e-ISSN: Pending

Browse the failure-mode index

276 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Psychology · Negative / Null Result Report. 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

The influence of income and testosterone on the validity of facial width-to-height ratio as a biomarker for dominance

Emilou Noser, Jessica Schoch, Ulrike Ehlert · 2018 · PLoS ONE

Research has indicated that men's facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is part of an evolved system of social dominance, aggression, and power. fWHR has been linked to antisocial behavior, measured by self-reported aggression, but recent studies have failed to replicate this finding. To overcome these inconsistencies, influencing factors such as social status have to be taken into account in order to explain the relationship between fWHR and aggression. In particular, income has been shown to be an important influencing factor in this relationship. Furthermore, previous findings suggested that

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportPsychology

Effects of the Reread-Adapt and Answer-Comprehend and goal setting intervention on decoding and reading comprehension skills of young adults with intellectual disabilities

Youjia Hua, Chengan Yuan, Kristin V. Monroe et al. · 2016 · Developmental Neurorehabilitation

OBJECTIVE: Reread-Adapt and Answer-Comprehend (RAAC) + Goal Setting intervention is a reading intervention that addresses both oral reading fluency (ORF) and reading comprehension while supporting persistence and motivation for learners…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Adolescent perfectionism: Structural features of the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale and correlates with attachment and psychopathology

Emily P. Taylor, Rachel Couper, Carolyn Maeve Butler · 2017 · Psychology and Psychotherapy Theory Research and Practice

OBJECTIVES: Perfectionism is recognized as a significant risk factor for psychopathology. Emerging research links attachment to perfectionism in adult and college-age samples. The Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS) has been…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Serum Concentrations of Tumor Necrosis Factor-α and its Soluble Receptors in Soldiers with and Without Combat-related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Hubertus Himmerich, Jörg-Egbert Wolf, Peter Zimmermann et al. · 2016 · Chinese Medical Journal

To the Editor: With great interest we read the original article of Chen et al.[1] published in the Chinese Medical Journal comparing serum concentrations of cytokines in patients of Han and Li ethnicity with posttraumatic stress disorder…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Male Body Attitudes Scale (MBAS) among Spanish Adolescent Males

Ana R. Sepúlveda, Dimitra Anastasiadou, Yolanda de Pellegrin et al. · 2016 · Men and Masculinities

The aim of this study was to examine the factor structure of the Male Body Attitudes Scale (MBAS) among a sample of 212 adolescent males by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis. The data revealed that while muscularity and low body fat factors were appropriate for the male sample, the height factor was not supported. The composite MBAS-Spanish version (MBAS-S) and its two factors had high internal consistency and were not significantly related to the traditionally used measure of body image (Eating Disorder Inventory–Body Dissatisfaction [BD]), confirming that this subscale only appears t

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Psychometric Validation Study of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale - Self-Reported Version for Brazilian Portuguese

Larissa Forni dos Santos, Sônia Regina Loureiro, José Alexandre S. Crippa et al. · 2013 · PLoS ONE

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is prevalent and rarely diagnosed due to the difficulty in recognizing its symptoms as belonging to a disorder. Therefore, the evaluation/screening scales are of great importance for its detection, with the most used being the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). Thus, this study proposed to evaluate the psychometric properties of internal consistency and convergent validity, as well as the confirmatory factorial analysis and reliability of the self-reported version of the LSAS (LSAS-SR), translated into Brazilian Portuguese, in a sample of the general populatio

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

How to tell a happy person: Accuracy of subjective well-being perception from texts

Olga Stavrova, Lena Haarmann · 2019 · Motivation and Emotion

Abstract Although perceptions of subjective well-being (SWB) in unacquainted others have been shown to play a major role in impression formation, little is known about how accurate such perceptions are. In two original studies and one pre-registered replication, we explored the accuracy of life satisfaction and happiness judgments from texts and its underlying mechanisms (use of linguistic cues). Participants filled in life satisfaction and happiness measures and completed a brief writing task. Another sample of participants judged the targets’ life satisfaction and happiness from the obtained

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportPsychology

Early Childhood Teachers’ Perception of Creative Personality as a Predictor of Their Support of pedagogy important for fostering Creativity: A Chinese Perspective

Rebecca Hun Ping Cheung, Magdalena Mo Ching Mok · 2018 · Creativity Research Journal

Previous studies have suggested that teacher’s personality traits and pedagogy are the important areas of investigation in creativity research; however, little is known about the relationship between teachers’ personality traits and…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Some Alternatives? Event-Related Potential Investigation of Literal and Pragmatic Interpretations of Some Presented in Isolation

Cécile Barbet, Guillaume Thierry · 2016 · Frontiers in Psychology

In sentence verification tasks involving under-informative statements such as Some elephants are mammals, some adults appear more tolerant to pragmatic violations than others. The underlying causes of such inter-individual variability remain however essentially unknown. Here, we investigated inter-individual variation in adults deriving the scalar inference "not all" triggered by the quantifier some. We first assessed the individual intolerance to pragmatic violations in adult participants presented with under-informative some-statements (e.g., Some infants are young). We then recorded event-r

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportPsychology

Examining a motivational treatment and its impact on adolescents' reading comprehension and fluency

Christopher A. Wolters, Marcia A. Barnes, Paulina A. Kulesz et al. · 2016 · The Journal of Educational Research

The authors' purpose was to examine adolescents' reading motivation in relation to standardized assessments of reading comprehension and fluency. After a reading pretest, 60 ninth-grade students (M age = 14.9 years) were randomly assigned…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportPsychology

Analyzing a German-language Expanded Form of the PhoPhiKat-45: Psychometric Properties, Factorial Structure, Measurement Invariance with the Likert-Version, and Self-Peer Convergence

Kay Brauer, René T. Proyer · 2020 · Journal of Personality Assessment

Personality assessment typically relies on self-report questionnaires utilizing Likert-type scales. Recently, the Expanded format has been proposed as alternative, but research on the consequences of adapting Likert-like responses to…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Fourteen-Month-Olds Adapt Their Imitative Behavior in Light of a Model’s Constraints

Kata Gellén, David Buttelmann · 2017 · Child Development Research

Rather than reenacting every action they observe, preverbal infants adapt their imitative behavior. Although previous studies have revealed the capability of preverbal infants to imitate selectively, the question about the adaptability of this behavior on an individual level did not attract considerable scientific attention until now. In the current study, we investigated whether 14-month-old infants flexibly alternate their imitative response in accordance with a model’s changing physical constraints in a body-part imitation paradigm. Participants were presented with two novel actions whereby

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportPsychology

Impact of a Student Success Course on Undergraduate Academic Outcomes

Leah D. Hoops, Shirley L. Yu, Andrea Burridge et al. · 2015 · Journal of College Reading and Learning

Both community colleges and four-year institutions offer Student Success Courses (SSCs) to promote student engagement (self-regulated learning, SRL) and performance (grades, retention, and graduation). However, little work has been done to…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

A Cognitive Approach to the Instruction of Phrasal Verbs: Rudzka-Ostyn’s Model

Ghuzayyil Mohammed Al-Otaibi · 2019 · Journal of language and Education

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners find some phrasal verbs problematic because of their idiomatic and polysemous nature. They are frequently used in spoken English and textbooks suggest an arbitrary way in teaching them. Cognitive linguists proposed that the particle plays a major role in determining the meaning of such phrasal verbs. This study investigated the effectiveness of a cognitive approach (i.e., Rudzka-Ostyn’s Model) in teaching taught and new phrasal verbs including metaphorical ones. Using a list of frequent phrasal verbs, a quasi-experimental design was used in which an

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Characteristics of personally important episodic memories, counterfactual thoughts, and future projections across age and culture

Müge Özbek, Annette Bohn, Dorthe Berntsen · 2020 · Applied Cognitive Psychology

Summary We have limited knowledge as to whether the phenomenological differences between episodic memories, counterfactuals, and future projections show the same pattern across age groups and diverse samples. Here we compared the…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Effectiveness and moderators of individual cognitive behavioral therapy versus treatment as usual in clinically depressed adolescents: a randomized controlled trial

Yvonne Stikkelbroek, Gerko Vink, Maaike H. Nauta et al. · 2020 · Scientific Reports

We examined if manualized cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) was more effective than Treatment As Usual (TAU) for clinically depressed adolescents within routine care. This multisite Randomized controlled trail included 88 clinically depressed adolescents (aged 12-21 years) randomly assigned to CBT or TAU. Multiple assessments (pre-, post treatment and six-month follow-up) were done using semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and ratings and multiple informants. The primary outcome was depressive or dysthymic disorder based on the KSADS. Completers, CBT (n = 19) and TAU (n = 26), showed a

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportPsychology

Hybrid Strategy—Interference or Integration? How Corporate Communication Impacts Consumers’ Memory and Company Evaluation

Zifei Fay Chen, Weiting Tao · 2020 · International Journal of Strategic Communication

This study investigates whether hybrid strategy would be more effective than corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy in boosting CSR information recall and company evaluation. Informed by the corporate ability (CA)-CSR-hybrid…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

SΔϕ-60 — Utilitarian Subject-Splitting Index

Sofience · 2026 · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

SΔϕ-60 introduces the Utilitarian Subject-Splitting Index, USSI, within the Sofience-Δϕ Formalism. The paper examines whether utilitarian calculation merely evaluates the happiness of already-existing majorities and minorities, or whether such calculation can first produce the operational boundary between majority and minority by redistributing Transition Completion Cost, TCC. The document begins with the Sofience Subject Thought Experiment. A person is imagined as capable of detaching and reattaching any part of the body while the detached parts remain alive, neurologically connected, and phy

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

A Statewide Randomized Controlled Trial to Compare Three Models for Implementing Parent Child Interaction Therapy

Amy D. Herschell, David J. Kolko, Ashley T. Scudder et al. · 2021 · Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology

OBJECTIVE: This study (NIMH RO1 MH095750; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02543359) evaluated the effectiveness of three training models to implement a well-established evidence-based treatment, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT).…

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Examining the reliability and validity of two versions of the Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT)

Hanno Andreas Ohmann, Niclas Kuper, Jan Wacker · 2022 · PLoS ONE

The Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT) has gained validity evidence from several studies. However, various modifications have been applied to the original version, which have never been compared systematically. In Study 1, we tested 120 healthy participants to directly compare two versions of the EEfRT. In Study 2, we tested a larger sample of 394 healthy participants to further examine the original EEfRT. We replicated the split-half reliability of both task versions. However, self-reported personality traits (e.g., trait BAS) correlated with only some task performance parameters in

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Measuring Semantic Deviation: Operationalizations, Experiments, and Falsification Conditions for a Theory of Meaning as Field Deformation

Nobel Glas · 2026 · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

EA-GLAS-02 v1.0. A self-contained empirical white paper presenting the measurement program for the Semantic Deviation Principle (Sharks 2026). Defines meaning as the time-integrated divergence a sign induces from the most probable trajectory of a semantic field, extending the Bar-Hillel and Carnap (1953) program into distributional and temporal domains. Two primary operationalizations. (F1) Closed-system trajectory deviation within a frozen language model, where the counterfactual baseline is read from logits, building on surprisal theory (Hale 2001; Levy 2008) and decomposing it into signed d

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Testing the Magnitude of Correlations Across Experimental Conditions

Simone Di Plinio · 2022 · Frontiers in Psychology

Correlation coefficients are often compared to investigate data across multiple research fields, as they allow investigators to determine different degrees of correlation to independent variables. Even with adequate sample size, such differences may be minor but still scientifically relevant. To date, although much effort has gone into developing methods for estimating differences across correlation coefficients, adequate tools for variable sample sizes and correlational strengths have yet to be tested. The present study evaluated four different methods for detecting the difference between two

View details →
Negative / Null Result ReportPsychology

Evaluating the Factor Structure of the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory

Sarah E. Whiteman, Lindsay B. Kramer, Madison W. Silverstein et al. · 2020 · Assessment

The Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory (PTCI) is one of the most widely used measure of posttraumatic cognitions. The original factor analysis of the PTCI provided evidence for a three-factor model of negative cognitions about self, world,…

View details →