of the online experiment).

8) Anything else you would like to pre-register?
(e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?)

For measuring need for cognition, the 4 item NFC-K scale by Beißert et al. (2015) will be used. For measuring fluid intelligence, the propositional reasoning test by Gühne et al. (2020) will be used.
Level of significance is defined as .0167 using the Bonferroni correction.
Manipulation check: Do participants who are in the experimental condition have a more negative attitude towards trusted working time than people in the control condition?