A closer look …

… Another social psychology classic bites the dust – meta-analysis finds little evidence for the Macbeth effect – Research Digest.

What’s perhaps most noteworthy here is that whereas the effect sizes found in the original three “Macbeth effect” studies were moderate-to-large, in all the 11 independent replication attempts  “there was no effect whatoseover”. In light of this, the authors argue, “the evidence suggests either that unethical primes do not generate a greater preference for cleansing-related stimuli than do ethical primes, or they generate a small one.” In other words it looks like the strength of the Macbeth Effect phenomenon has been overhyped, which won’t come as a surprise to those who have been following psychology’s replication crisis. (On the reverse question — of whether “cleansing alleviates moral threat” — the authors suggest there’s stronger evidence, in the form of several independent replications.)