'Replication and Extension of Study 3 of Wiggin, Reimann, & Jain (2019)' (AsPredicted #27777)
Author(s) Joseph Simmons (University of Pennsylvania) - jsimmo@upenn.edu
Pre-registered on 09/12/2019 08:28 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? This study is a close replication and extension of Study 3 in Wiggin, Reimann, & Jain (2019), “Curiosity Tempts Indulgence” published in the Journal of Consumer Research. The original study examined the hypothesis that “unsatisfied curiosity tempts indulgent consumption in domains unrelated to the source of the curiosity” (Abstract). In this study we are examining whether this effect is moderated by the presence or absence of a particular instruction that was included in the original study.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. Participants will be asked to choose for which of two gyms – a regular gym or an indulgent gym – they’d prefer to receive a reward gift card. The exact wording of the question will be, “Please tell us which reward gift card you are more likely to explore, from highly likely to choose regular gym to highly likely to choose indulgent gym:”. Participants will answer on an 11 point scale, where 1 = “Regular gym reward plus $15 check in mail”, 6 = “Indifferent between the two gyms,” and 11 = “Indulgent gym reward with pool, sauna, rain shower”.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? We will manipulate two variables in a between-subjects design.
First, participants will either write about “3-5 things that made you the most curious about AND that you still feel curious about because you still do not know the answer” (the curiosity condition) or about “3-5 normal things that you did yesterday” (the normal condition).
Second, after being exposed to the two gym reward options (regular vs. indulgent) but before making their choice, participants will either be exposed to a screen of instructions used in the original study (original instructions condition) or to a screen of new, bland instructions (new instructions condition). In the original instructions condition, those instructions will differ across the curiosity vs. normal condition. Specifically, in the original instructions/curiosity condition, the instructions will read, “Earlier, you stated that you are curious. Please read the definition of curiosity again. Curiosity is often described as a state of high arousal that motivates exploratory behavior in order to acquire new knowledge or experiences. Please try to put yourself into this aroused and exploratory state when you make a decision on the next screen.” In the original instructions/normal condition, the instructions will read, “Earlier, you stated a normal situation. Please try to put yourself into this normal situation when you make a decision on the next screen.” In the new instructions condition, the instruction screen will not vary across the curiosity vs. normal conditions, and will simply read, “Please made a decision on the next screen.”
Thus, participants will be randomly assigned to one cell of a 2 (curiosity vs. normal) x 2 (original instructions vs. new instructions) between-subjects design.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We will conduct a 2 (curiosity vs. normal) x 2 (original instructions vs. new instructions) between-subjects ANOVA on the dependent measure. We are expecting a significant interaction. We are also going to analyze the results separately, within the original instructions condition and the new instructions condition, using t-tests.
We will also perform separate small telescopes analyses on the effects of curiosity within the original instructions condition and the new instructions condition to determine whether the effects replicated.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. We will retain any participant who completes the dependent variable.
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 from 3,000 U.S. MTurk participants.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) No.
