Joseph P Simmons
Biographic Data
| ID | 166351 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph P Simmons |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph P |
| FAMILY NAME | Simmons |
| SIGNATURE | SIMMONS J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8833-224X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Why (and When) Are Uncertain Price Promotions More Effective Than Equivalent Sure Discounts
Past research suggests that offering customers a probabilistic promotion, such as an X% chance to get a product for free, is often more effective than providing a sure discount of equal expected value. In five studies (N = 8,969), we find that probabilistic price promotions are more effective than equivalent sure discounts only when those sure discounts are or seem trivial. Specifically, we find that probabilistic promotions are relatively more e…
How Does Rating Specific Features of an Experience Alter Consumers' Overall Evaluations of That Experience
How does the way companies elicit ratings from consumers affect the ratings that they receive? In 10 pre-registered experiments, we find that consumers rate subpar experiences more positively overall when they are also asked to rate specific aspects of those experiences (e.g., a restaurant's food, service, and ambiance). Studies 1–4 established the basic effect across different scenarios and experiences. Study 5 found that the effect is limited t…
Specification curve analysis
Overcoming Algorithm Aversion: People Will Use Imperfect Algorithms If They Can (Even Slightly) Modify Them
Although evidence-based algorithms consistently outperform human forecasters, people often fail to use them after learning that they are imperfect, a phenomenon known as algorithm aversion. In this paper, we present three studies investigating how to reduce algorithm aversion. In incentivized forecasting tasks, participants chose between using their own forecasts or those of an algorithm that was built by experts. Participants were considerably m…
Psychology's Renaissance
In 2010–2012, a few largely coincidental events led experimental psychologists to realize that their approach to collecting, analyzing, and reporting data made it too easy to publish false-positive findings. This sparked a period of methodological reflection that we review here and call Psychology's Renaissance. We begin by describing how psychologists’ concerns with publication bias shifted from worrying about file-drawered studies to worrying a…
Rejecting a bad option feels like choosing a good one
Across 4,151 participants, the authors demonstrate a novel framing effect, attribute matching, whereby matching a salient attribute of a decision frame with that of a decision's options facilitates decision-making. This attribute matching is shown to increase decision confidence and, ultimately, consensus estimates by increasing feelings of metacognitive ease. In Study 1, participants choosing the more attractive of two faces or rejecting the les…
Promoting Transparency in Social Science Research
Social scientists should adopt higher transparency standards to improve the quality and credibility of research.
P-curve: A key to the file-drawer.
Because scientists tend to report only studies (publication bias) or analyses (p-hacking) that "work," readers must ask, "Are these effects true, or do they merely reflect selective reporting?" We introduce p-curve as a way to answer this question. P-curve is the distribution of statistically significant p values for a set of studies (ps < .05). Because only true effects are expected to generate right-skewed p-curves-containing more low (.01s) th…
P -Curve and Effect Size: Correcting for Publication Bias Using Only Significant Results
Journals tend to publish only statistically significant evidence, creating a scientific record that markedly overstates the size of effects. We provide a new tool that corrects for this bias without requiring access to nonsignificant results. It capitalizes on the fact that the distribution of significant p values, p-curve, is a function of the true underlying effect. Researchers armed only with sample sizes and test results of the published find…
Life after P-Hacking
A 21 Word Solution
Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi
Across 7 experiments (N = 3,289), we replicate the procedure of Experiments 8 and 9 from Bem (2011), which had originally demonstrated retroactive facilitation of recall. We failed to replicate that finding. We further conduct a meta-analysis of all replication attempts of these experiments and find that the average effect size (d = 0.04) is no different from 0. We discuss some reasons for differences between the results in this article and those…
False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant
In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists’ nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. We present computer simulations and …
Intuitive Biases in Choice versus Estimation: Implications for the Wisdom of Crowds
Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long ex…
The effect of accuracy motivation on anchoring and adjustment: Do people adjust from provided anchors
Increasing accuracy motivation (e.g., by providing monetary incentives for accuracy) often fails to increase adjustment away from provided anchors, a result that has led researchers to conclude that people do not effortfully adjust away from such anchors. We challenge this conclusion. First, we show that people are typically uncertain about which way to adjust from provided anchors and that this uncertainty often causes people to believe that the…
Preferences for Enhancement Pharmaceuticals: The Reluctance to Enhance Fundamental Traits
Four studies examined the willingness of young, healthy individuals to take drugs intended to enhance their own social, emotional, and cognitive traits. We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be more fundamental to self-identity (e.g., social comfort) than traits considered less fundamental to self-identity (e.g., concentration ability). Moral acceptability of a trait enhancement strongly predicted people's de…
Pay attention! Attention to the primes increases attitude assessment accuracy
Distinguishing the cognitive and behavioral consequences of attitude importance and certainty: A new approach to testing the common-factor hypothesis
Distinguishing the cognitive and behavioral consequences of attitude importance and certainty: A new approach to testing the common-factor hypothesis
Specification curve analysis
The effect of accuracy motivation on anchoring and adjustment: Do people adjust from provided anchors
Increasing accuracy motivation (e.g., by providing monetary incentives for accuracy) often fails to increase adjustment away from provided anchors, a result that has led researchers to conclude that people do not effortfully adjust away from such anchors. We challenge this conclusion. First, we show that people are typically uncertain about which way to adjust from provided anchors and that this uncertainty often causes people to believe that the…
Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi
Across 7 experiments (N = 3,289), we replicate the procedure of Experiments 8 and 9 from Bem (2011), which had originally demonstrated retroactive facilitation of recall. We failed to replicate that finding. We further conduct a meta-analysis of all replication attempts of these experiments and find that the average effect size (d = 0.04) is no different from 0. We discuss some reasons for differences between the results in this article and those…
Preferences for Enhancement Pharmaceuticals: The Reluctance to Enhance Fundamental Traits
Four studies examined the willingness of young, healthy individuals to take drugs intended to enhance their own social, emotional, and cognitive traits. We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be more fundamental to self-identity (e.g., social comfort) than traits considered less fundamental to self-identity (e.g., concentration ability). Moral acceptability of a trait enhancement strongly predicted people's de…
Intuitive Biases in Choice versus Estimation: Implications for the Wisdom of Crowds
Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long ex…
Rejecting a bad option feels like choosing a good one
Across 4,151 participants, the authors demonstrate a novel framing effect, attribute matching, whereby matching a salient attribute of a decision frame with that of a decision's options facilitates decision-making. This attribute matching is shown to increase decision confidence and, ultimately, consensus estimates by increasing feelings of metacognitive ease. In Study 1, participants choosing the more attractive of two faces or rejecting the les…
Pay attention! Attention to the primes increases attitude assessment accuracy
Distinguishing the cognitive and behavioral consequences of attitude importance and certainty: A new approach to testing the common-factor hypothesis
Pay attention! Attention to the primes increases attitude assessment accuracy
Preferences for Enhancement Pharmaceuticals: The Reluctance to Enhance Fundamental Traits
Four studies examined the willingness of young, healthy individuals to take drugs intended to enhance their own social, emotional, and cognitive traits. We found that people were much more reluctant to enhance traits believed to be more fundamental to self-identity (e.g., social comfort) than traits considered less fundamental to self-identity (e.g., concentration ability). Moral acceptability of a trait enhancement strongly predicted people's de…
The effect of accuracy motivation on anchoring and adjustment: Do people adjust from provided anchors
Increasing accuracy motivation (e.g., by providing monetary incentives for accuracy) often fails to increase adjustment away from provided anchors, a result that has led researchers to conclude that people do not effortfully adjust away from such anchors. We challenge this conclusion. First, we show that people are typically uncertain about which way to adjust from provided anchors and that this uncertainty often causes people to believe that the…
False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant
In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists’ nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. We present computer simulations and …
Intuitive Biases in Choice versus Estimation: Implications for the Wisdom of Crowds
Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds’ judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds’ judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long ex…
A 21 Word Solution
Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi
Across 7 experiments (N = 3,289), we replicate the procedure of Experiments 8 and 9 from Bem (2011), which had originally demonstrated retroactive facilitation of recall. We failed to replicate that finding. We further conduct a meta-analysis of all replication attempts of these experiments and find that the average effect size (d = 0.04) is no different from 0. We discuss some reasons for differences between the results in this article and those…
Life after P-Hacking
Promoting Transparency in Social Science Research
Social scientists should adopt higher transparency standards to improve the quality and credibility of research.
P-curve: A key to the file-drawer.
Because scientists tend to report only studies (publication bias) or analyses (p-hacking) that "work," readers must ask, "Are these effects true, or do they merely reflect selective reporting?" We introduce p-curve as a way to answer this question. P-curve is the distribution of statistically significant p values for a set of studies (ps < .05). Because only true effects are expected to generate right-skewed p-curves-containing more low (.01s) th…
P -Curve and Effect Size: Correcting for Publication Bias Using Only Significant Results
Journals tend to publish only statistically significant evidence, creating a scientific record that markedly overstates the size of effects. We provide a new tool that corrects for this bias without requiring access to nonsignificant results. It capitalizes on the fact that the distribution of significant p values, p-curve, is a function of the true underlying effect. Researchers armed only with sample sizes and test results of the published find…
Rejecting a bad option feels like choosing a good one
Across 4,151 participants, the authors demonstrate a novel framing effect, attribute matching, whereby matching a salient attribute of a decision frame with that of a decision's options facilitates decision-making. This attribute matching is shown to increase decision confidence and, ultimately, consensus estimates by increasing feelings of metacognitive ease. In Study 1, participants choosing the more attractive of two faces or rejecting the les…
Overcoming Algorithm Aversion: People Will Use Imperfect Algorithms If They Can (Even Slightly) Modify Them
Although evidence-based algorithms consistently outperform human forecasters, people often fail to use them after learning that they are imperfect, a phenomenon known as algorithm aversion. In this paper, we present three studies investigating how to reduce algorithm aversion. In incentivized forecasting tasks, participants chose between using their own forecasts or those of an algorithm that was built by experts. Participants were considerably m…
Psychology's Renaissance
In 2010–2012, a few largely coincidental events led experimental psychologists to realize that their approach to collecting, analyzing, and reporting data made it too easy to publish false-positive findings. This sparked a period of methodological reflection that we review here and call Psychology's Renaissance. We begin by describing how psychologists’ concerns with publication bias shifted from worrying about file-drawered studies to worrying a…
Specification curve analysis
How Does Rating Specific Features of an Experience Alter Consumers' Overall Evaluations of That Experience
How does the way companies elicit ratings from consumers affect the ratings that they receive? In 10 pre-registered experiments, we find that consumers rate subpar experiences more positively overall when they are also asked to rate specific aspects of those experiences (e.g., a restaurant's food, service, and ambiance). Studies 1–4 established the basic effect across different scenarios and experiences. Study 5 found that the effect is limited t…
Why (and When) Are Uncertain Price Promotions More Effective Than Equivalent Sure Discounts
Past research suggests that offering customers a probabilistic promotion, such as an X% chance to get a product for free, is often more effective than providing a sure discount of equal expected value. In five studies (N = 8,969), we find that probabilistic price promotions are more effective than equivalent sure discounts only when those sure discounts are or seem trivial. Specifically, we find that probabilistic promotions are relatively more e…
Psychology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (5 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (5 works) · Meta-analysis and systematic reviews (5 works) · Statistics (5 works) · Cognition (4 works)