Department of Psychology, University of Otago.
Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2018 Mar;147(3):377-397. doi: 10.1037/xge0000367. Epub 2017 Oct 23.
Most psychological models are intended to describe processes that operate within each individual. In many research areas, however, models are tested by looking at results averaged across many individuals, despite the fact that such averaged results may give a misleading picture of what is true for each one. We consider this conundrum with respect to the interpretation of on-average null effects. Specifically, even though an experimental manipulation might have no effect on average across individuals, it might still have demonstrable effects-albeit in opposite directions-for many or all of the individuals tested. We discuss several examples of research questions for which it would be theoretically crucial to determine whether manipulations really have no effect at the individual level, and we present a method of testing for individual-level effects. (PsycINFO Database Record
大多数心理模型旨在描述个体内部的运作过程。然而，在许多研究领域，尽管平均结果可能会对每个人的真实情况产生误导，但模型是通过查看跨多个个体的平均结果来进行测试的。我们考虑了这种平均零效应解释的难题。具体来说，即使实验操作对个体平均没有影响，它仍然可能对许多或所有接受测试的个体产生可证明的影响，尽管方向相反。我们讨论了几个研究问题的例子，对于这些问题，确定操作是否在个体水平上真的没有影响在理论上至关重要，我们还提出了一种测试个体水平影响的方法。
