The main finding reported in this article is not robust. It failed to replicate in a study with a much larger and more representative sample. The results in this article should no longer be cited as evidence for the claims made in this article.
Yeager, D. S., Krosnick, J. A., Visser, P. S., Holbrook, A. L., & Tahk, A. M. (2019). Moderation of classic social psychological effects by demographics in the U.S. adult population: New opportunities for theoretical advancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(6), e84-e99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000171
Anyone interested in ease of retrieval effects may want to consult the meta-analysis of 253 studies by Weingarten & Hutchinson, Psychological Bulletin, 2018. I copy their abstract below.
"A wealth of literature suggests individuals use feelings in addition to facts as sources of information for judgment. This paper focuses on a manipulation in which participants list either a few or many examples of a given type, and then make a judgment. Instead of using the number of arguments or evidence strength, participants are hypothesized to use the subjective ease of generating examples as the primary input to judgment. This result is commonly called the ease-of-retrieval effect, and the feeling of ease is typically assumed to mediate the effect. We use meta-analytic methods across 142 papers, 263 studies, and 582 effect sizes to assess the robustness of the ease-of-retrieval effect, and whether or not the effect is mediated by subjective ease. On average, the standard few/many manipulation exhibits a medium-sized effect. In experimental conditions designed to replicate the standard effect, about one third to one half of the total effect is mediated by subjective ease. This supports the standard explanation, but suggests that other mediators are present. Further, we find evidence of publication bias that reduces the standard effect by up to one-third. We also find that (1) moderator manipulations that differ from the standard manipulation lead to smaller, often reversed effects that are not as strongly mediated as ease, (2) several manipulations of theory-based moderators (e.g., polarized attitudes, misattribution) yield strong theory-consistent effects, (2) method-based moderators have little or no effects on the results, and (4) the mediation results are robust with respect to assumptions about error structure."
#2 The main problem with meta-analysis is that studies and effects are heterogenous. This makes it difficult to predict when the effect will emerge and when it will not emerge (this is called hidden moderators or contextual sensitivity) which adds to the replication crisis in social psychology.
The abstract also points out that publication bias is present, but there are no good methods to correct for it in heterogeneous datasets. Thus, the effect size remains unknown.
Finally, the design of this experiment forces participants to retrieve concrete exemplars. This is an effortful/slow process. In contrast, social judgments or frequency judgments are often made much faster, indicating that individuals do not usually retrieve exemplars (Schimmack, 1997).
https://replicationindex.com/2021/03/26/fje/
Even Tversky and Kahneman (1971) suggested that feelings of familiarity may provide information about the availability of examplars without actual retrieval.
Further reading: https://replicationindex.com/2019/01/03/ease-of-retrieval/
Another replication failure in a large sample, direct replication attempt. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2021.1882502
ABSTRACT The way in which individuals think about their own cognitive processes plays an important role in various domains. When eyewitnesses assess their confidence in identification decisions, they could be influenced by how easily relevant information comes to mind. This ease-of-retrieval effect has a robust influence on people’s cognitions in a variety of contexts (e.g., attitudes), but it has not yet been applied to eyewitness decisions. In three studies, we explored whether the ease with which eyewitnesses recall certain memorial information influenced their identification confidence assessments and related testimonyrelevant judgements (e.g., perceived quality of view). We manipulated the number of reasons participants gave to justify their identification (Study 1; N = 343), and also the number of instances they provided of a weak or strong memory (Studies 2a & 2b; Ns = 350 & 312, respectively). Across the three studies, ease-of-retrieval did not affect eyewitnesses’ confidence or other testimony-relevant judgements. We then tried – and failed – to replicate Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991. Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 195–202. doi:10.1037/0022- 3514.61.2.195) original ease-of-retrieval finding (Study 3; N = 661). In three of the four studies, ease-of-retrieval had the expected effect on participants’ perceived task difficulty; however, frequentist and Bayesian testing showed no evidence for an effect on confidence or assertiveness ratings.
Attach files by dragging & dropping, selecting them, or pasting from the clipboard. Uploading your files… We don’t support that file type. with a PNG, GIF, or JPG. Yowza, that’s a big file. with a file smaller than 1MB. This file is empty. with a file that’s not empty. Something went really wrong, and we can’t process that file.
Comment must be at least 15 characters.