Balazs Aczel
Biographic Data
| ID | 1751950 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Balazs Aczel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Balazs |
| FAMILY NAME | Aczel |
| SIGNATURE | ACZEL B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Eötvös Loránd University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9364-4988 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Sociosexual orientation, life history strategy, and reproductive success: A large-scale cross-cultural analysis across 92 contemporary societies
Investigating object orientation effects across 18 languages
Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of objects mentioned in sentences. Mental representation is often measured with the sentence-picture verification task, wherein participants first read a sentence that implies the object property (i.e., shape and orientation). Participants then respond to an image of an object by indicating whether it was an object from the sentenc…
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries: Global Evidence on How People Encounter and Engage with Information about Science
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
Why I declare a conflict of interest and you should not
Academic publishing is both an indication of scientific contribution and a currency for career advancement. This dual role gives rise to a normative scientific conflict: Does the structural incentive to publish constitute a conflict of interest (COI) that ought to be disclosed? In this paper, we address this conflict through an action research approach, engaging collaboratively and reflexively to answer four related questions: (1) What evidence s…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
Introducing synchronous robustness reports
Exploring Attitudes Toward “Sugar Relationships” Across 87 Countries: A Global Perspective on Exchanges of Resources for Sex and Companionship
The current study investigates attitudes toward one form of sex for resources: the so-called sugar relationships, which often involve exchanges of resources for sex and/or companionship. The present study examined associations among attitudes toward sugar relationships and relevant variables (e.g., sex, sociosexuality, gender inequality, parasitic exposure) in 69,924 participants across 87 countries. Two self-report measures of Acceptance of Suga…
(In)Alienable Worth? Cultural Logics of Dignity, Honor, and Face and their Links to Prosociality Across the World
Cultural logic is a set of cultural scripts and patterns organized around a central theme. The cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face describe different ways of evaluating a person’s worth and maintaining cooperation. These cultural logics vary in prevalence across cultures. In this study, we collaboratively develop and validate a measure capturing these cultural logics, which will allow us to map world cultures based on the prevalence of th…
Phasic affective signals by themselves do not regulate cognitive control
Cognitive control is a set of mechanisms that help us process conflicting stimuli and maintain goal-relevant behaviour. According to the Affective Signalling Hypothesis, conflicting stimuli are aversive and thus elicit (negative) affect, moreover - to avoid aversive signals - affective and cognitive systems work together by increasing control and thus, drive conflict adaptation. Several studies have found that affective stimuli can indeed modulat…
Extending the Choice Architecture Toolbox: The Choice Context Exploration
The importance of context in behavioral interventions is undeniable, yet few intervention studies begin with a systematic investigation of the contextual factors that influence the behavior in question. This is largely due to the lack of a reliable method for doing so. In recognition of this gap in the field, we have developed a procedure called the Choice Context Exploration that uses machine learning tools to examine the contextual factors that…
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
Why we need a 'psychology of science
Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration
A community-sourced glossary of open scholarship terms
Open scholarship has transformed research, and introduced a host of new terms in the lexicon of researchers. The ‘Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Teaching’ (FORRT) community presents a crowdsourced glossary of open scholarship terms to facilitate education and effective communication between experts and newcomers
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof an…
Seven steps toward more transparency in statistical practice
Here, to promote such a practice, we recommend seven concrete statistical procedures: (1) visualizing data; (2) quantifying inferential uncertainty; (3) assessing data preprocessing choices; (4) reporting multiple models; (5) involving multiple analysts; (6) interpreting results modestly; and (7) sharing data and code. We discuss their benefits and limitations, and provide guidelines for adoption. Each of the seven procedures finds inspiration in…
Uncanny but not confusing: Multisite study of perceptual category confusion in the Uncanny Valley
Android robots that resemble humans closely, but not perfectly, can provoke negative feelings of dislike and eeriness in humans (the “Uncanny Valley” effect). We investigated whether category confusion between the perceptual categories of “robot” and “human” contributes to Uncanny Valley aversion. Using a novel, validated corpus of 182 images of real robot and human faces, we precisely estimated the shape of the Uncanny Valley and the location of…
Discussion points for Bayesian inference
A consensus-based transparency checklist
We present a consensus-based checklist to improve and document the transparency of research reports in social and behavioural research. An accompanying online application allows users to complete the form and generate a report that they can submit with their manuscript or post to a public repository
Author Correction: A consensus-based transparency checklist
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper
The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution t…
A Systematic Scoping Review of the Choice Architecture Movement: Toward Understanding When and Why Nudges Work
In this paper, we provide a domain‐general scoping review of the nudge movement by reviewing 422 choice architecture interventions in 156 empirical studies. We report the distribution of the studies across countries, years, domains, subdomains of applicability, intervention types, and the moderators associated with each intervention category to review the current state of the nudge movement. Furthermore, we highlight certain characteristics of th…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
A community-sourced glossary of open scholarship terms
Open scholarship has transformed research, and introduced a host of new terms in the lexicon of researchers. The ‘Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Teaching’ (FORRT) community presents a crowdsourced glossary of open scholarship terms to facilitate education and effective communication between experts and newcomers
A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof an…
A consensus-based transparency checklist
We present a consensus-based checklist to improve and document the transparency of research reports in social and behavioural research. An accompanying online application allows users to complete the form and generate a report that they can submit with their manuscript or post to a public repository
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Discussion points for Bayesian inference
Seven steps toward more transparency in statistical practice
Here, to promote such a practice, we recommend seven concrete statistical procedures: (1) visualizing data; (2) quantifying inferential uncertainty; (3) assessing data preprocessing choices; (4) reporting multiple models; (5) involving multiple analysts; (6) interpreting results modestly; and (7) sharing data and code. We discuss their benefits and limitations, and provide guidelines for adoption. Each of the seven procedures finds inspiration in…
The Effect of Transparency on Framing Effects in Within‐Subject Designs
A long‐lasting assumption about the framing effect is that if the participants discover the purpose of the experiment in a within‐subject design, then this test transparency would trigger them to override their initial answer and make coherent choices. For this reason, researchers try to mask the connection between the two parts of the test by inserting filling questions or a time delay between the two parts of the test. In this research, we expl…
A Systematic Scoping Review of the Choice Architecture Movement: Toward Understanding When and Why Nudges Work
In this paper, we provide a domain‐general scoping review of the nudge movement by reviewing 422 choice architecture interventions in 156 empirical studies. We report the distribution of the studies across countries, years, domains, subdomains of applicability, intervention types, and the moderators associated with each intervention category to review the current state of the nudge movement. Furthermore, we highlight certain characteristics of th…
The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution t…
A consensus-based transparency checklist
We present a consensus-based checklist to improve and document the transparency of research reports in social and behavioural research. An accompanying online application allows users to complete the form and generate a report that they can submit with their manuscript or post to a public repository
Author Correction: A consensus-based transparency checklist
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper
Uncanny but not confusing: Multisite study of perceptual category confusion in the Uncanny Valley
Android robots that resemble humans closely, but not perfectly, can provoke negative feelings of dislike and eeriness in humans (the “Uncanny Valley” effect). We investigated whether category confusion between the perceptual categories of “robot” and “human” contributes to Uncanny Valley aversion. Using a novel, validated corpus of 182 images of real robot and human faces, we precisely estimated the shape of the Uncanny Valley and the location of…
Discussion points for Bayesian inference
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof an…
Seven steps toward more transparency in statistical practice
Here, to promote such a practice, we recommend seven concrete statistical procedures: (1) visualizing data; (2) quantifying inferential uncertainty; (3) assessing data preprocessing choices; (4) reporting multiple models; (5) involving multiple analysts; (6) interpreting results modestly; and (7) sharing data and code. We discuss their benefits and limitations, and provide guidelines for adoption. Each of the seven procedures finds inspiration in…
Author Correction: A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration
A community-sourced glossary of open scholarship terms
Open scholarship has transformed research, and introduced a host of new terms in the lexicon of researchers. The ‘Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Teaching’ (FORRT) community presents a crowdsourced glossary of open scholarship terms to facilitate education and effective communication between experts and newcomers
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Phasic affective signals by themselves do not regulate cognitive control
Cognitive control is a set of mechanisms that help us process conflicting stimuli and maintain goal-relevant behaviour. According to the Affective Signalling Hypothesis, conflicting stimuli are aversive and thus elicit (negative) affect, moreover - to avoid aversive signals - affective and cognitive systems work together by increasing control and thus, drive conflict adaptation. Several studies have found that affective stimuli can indeed modulat…
Extending the Choice Architecture Toolbox: The Choice Context Exploration
The importance of context in behavioral interventions is undeniable, yet few intervention studies begin with a systematic investigation of the contextual factors that influence the behavior in question. This is largely due to the lack of a reliable method for doing so. In recognition of this gap in the field, we have developed a procedure called the Choice Context Exploration that uses machine learning tools to examine the contextual factors that…
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
Why we need a 'psychology of science
Exploring Attitudes Toward “Sugar Relationships” Across 87 Countries: A Global Perspective on Exchanges of Resources for Sex and Companionship
The current study investigates attitudes toward one form of sex for resources: the so-called sugar relationships, which often involve exchanges of resources for sex and/or companionship. The present study examined associations among attitudes toward sugar relationships and relevant variables (e.g., sex, sociosexuality, gender inequality, parasitic exposure) in 69,924 participants across 87 countries. Two self-report measures of Acceptance of Suga…
(In)Alienable Worth? Cultural Logics of Dignity, Honor, and Face and their Links to Prosociality Across the World
Cultural logic is a set of cultural scripts and patterns organized around a central theme. The cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face describe different ways of evaluating a person’s worth and maintaining cooperation. These cultural logics vary in prevalence across cultures. In this study, we collaboratively develop and validate a measure capturing these cultural logics, which will allow us to map world cultures based on the prevalence of th…
Investigating object orientation effects across 18 languages
Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of objects mentioned in sentences. Mental representation is often measured with the sentence-picture verification task, wherein participants first read a sentence that implies the object property (i.e., shape and orientation). Participants then respond to an image of an object by indicating whether it was an object from the sentenc…
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries: Global Evidence on How People Encounter and Engage with Information about Science
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
Why I declare a conflict of interest and you should not
Academic publishing is both an indication of scientific contribution and a currency for career advancement. This dual role gives rise to a normative scientific conflict: Does the structural incentive to publish constitute a conflict of interest (COI) that ought to be disclosed? In this paper, we address this conflict through an action research approach, engaging collaboratively and reflexively to answer four related questions: (1) What evidence s…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
Psychology (18 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Cognitive psychology (8 works) · Data science (5 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Applied Psychology (3 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works)