Reply to Inbar: Contextual sensitivity helps explain the reproducibility gap between social and cognitive psychology

Abstract

We find that contextual sensitivity correlates with the reproducibility of 100 psychology studies from the Reproducibility Project (1). This relationship remains after adjusting for several methodological factors believed to account for reproducibility (e.g., sample size, effect size) and does not differ across subdisciplines (social vs. cognitive psychology). We also report a strong relationship between subdiscipline and context (1): social psychology studies are more likely to examine contextually sensitive topics than cognitive psychology studies. We conclude that context might play a role in reproducibility across (rather than within) subdisciplines. Inbar (2) notes that the reproducibility rate of social psychology (28%) is lower than cognitive psychology (53%). He also … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jay.vanbavel{at}nyu.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1