Registered Replication Report

Language can be viewed as a complex set of cues that shape people’s mental representations of situations. For example, people think of behavior described using imperfective aspect (i.e., what a person was doing) as a dynamic, unfolding sequence of actions, whereas the same behavior described using perfective aspect (i.e., what a person did) is perceived as a completed whole. A recent study found that aspect can also influence how we think about a person’s intentions (Hart & Albarracín, 2011). Participants judged actions described in imperfective as being more intentional (d between 0.67 and 0.77) and they imagined these actions in more detail (d = 0.73). The fact that this finding has implications for legal decision making, coupled with the absence of other direct replication attempts, motivated this registered replication report (RRR). Multiple laboratories carried out 12 direct replication studies, including one MTurk study. A meta-analysis of these studies provides a precise estimate of the size of this effect free from publication bias. This RRR did not find that grammatical aspect affects intentionality (d between 0 and −0.24) or imagery (d = −0.08). We discuss possible explanations for the discrepancy between these results and those of the original study. at Utrecht University Library on December 12, 2016 pps.sagepub.com Downloaded from RRR: Hart & Albarracín (2011) 159 People use language to convey ideas about situations in the real world or in some hypothetical world. Language can be viewed as a complex set of cues that help shape how people understand and represent actions and events in their world ( Johnson-Laird, 1983; Morrow, Greenspan, & Bower, 1987; Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). Grammatical aspect is one such cue. Behavior described using imperfective aspect (i.e., what a person was doing) is perceived as a dynamic, unfolding sequence of actions, whereas the same behavior described using perfective aspect (i.e., what a person did) is perceived as a completed whole (Madden & Zwaan, 2003; Magliano & Schleich, 2000; Mozuraitis, Chambers, & Daneman, 2013). Actions described in imperfective aspect are perceived as more vivid and perceptually engaging than are those in perfective aspect. Perhaps this enhancement of detailed processing (i.e., richer encoding) causes actions described in imperfective aspect to also be more memorable than other aspectual forms (Carreiras, Carriedo, Alonso, & Fernandez, 1997; Magliano & Schleich, 2000). The results of a recent study suggest that grammatical aspect not only influences our understanding of and memory for described situations, but also whether we think of an action as being intentional (Hart & Albarracín, 2011). The first two experiments showed that grammatical aspect influences our perceptions of intentionality for mundane behavior. For example, whenever participants read sentences describing the actions of a person in imperfective aspect (e.g., Keith was preparing dinner for some friends) compared with those describing actions in perfective aspect (e.g., Keith prepared dinner for some friends), they were more likely to complete word stems with intention-relevant words. Experiment 3, which is the focus of this RRR, showed that grammatical aspect influences perceived intentionality for both mundane and criminal behavior. In the experiment, participants read a vignette (see Appendix A) about a man being shot by another man after the two had argued about a dice game. The actions of the perpetrator were either described in imperfective aspect (i.e., pulling out a gun, pointing it at the other man, and shooting the gun) or perfective aspect (i.e., pulled out a gun, pointed it at the other man, and shot the gun). Participants rated the perpetrator’s harmful intent higher when the actions were described in imperfective aspect rather than in perfective aspect. Mediation analyses indicated that imperfective aspect resulted in higher intentionality ratings because it promoted more detailed processing of the described criminal acts. The finding that subtle shifts in aspect can change how people interpret intentions has implications for explaining, predicting, and morally judging the behavior of others (Young & Waytz, 1993), such as in legal decision making (e.g., a prosecutor could use imperfective aspect to imply greater intentionality by the accused suspect). Moreover, whereas other known effects of grammatical aspect on situation models tend to be rather small (e.g., Ferretti, Kutas, and McRae (2007) found Cohen’s d = 0.16), this study found large effects of aspect on mundane behavior (d between 0.99 and 1.03) and moderate to large effects on criminal behavior (d between 0.67 and 0.77).1 The size of these effects suggests that differences in the use of grammatical aspect could have far-reaching practical consequences. To date, no independent replication exists of this finding, supporting the case for a registered replication report (RRR). RRR projects are designed to arrive at a precise estimate of the magnitude of a previously reported effect by meta-analyzing a set of replications of the original study. Multiple laboratories independently conduct a direct replication of the same study by following a preregistered protocol. By following this procedure, the specific goal of this RRR was to provide an accurate estimate of the effect of grammatical aspect on perceived intentionality. Protocol Development to Compare Past and Present Studies For a direct replication of the original grammatical aspect study, Eerland, Sherrill, Magliano, and Zwaan developed the protocol in consultation with the original study’s first author, William Hart. The protocol was designed to follow the original study’s methodology as closely as possible, with one exception described in Materials below. After finalizing the protocol, Perspectives on Psychological Science publicly announced a call for laboratories interested in participating in this replication project on March 6, 2014. A deadline for applications to participate was set for April 10, 2014, and by that time 11 labs joined this project. All labs conducted an independent replication and preregistered their plan for implementing the protocol. Each implementation plan was checked by the editor for agreement with the protocol before the start of data collection. Laboratories in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands participated. The researchers from the Netherlands ran a large-scale online experiment recruiting U.S. participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk; http://www.mturk.com) so that the materials of the original study did not require any translation. This online experiment differed slightly from the lab-based studies (see Online Version of the Protocol). Most labs included experts on language comprehension, memory, and/or forensic psychology, and all are coauthors on this manuscript. Some labs lacked domain-specific experience, but all were experienced in conducting psychology experiments. at Utrecht University Library on December 12, 2016 pps.sagepub.com Downloaded from