French, K. A., Dumani, S., Allen, T. D., & Shockley, K. M. (2018). A meta-analysis of work-family conflict and social support. Psychological Bulletin, 144(3), 284-314. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000120

Abstract

The relationship between social support and work–family conflict is well-established, but the notion that different forms, sources, and types of social support as well as contextual factors can alter this relationship has been relatively neglected. To address this limitation, the current study provides the most comprehensive and in-depth examination of the relationship between social support and work–family conflict to date. We conduct a meta-analysis based on 1021 effect sizes and 46 countries to dissect the social support and work–family conflict relationship. Using social support theory as a theoretical framework, we challenge the assumption that social support measures are interchangeable by comparing work/family support relationships with work–family conflict across different support forms (behavior, perceptions), sources (e.g., supervisor, coworker, spouse), types (instrumental, emotional), and national contexts (cultural values, economic factors). National context hypotheses use a strong inferences paradigm in which utility and value congruence theoretical perspectives are pitted against one another. Significant results concerning support source are in line with social support theory, indicating that broad sources of support are more strongly related to work–family conflict than are specific sources of support. In line with utility perspective from social support theory, culture and economic national context significantly moderate some of the relationships between work/family support and work interference with family, indicating that social support is most beneficial in contexts in which it is needed or perceived as useful. The results suggest that organizational support may be the most important source of support overall.

Reviewer

Matthew B. Jané

Charlesworth, T. E. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). Patterns of implicit and explicit attitudes: I. Long-term change and stability from 2007 to 2016. Psychological Science, 30(2), 174-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618813087

Abstract

Using 4.4 million tests of implicit and explicit attitudes measured continuously from an Internet population of U.S. respondents over 13 years, we conducted the first comparative analysis using time-series models to examine patterns of long-term change in six social-group attitudes: sexual orientation, race, skin tone, age, disability, and body weight. Even within just a decade, all explicit responses showed change toward attitude neutrality. Parallel implicit responses also showed change toward neutrality for sexual orientation, race, and skin-tone attitudes but revealed stability over time for age and disability attitudes and change away from neutrality for body-weight attitudes. These data provide previously unavailable evidence for long-term implicit attitude change and stability across multiple social groups; the data can be used to generate and test theoretical predictions as well as construct forecasts of future attitudes.

Reviewer

Frederik Aust

Pluess, M., Assary, E., Lionetti, F., Lester, K. J., Krapohl, E., Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (2018). Environmental sensitivity in children: Development of the Highly Sensitive Child Scale and identification of sensitivity groups. Developmental Psychology, 54(1), 51–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000406

Abstract

A large number of studies document that children differ in the degree they are shaped by their developmental context with some being more sensitive to environmental influences than others. Multiple theories suggest that Environmental Sensitivity is a common trait predicting the response to negative as well as positive exposures. However, most research to date has relied on more or less proximal markers of Environmental Sensitivity. In this paper we introduce a new questionnaire—the Highly Sensitive Child (HSC) scale—as a promising self-report measure of Environmental Sensitivity. After describing the development of the short 12-item HSC scale for children and adolescents, we report on the psychometric properties of the scale, including confirmatory factor analysis and test–retest reliability. After considering bivariate and multivariate associations with well-established temperament and personality traits, we apply Latent Class Analysis to test for the existence of hypothesized sensitivity groups. Analyses are conducted across 5 studies featuring 4 different U.K.-based samples ranging in age from 8–19 years and with a total sample size of N = 3,581. Results suggest the 12-item HSC scale is a psychometrically robust measure that performs well in both children and adolescents. Besides being relatively independent from other common traits, the Latent Class Analysis suggests that there are 3 distinct groups with different levels of Environmental Sensitivity—low (approx. 25–35%), medium (approx. 41–47%), and high (20–35%). Finally, we provide exploratory cut-off scores for the categorization of children into these different groups which may be useful for both researchers and practitioners.

Reviewer

Danièle Gubler

Rey-Mermet, A., Gade, M., & Oberauer, K. (2018). Should we stop thinking about inhibition? Searching for individual and age differences in inhibition ability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(4), 501–526. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000450

Abstract

Inhibition is often conceptualized as a unitary construct reflecting the ability to ignore and suppress irrelevant information. At the same time, it has been subdivided into inhibition of prepotent responses (i.e., the ability to stop dominant responses) and resistance to distracter interference (i.e., the ability to ignore distracting information). The present study investigated the unity and diversity of inhibition as a psychometric construct, and tested the hypothesis of an inhibition deficit in older age. We measured inhibition in young and old adults with 11 established laboratory tasks: antisaccade, stop-signal, color Stroop, number Stroop, arrow flanker, letter flanker, Simon, global-local, positive and negative compatibility tasks, and n-2 repetition costs in task switching. In both age groups, the inhibition measures from individual tasks had good reliabilities, but correlated only weakly among each other. Structural equation modeling identified a 2-factor model with factors for inhibition of prepotent responses and resistance to distracter interference. Older adults scored worse in the inhibition of prepotent response, but better in the resistance to distracter interference. However, the model had low explanatory power. Together, these findings call into question inhibition as a psychometric construct and the hypothesis of an inhibition deficit in older age.

Reviewer

Alex Burgoyne

Cheryan, S., Ziegler, S. A., Montoya, A. K., & Jiang, L. (2017). Why are some STEM fields more gender balanced than others? Psychological Bulletin, 143(1), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000052

Abstract

Women obtain more than half of U.S. undergraduate degrees in biology, chemistry, and mathematics, yet they earn less than 20% of computer science, engineering, and physics undergraduate degrees (National Science Foundation, 2014a). Gender differences in interest in computer science, engineering, and physics appear even before college. Why are women represented in some science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields more than others? We conduct a critical review of the most commonly cited factors explaining gender disparities in STEM participation and investigate whether these factors explain differential gender participation across STEM fields. Math performance and discrimination influence who enters STEM, but there is little evidence to date that these factors explain why women’s underrepresentation is relatively worse in some STEM fields. We introduce a model with three overarching factors to explain the larger gender gaps in participation in computer science, engineering, and physics than in biology, chemistry, and mathematics: (a) masculine cultures that signal a lower sense of belonging to women than men, (b) a lack of sufficient early experience with computer science, engineering, and physics, and (c) gender gaps in self-efficacy. Efforts to increase women’s participation in computer science, engineering, and physics may benefit from changing masculine cultures and providing students with early experiences that signal equally to both girls and boys that they belong and can succeed in these fields.

Reviewer

Drew Bailey

Rouault, M., Seow, T., Gillan, C. M., & Fleming, S. M. (2018). Psychiatric symptom dimensions are associated with dissociable shifts in metacognition but not task performance. Biological Psychiatry, 84(6), 443-451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.12.017

Abstract

Background
Distortions in metacognition—the ability to reflect on and control other cognitive processes—are thought to be characteristic of poor mental health. However, it remains unknown whether such shifts in self-evaluation are due to specific alterations in metacognition and/or a downstream consequence of changes in decision-making processes.

Methods
Using perceptual decision making as a model system, we employed a computational psychiatry approach to relate parameters governing both decision formation and metacognitive evaluation to self-reported transdiagnostic symptom dimensions in a large general population sample (N = 995).

Results
Variability in psychopathology was unrelated to either speed or accuracy of decision formation. In contrast, leveraging a dimensional approach, we revealed independent relationships between psychopathology and metacognition: a symptom dimension related to anxiety and depression was associated with lower confidence and heightened metacognitive efficiency, whereas a dimension characterizing compulsive behavior and intrusive thoughts was associated with higher confidence and lower metacognitive efficiency. Furthermore, we obtained a robust double dissociation—whereas psychiatric symptoms predicted changes in metacognition but not decision performance, age predicted changes in decision performance but not metacognition.

Conclusions
Our findings indicate a specific and pervasive link between metacognition and mental health. Our study bridges a gap between an emerging neuroscience of decision making and an understanding of metacognitive alterations in psychopathology.

Reviewer

Sascha Meyen

Fernbach, P. M., Light, N., Scott, S. E., Inbar, Y., & Rozin, P. (2019). Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(3), 251-256. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0520-3

DECISION: Minor Errors

that do not affect the core conclusions

Reviewer: R. Chris Fraley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Author response: Nick Light, University of Oregon
Recommender: Jamie Cummins, University of Bern

Decision & Recommendation

Based on the reviewer’s report and the author’s response, a decision was made that the original article contains Minor Errors that do not affect the core conclusions of the manuscript. That is, errors that have the benefit of being detectable thanks to the presence and sharing of research materials, but whose scope and implications are minor. The detected errors do not rise to the level where we would recommend that a correction be issued. A decision of minor errors entails the publication of the report, authors response, and recommendation on the ERROR website (error.reviews). The authors are also asked that, in future, they recognise the minor errors associated with their manuscript in future discussions of the article.
The report, author response, and recommendation have been posted on the ERROR website (https://error.reviews/reviews/fernbach-et-al-2019/), and as a preprint on PsyArXiv (https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/evp57).

Cite as: ERROR. (2025). Error review of Fernbach et al. (2019). Version 1. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/evp57

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Lades, L. K., Laffan, K., Daly, M., & Delaney, L. (2020). Daily emotional well‐being during the COVID‐19 pandemic. British Journal of Health Psychology, 25(4), 902-911. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12450

DECISION: Moderate Errors

that do not affect the core conclusions

Reviewer: Joop Adema, LMU Munich
Author response: Leonhard Lades, University of Stirling
Recommender: Ian Hussey, University of Bern

Decision & Recommendation

Lades, Laffan, Daly, & Delaney (2020) “Daily emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic” was determined to contain Moderate Errors that do not affect the core conclusions. That is, errors that have the benefit of being detectable thanks to the presence and sharing of research materials, whose scope is moderate given that a large proportion of the reported results are affected (likely to a small degree), but which do not affect the article’s core conclusions. A determination of Moderate Errors involves the recommendation that the authors seek a correction. Following the ERROR project’s emergent guidelines, the recommendations associated with a Moderate Errors decision are as follows:

• The report, author response, and recommendation have been posted on the ERROR website (error.reviews/reviews/lades-2020) and as a preprint on PsyArXiv (osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/e3c7p). Their associated materials have been posted to OSF (see osf.io/sdz5y).
• The authors are asked to recognize these errors in future discussions of the article.
• The authors are recommended to pursue a correction notice with the journal. Specifically, with regard to:
  • The text on p. 905 states that multiple testing corrections were used. However, corrections were in fact only applied to results in the supplementary materials and not any results reported in the article itself. 11 of 42 (26.2%) statistically significant results reported in the article were not significant after multiple testing corrections. Although, these do not alter the main conclusions. The use of multiple testing corrections should either (a) more clearly state that these corrections were applied only to the results reported in the supplementary materials and not any results reported in the article, or (b) all results reported in text should be those with the multiple testing corrections applied.
  • The primary analyses reported in the article did not acknowledge dependencies in the data (i.e., each participant completed the survey multiple times). The authors agreed with the reviewer that they should have employed clustered Standard Errors to acknowledge these dependencies. Applying clustered Standard Errors changes the statistical significance of one result (positive affect ~ schooling children), although this does not change the core conclusions. Corrections should be made to the Standard Errors reported in text, the Confidence Intervals in all panels of Figure 1 and Figure S1, and the results reported in Table S2. The “†” significance bar should be removed from the positive affect ~ schooling children result in Table S2.
  • All analyses and summary statistics should use corrected data that use unique participant IDs. A small number of duplicate participant IDs were found by the reviewer, which the authors argue are distinct participants but are not treated as such in the reported analysis. Correcting this error may produce additional changes in the results of the regressions reported in the text, tables, and plots. These magnitude of any such changes is currently unknown but likely to be very small.

Cite as: ERROR. (2025). Error review of Lades et al. (2020). Version 1. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/e3c7p

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Hehman, E., Flake, J. K., & Calanchini, J. (2018). Disproportionate use of lethal force in policing is associated with regional racial biases of residents. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(4), 393-401. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617711229

DECISION: Major Error

that affects a core conclusion

Reviewer:
Will Lowe, Hertie School

Author response:
Eric Hehman, McGill
Jimmy Calanchini, UC Riverside
Jessica Flake, University of British Columbia

Recommender:
Ruben Arslan, University of Leipzig

Decision & Recommendation

Hehman, Flake, & Calanchini (2018) “Disproportionate Use of Lethal Force in Policing Is Associated With Regional Racial Biases” was determined to contain a Major Error that affects a core conclusion. Specifically, the conclusion in the Abstract – “Results indicate that only the implicit racial prejudices and stereotypes of White residents, beyond major demographic covariates, are associated with disproportionally more use of lethal force with Blacks relative to regional base rates of Blacks in the population.“ — is unsupported upon reexamination of the assumptions behind the applied model. An intuitive reading would lead the reader to think that the relationship between White people’s scores on the Black/White Racial Prejudice IAT and police killings of Black people cannot be explained through demographic covariates. However, the use of a difference of proportions variable as the regression outcome did not effectively adjust for the Black population base rate. A reformulated regression model that accounts for base rates more effectively finds no significant relationship between Black/White Racial Prejudice IAT scores and police killings of Black people. Therefore, the results for racial prejudice did not, in fact, hold “beyond major demographic covariates”.

However, the result that scores on the Black/White Weapons Stereotype IAT predict police killings of Black people was still significant after effectively accounting for the base rate of Black people in the population. As such, the detected errors rise to the level where I recommend that the authors seek a correction notice. Following the ERROR project’s emergent guidelines, the recommendations associated with this decision are as follows:

• The report, author response, and recommendation have been posted on the ERROR website (https://error.reviews/reviews/hehman-et-al-2018/) and as a preprint on PsyArXiv (https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/a7jhu). Their associated materials have been posted to OSF (https://osf.io/abyqs/).
• The authors are asked to recognize these errors in future discussions of the article.
• The authors are recommended to pursue a correction with the journal. Specifically:
  • The abstract should be updated to reflect the corrected conclusion.
  • The title should be rephrased to better reflect the main findings.
  • Analyses should be corrected to use an explicit adjustment for the Black base rate, for example using the binomial model suggested by Dr. Lowe.
  • As analyses need to be modified, the authors should take the opportunity to be clearer about the data sources and how they dealt with inconsistencies between data sources.
    • Clarify which version of the Guardian lethal force database was used. The authors have noted that it is difficult to reconstruct what version they accessed — in a correction, they should take care to make this clear.
    • Use and describe a principled approach to handle mismatched core-based statistical areas (CBSAs).
    • Report code or syntax to make analyses reproducible.
• The sentences “Black people represented 22.76% of all deaths” and “In contrast, the percentage of White deaths (77.24% of all lethal force)” need to be corrected (the reported percentages are of Black+White deaths, not all deaths)
• p values and regression coefficients that are reported as .001 but are in fact smaller should be reported as < .001 or 0, respectively.

Cite as: ERROR. (2025). Error review of Hehman et al. (2018). Version 1. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/a7jhu

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Cikara, M., Bruneau, E., Van Bavel, J. J., & Saxe, R. (2014). Their pain gives us pleasure: How intergroup dynamics shape empathic failures and counter-empathic responses. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 110-125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.06.007

DECISION: Minor Errors

that do not affect the core conclusions

Reviewer: Øystein Sørensen, University of Oslo
Author response: Mina Cikara, Harvard University
Recommender: Jamie Cummins, University of Bern

Decision & Recommendation

Based on the reviewer’s report and the authors’ response, I return the decision that the original article contains Minor Errors that do not affect the core conclusions. That is, errors that have the benefit of being detectable thanks to the presence and sharing of research materials, but whose scope and implications are minor. The reviewer reproduced the principal mixed-model results after updating/repairing the SAS code; discrepancies that remain are limited to reporting and rounding issues, effect-size computation differences for reported Cohen’s ds, and a denominator degrees-of-freedom typo. A decision of minor errors entails the publication of the report, authors response, and recommendation on the ERROR website (error.reviews). The authors are also asked that they recognise the minor errors associated with their manuscript in future discussions of their article. We commend the authors in already taking action to publicly acknowledge and rectify the errors found here, specifically by committing to posting cleaned data and functioning code to OSF. A highly-cited paper which was not computationally reproducible ~1 year ago now has clean, working, openly-available code thanks to the efforts of the reviewer and the author.
The report, author response, and recommendation have been posted on the ERROR website (https://error.reviews/reviews/cikara-et-al-2014/), and as a preprint on PsyArXiv (https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nqkvg_v1).

Cite as: ERROR. (2025). Error review of Cikara et al. (2014). Version 1. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nqkvg_v1

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