Michigan State University
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2014 Jan;9(1):40-8. doi: 10.1177/1745691613513470.
Concerns have been raised recently about the replicability of behavioral priming effects, and calls have been issued to identify priming methodologies with effects that can be obtained in any context and with any population. I argue that such expectations are misguided and inconsistent with evolutionary understandings of the brain as a computational organ. Rather, we should expect priming effects to be highly sensitive to variations in experimental features and subject populations. Such variation does not make priming effects frivolous or capricious but instead can be predicted a priori. However, absent theories specifying the precise contingencies that lead to such variation, failures to replicate another researcher's findings will necessarily be ambiguous with respect to the inferences that can be made. Priming research is not yet at the stage where such theories exist, and therefore failures are uninformative at the current time. Ultimately, priming researchers themselves must provide direct replications of their own effects; researchers have been deficient in meeting this responsibility and have contributed to the current state of confusion. The recommendations issued in this article reflect concerns both with the practice of priming researchers and with the inappropriate expectations of researchers who have failed to replicate others' priming effects.
最近人们对行为启动效应的可复制性提出了担忧，并呼吁确定具有在任何环境和任何人群中都能获得的效果的启动方法。我认为，这种期望是有误导性的，不符合大脑作为计算器官的进化理解。相反，我们应该预期启动效应会对实验特征和被试群体的变化非常敏感。这种变化并不会使启动效应变得琐碎或反复无常，而是可以事先预测。然而，如果没有理论指定导致这种变化的确切条件，那么未能复制另一位研究人员的发现，对于可以得出的推论来说，必然是不明确的。启动研究还没有达到存在这种理论的阶段，因此目前的失败没有提供信息。最终，启动研究人员自己必须对自己的效应进行直接复制；研究人员在履行这一责任方面一直存在不足，并导致了目前的混乱状态。本文提出的建议既反映了启动研究人员的做法问题，也反映了未能复制他人启动效应的研究人员的不适当期望问题。
