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Negative impressions of moral transgressors can be countered by them expressing socially desirable beliefs (thinking that unethical behavior is morally unacceptable) and emotions (such as guilt). Across four experiments with N = 1178, we establish a moral superadditivity effect, whereby jointly signaling socially desirable beliefs and emotions adds more than one could gain from them separately. This effect is visible when directly comparing the moral character of several transgressors (Studies 1 and 2) but disappears when judging them independently (Studies 3 and 4). Additionally, internal metanalysis showed that the benefits of expressing guilt and desirable beliefs are of similar strength, and that both are much larger when participants compare different types of transgressors directly.

We propose that predictability is a key factor for judging the morality of others, one which has so far been neglected by dominant theories of moral psychology. Across four studies (N = 1,457 US residents and 81 traditional people of Papua), participants judged agents acting in sacrificial moral dilemmas. Utilitarian agents, described as opting to sacrifice a single individual for the greater good, were perceived as less predictable and less moral than deontological agents whose inaction resulted in five people being harmed. We show that these effects generalize to a non- Western sample of the Dani people, a traditional indigenous society of Papua. This moral preference for deontological agents was not due to a mere misunderstanding of utilitarian principles, as it persisted even when the underlying logic of utilitarian acts was explained. Furthermore, this preference reverses when the actions of utilitarian agents are made to seem more predictable, such as by presenting scenarios in which utilitarian acts involve an indirect (e.g., redirecting a trolley by flipping a switch) as opposed to direct (e.g., pushing a stranger onto trolley tracks) method of sacrifice. Despite the consequences of the sacrificial choice being identical for both direct and indirect acts, people perceived utilitarian agents to be less predictable, and consequently less moral when a direct sacrificial act was performed.

Replication efforts in psychological science sometimes fail to replicate prior findings. If replications use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the replication protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data collection peer review by experts may address shortcomings and increase replicability rates. We selected 10 replications from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) in which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection and only one of which was “statistically significant” (p < .05). Commenters on RP:P suggested that lack of adherence to expert review and low-powered tests were the reasons that most of these failed to replicate (Gilbert et al., 2016). We revised the replication protocols and received formal peer review prior to conducting new replications. We administered the RP:P and Revised replication protocols in multiple laboratories (Median number of laboratories per original study = XX; Range XX to YY; Median total sample = XX; Range XX to YY) for high-powered tests of each original finding with both protocols. Overall, XX of 10 RP:P protocols and XX of 10 Revised protocols showed significant evidence in the same direction as the original finding (p < .05), compared to an expected XX. The median effect size was [larger/smaller/similar] for Revised protocols (ES = .XX) compared to RP:P protocols (ES = .XX), and [larger/smaller/similar] compared to the original studies (ES = .XX) and [larger/smaller/similar] compared to the original RP:P replications (ES = .XX). Overall, Revised protocols produced [much larger/somewhat larger/similar] effect sizes compared to RP:P protocols (ES = .XX). We also elicited peer beliefs about the replications through prediction markets and surveys of a group of researchers in psychology. The peer researchers predicted that the Revised protocols would [decrease/not affect/increase] the replication rate, [consistent with/not consistent with] the observed replication results. The results suggest that the lack of replicability of these findings observed in RP:P was [partly/completely/not] due to discrepancies in the RP:P protocols that could be resolved with expert peer review.

If we want psychological science to have a meaningful real-world impact, it has to be trusted by the public. Scientific progress is noisy; accordingly, replications sometimes fail even for true findings. We need to communicate the acceptability of uncertainty to the public and our peers, to prevent psychology from being perceived as having nothing to say about reality.

The cognitive reflection test (CRT) is a widely used measure of the propensity to engage in analytic or deliberative reasoning in lieu of gut feelings or intuitions. CRT problems are unique because they reliably cue intuitive but incorrect responses and, therefore, appear simple among those who do poorly. By virtue of being composed of so-called “trick problems” that, in theory, could be discovered as such, it is commonly held that the predictive validity of the CRT is undermined by prior experience with the task. Indeed, recent studies have shown that people who have had previous experience with the CRT score higher on the test. Naturally, however, it is not obvious that this actually undermines the predictive validity of the test. Across six studies with ~ 2,500 participants and 17 variables of interest (e.g., religious belief, bullshit receptivity, smartphone usage, susceptibility to heuristics and biases, and numeracy), we did not find a single case in which the predictive power of the CRT was significantly undermined by repeated exposure. This occurred despite the fact that we replicated the previously reported increase in accuracy among individuals who reported previous experience with the CRT. We speculate that the CRT remains robust after multiple exposures because less reflective (more intuitive) individuals fail to realize that being presented with apparently easy problems more than once confers information about the task’s actual difficulty.