Instruction-based Replication Studies Raise Challenging Questions for Psychological Science

Abstract

A variety of psychological effects have been recently replicated in studies where participants merely received information describing experimental tasks, while participants experienced these tasks in studies where these effects were originally established. We argue that these successful instruction-based replication studies raise challenging questions for contemporary psychological research: (1) What does psychological science tell us about effects beyond common knowledge? (2) Does performing the experienced version of the task add to the effect, how much so, and why? (3) Should the effect be considered an experimental demand artifact? Throughout the article, we discuss methodological challenges and solutions associated with these questions. We conclude that instruction-based replication studies offer opportunities for theoretical, methodological, and empirical development in psychological science.