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Browse the failure-mode index

323 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Psychology. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Does baseline severity interact with the effects of psychotherapy for depression? A meta-analytic review

Pim Cuijpers, Mathias Harrer, Clara Miguel et al. · 2026 · Journal of Affective Disorders

It is not yet clear whether baseline severity is associated with the effects of psychotherapies. We examined baseline severity at the study level in a large sample of randomized controlled trials comparing psychotherapies against a control condition for the treatment of depression. We used an existing large database of randomized trials comparing psychotherapies for depression with control groups ( www.metapsy.org ). We converted baseline severity scores across different depression measures into a common metric. We ran bivariable and multivariable meta-regression analyses to examine the associ

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Training language models to be warm can reduce accuracy and increase sycophancy

Lujain Ibrahim, Franziska Sofia Hafner, Luc Rocher · 2026 · Nature

. Here we show how this can create a significant trade-off: optimizing language models for warmth can undermine their performance, especially when users express vulnerability. We conducted controlled experiments on five different language models, training them to produce warmer responses, then evaluating them on consequential tasks. Warm models showed substantially higher error rates (+10 to +30 percentage points) than their original counterparts, promoting conspiracy theories, providing inaccurate factual information and offering incorrect medical advice. They were also significantly more lik

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

On the universality of aesthetic preference and inference: a cross-cultural (Chinese–German) study

Chantal A. Miller, Keshun Zhang, Ronald Hübner · 2025 · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Abstract Aesthetic preferences vary widely among individuals and across cultures. These culture-specific aesthetic preferences are reflected in the environment, artistic behaviour, and consumer choices. People have the ability to infer the aesthetic preferences of others within their own culture through their Theory of Aesthetic Preferences , which is a subcategory of the Theory of Mind. An important question is whether people can also infer aesthetic preferences across different cultures. This study aimed to investigate aesthetic preference and aesthetic inference, as well as the underlying m

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Interventions for children and adolescents with specific learning disability and co-occurring disorders

Daniel R. Espinas, Sharon Vaughn, Lynn S. Fuchs · 2025 · Pediatric Research

Interventions for individuals with specific learning disabilities (SLD) largely focus on performance within a single performance domain (e.g., reading). However, it is more the rule than the exception that individuals with SLD will experience difficulties that span multiple domains (e.g., reading and mathematics), and that co-occur with other disorders (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). In this article, we discuss what has been learned about supporting children and adolescents with SLD affecting multiple performance domains (i.e., reading and mathematics), and with common co-occ

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Spurious effects in random-intercept cross-lagged panel models: Results from simulations and reanalyses of data on self-esteem and problematic eating behaviors used by Beckers et al. (2023)

Kimmo Sorjonen, Gustav Nilsonne, Ata Ghaderi et al. · 2026 · PLoS ONE

The random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) is an extension of the traditional cross-lagged panel model. The RI-CPLM specifically addresses prospective effects within individuals. In the present simulations, we found that the RI-CLPM is susceptible to spurious findings when observed scores on the two variables are affected by common auto-correlated state factors. In reanalyses of empirical data, we found contradictory decreasing, increasing, and null prospective effects between within-individual levels of self-esteem and problematic eating behaviors among Dutch teenagers (N = 1856)

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Moral Disengagement and Unethical Generative AI Use as the Chain Mediators Between Antagonistic Personality and Problematic Generative AI Use

Kağan Kırcaburun, Pınar Özdemir · 2026 · Behavioral Sciences

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools into academic and professional contexts has raised concerns regarding unethical use and the potential development of problematic usage patterns. Drawing on personality and moral psychology frameworks, the present study examined the associations between antagonistic personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) and problematic (i.e., addictive) GAI use (PGAIU), as well as the chain mediating effect of moral disengagement and unethical GAI use (UGAIU). Data were collected from an adult sample (N = 491; 5

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Replication FailureOpen accessPsychology

Assessment of an App-Based Sleep Program to Improve Sleep Outcomes in a Clinical Insomnia Population: Randomized Controlled Trial

Walter Staiano, Christine E. Callahan, Michelle Davis et al. · 2025 · JMIR mhealth and uhealth

BACKGROUND: Insomnia is the most commonly reported sleep disturbance and significantly impacts mental health and quality of life. Traditional treatments for insomnia include pharmacological interventions or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), but these options may not be accessible to everyone who needs treatment. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of the app-based Headspace Sleep Program in adults with clinical insomnia on sleep disturbance and mental health outcomes, compared with a waitlist control group. METHODS: This randomized controlled trial included

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Nogo stimuli do not receive more attentional suppression or response inhibition than neutral stimuli: evidence from the N2pc, PD and N2 components in a spatial cueing paradigm

Caroline eBarras, Dirk eKerzel · 2016 · Frontiers in Psychology

It has been claimed that stimuli sharing the color of the nogo-target are suppressed because of the strong incentive to not process the nogo-target, but we failed to replicate this finding. Participants searched for a color singleton in the target display and indicated its shape when it was in the go color. If the color singleton in the target display was in the nogo color, they had to withhold the response. The target display was preceded by a cue display that also contained a color singleton (the cue). The cue was either in the color of the go or nogo target, or it was in an unrelated, neutr

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Exploring the role of Honesty-Humility in replicating "The relationships between behavioral addictions and the five-factor model of personality"

Singh, Anjali, Durand, Guillaume · 2022 · Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology

This study is a replication of Andreassen and colleagues (2013) [The relationships between behavioral addictions and the five-factor model of personality. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2(2), 90-99]. We partially replicated the findings of the original study. Our results support the role of personality, particularly conscientiousness, in predicting behavioral addictions, such as video game, Internet, and mobile phone addiction. However, we failed to replicate the same pattern of personality traits for each behavioral addiction.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Exploration of Attentional and Executive Abilities in French-Speaking Children Immersed in Dutch Since 1, 2, 3, and 6 Years

Sophie Gillet, Cristina Anca Barbu, Martine Poncelet · 2020 · Frontiers in Psychology

Advantages in diverse aspects of cognitive functioning have been reported in early bilinguals (Bialystok, 2011) as well as in children frequenting an early bilingual immersion school program (Nicolay and Poncelet, 2015). However, during the last decade, some studies failed to replicate these advantages. Currently, the presence of cognitive benefits in children frequenting an immersion program remains debated. The lack of consistency between the studies could come from the fact that time spent by children within the immersion program is variable from one study to the other and that studies used

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Caffeine enhances memory performance in young adults during their non-optimal time of day

Stephanie M Sherman, Timothy P Buckley, Elsa Baena et al. · 2016 · Frontiers in Psychology

Many college students struggle to perform well on exams in the early morning. Although students drink caffeinated beverages to feel more awake, it is unclear whether these actually improve performance. After consuming coffee (caffeinated or decaffeinated), college-age adults completed implicit and explicit memory tasks in the early morning and late afternoon (Experiment 1). During the morning, participants ingesting caffeine demonstrated a striking improvement in explicit memory, but not implicit memory. Caffeine did not alter memory performance in the afternoon. In Experiment 2, participants

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Study of Emotional Intelligence as Stress Controller for City Guards

Monalisa Muniz, Ricardo Primi, Fabiano Koich Miguel · 2007 · Psicologia

The Emotional intelligence supposedly is a mediator variable in the stress control although there is no sufficient empirical evidence supporting this relationship. The purpose of the present research was to study the correlation between emotional intelligence and stress. The participants were 24 city guards who answered the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Tests V2.0 (MSCEIT) and the Lipp’s Inventory of Stress Symptoms for Adults (ISSL). The results showed no significant correlation between stress and the general score of emotional intelligence. However, analyzing the subtasks score

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Inter-trial priming does not affect attentional priority in asymmetric visual search

Liana eAmunts, Amit eYashar, Dominique eLamy · 2014 · Frontiers in Psychology

Visual search is considerably speeded when the target’s characteristics remain constant across successive selections. Here, we investigated whether such inter-trial priming increases the target’s attentional priority, by examining whether target repetition reduces search efficiency during serial search. As the study of inter-trial priming requires the target and distractors to exchange roles unpredictably, it has mostly been confined to singleton searches, which typically yield efficient search. We therefore resorted to two singleton searches known to yield relatively inefficient performance,

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Dual Task Effects on Visual Attention Capacity in Normal Aging

Erika C. S. Künstler, Melanie D. Penning, Natan Napiórkowski et al. · 2018 · Frontiers in Psychology

Older adults show higher dual task performance decrements than younger adults. While this is assumed to be related to attentional capacity reductions, the precise affected functions are not specified. Such specification is, however, possible based on the “theory of visual attention” (TVA) which allows for modeling of distinct attentional capacity parameters. Furthermore, it is unclear whether older adults show qualitatively different attentional effects or whether they show the same effects as younger adults experience under more challenging conditions. By varying the complexity of the seconda

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Workspace Disorder Does Not Influence Creativity and Executive Functions

Alberto Manzi, Yana Durmysheva, Shannon K. Pinegar et al. · 2019 · Frontiers in Psychology

Recent research by Vohs et al. (2013) garnered media attention after reporting that disordered environments increase creativity. The present research was designed to conceptually replicate and extend this finding by exploring the effect of workspace disorder on creativity. Participants were randomly assigned to work at a neatly organized (Order condition) or a messy desk (Disorder condition), where they completed several paper-and-pencil and computerized tasks, including two validated creativity measures (Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults; ATTA; Goff and Torrance, 2002; Alternative Uses Tas

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessPsychology

Problems of the defining the dimensions of the Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory

Smederevac Snežana, Mitrović Dušanka · 2005 · Psihologija

Jeffrey Gray has modified Eysenck's system by rotating the dimensions of extraversion and neuroticism by 45 degrees, which resulted in two new dimensions: impulsivity (behavioral approach system) and anxiety (behavioral inhibition system). The main purpose of this study was to examine psychometric properties of the BIS/BAS scale, inventory for assessment of dimensions included in Gray's theory, in order to, also, test the foundation of the Gray's constructs themselves. 476 participants were included, age 17 to 77. All subjects completed The BIS/BAS scale (Carver & White, 1994) and The Big Five

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

PENGARUH KEPUASAN PELANGGAN, BRAND IMAGE, DAN KEPERCAYAAN PELANGGAN TERHADAP LOYALITAS PELANGGAN PADA MEMBERCARD

Dwi Apriliani, S. NikmahBaqiyyatus, Rizka Febila et al. · 2020 · Entrepreneurship Bisnis Manajemen Akuntansi (E-BISMA)

This research was conducted to determine the effect of satisfaction, brand image and trust on customer loyalty at member cards. This research method uses questionnaire data collection techniques with the respondent data of 100 people. The…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Are There Multiple Motivators for Helping Behavior in Rats?

Phietica R. R. Silva, Phietica R. R. Silva, Regina H. Silva et al. · 2020 · Frontiers in Psychology

Empathy is the ability to (a) be affected by and share the emotional state of another; (b) assess the reasons for the other’s state; and (c) identify with the other, adopting their perspective. This phenomenon has been shown to exist in several species and is proposed as a motivator for prosocial behavior. The experimental study of this feature in laboratory rodents is a more viable alternative in comparison to wild animals. A recent report showed that rats opened a door to free their cage mate from a restraint box. Although this behavior has been suggested to be motivated by empathy, this fac

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessPsychology

Goats Follow Human Pointing Gestures in an Object Choice Task

Christian Nawroth, Zoe M. Martin, Alan G. McElligott et al. · 2020 · Frontiers in Psychology

Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are extremely adept in interpreting human-given cues, such as the pointing gesture. However, the underlying mechanisms on how domestic non-companion species use these cues are not well understood. We investigated the use of human-given pointing gestures by goats (Capra hircus) in an object choice task, where an experimenter surreptitiously hid food in one of two buckets. Subjects first had to pass a pre-test where the experimenter indicated the location of the food to the subject by a proximal pointing gesture. Subjects that succeeded in the use of this gesture we

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Observed effects of distributional learning may not relate to the number of peaks. A test of dispersion as a confounding factor.

Karin eWanrooij, Paul eBoersma, Titia eBenders et al. · 2015 · Frontiers in Psychology

Distributional learning of speech sounds is learning from simply being exposed to frequency distributions of speech sounds in one’s surroundings. In laboratory settings, the mechanism has been reported to be discernible already after a few minutes of exposure, in both infants and adults. These effects of distributional training have traditionally been attributed to the difference in the number of peaks between the experimental distribution (two peaks) and the control distribution (one or zero peaks). However, none of the earlier studies fully excluded a possibly confounding effect of the dispe

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

The Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Children’s Prosocial Behavior: The Mediating Role of Children’s Emotional Intelligence

Siqi Zhang, Ping Wang, Weichen Wang et al. · 2026 · Behavioral Sciences

Prosocial behavior is an important manifestation of socialization in young children. As the primary setting for socialization of young children, the family bears the significant responsibility of fostering prosocial behavior in young children. Drawing on family systems theory and Goleman’s emotional intelligence theory, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between parenting styles and children’s prosocial behavior and the mediating role of children’s emotional intelligence in it. In this study, an online questionnaire was distributed to 869 young children’s parents usi

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessPsychology

Resource scarcity priming and face perception: A preregistered conceptual replication of Study 1 of Rodeheffer et al. (2012) in Japan

Masataka Takebe, Kenta Tsumura, Ken'ichiro Nakashima · 2023 · Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology

Rodeheffer et al. (2012) showed that when people perceive resource scarcity, they are more likely to judge racially ambiguous people as out-group members. In their first experiment, 71 White participants viewed a slideshow depicting either resource scarcity or abundance; subsequently, they judged 20 biracial faces created by averaging a White and a Black face. We conducted this experiment's preregistered conceptual replication study in Japan. Specifically, after observing a slideshow depicting either resource scarcity or abundance, East Asian participants judged 20 biracial faces produced by a

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

The Impact of Cues on Joint Attention in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study in Virtual Games

Lili Liu, Shuang Li, Lin Tian et al. · 2024 · Behavioral Sciences

Joint attention (JA), a core deficit in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is crucial for social interaction, emotional understanding, and cognitive development. This study aims to compare and analyze the eye-tracking data of ASD and typically developing children (TDC) during virtual games, exploring how different cue types affect JA performance in ASD children. A total of 31 TDC and 40 ASD children participated in the study. Using eye-tracking devices, we recorded the children’s eye movements as they played virtual games, selecting the correct target based on cues provided by virtu

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessPsychology

Working Memory Load Effects on the Tilt Aftereffect

Gaoxing Mei, Mofen Cen, Xu Luo et al. · 2021 · Frontiers in Psychology

Prolonged exposure to an oriented stimulus causes a subsequent test stimulus to be perceived as tilted in the opposite direction, a phenomenon referred to as the tilt aftereffect (TAE). Previous studies have demonstrated that high-level cognitive functions such as attention can modulate the TAE, which is generally well-known as a low-level perceptual process. However, it is unclear whether working memory load, another high-level cognitive function, could modulate the TAE. To address this issue, here we developed a new paradigm by combining a working memory load task with a TAE task. Participan

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

When Does the Story Matter? No Evidence for the Foregrounding Hypothesis in Math Story Problems

Sabrina M. Di Lonardo Burr, Jill Turner, Jesse Nietmann et al. · 2021 · Journal of Numerical Cognition

Math story problems are difficult for many solvers because comprehension of mathematical and linguistic content must occur simultaneously. Across two studies, we attempted to conceptually replicate and extend findings reported by Mattarella-Micke and Beilock (2010, https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.17.1.106) and Jarosz and Jaeger (2019, https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3471). Mattarella-Micke and Beilock found that multiplication word problems in which an irrelevant number was associated with the protagonist of the problem (i.e., foregrounded in the text) were solved less accurately than problems in othe

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Snap & Write: Examining the Effect of Taking Photos and Notes on Memory for Lecture Content

Maribeth M. Trego, Julia S. Soares, Annie S. Ditta · 2025 · Behavioral Sciences

Three studies investigated the effects of photo and note taking on memory for lecture content in in-person and online environments. Participants watched slideshow lecture videos and were instructed to only watch, take photos, take notes, or simultaneously take both photos and notes of the information on the slides. Memory for on-slide and only said information was tested using fill-in-the-blank questions. Experiment 1, conducted in-person, found a significant photo-taking impairment and an interaction for on-slide information such that there was a larger impairment when participants took both

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