You Could Have Just Asked: Reply to Francis (2012)

In an earlier article (Galak & Meyvis, 2011), we reported eight studies that demonstrate people's tendency to remember unpleasant experiences as more aversive when they think they will experience them again. Based on a test that, ironically, suffers from publication bias, Francis (2012) estimated that there is a high probability that we obtained at least one unsuccessful study that was left in the file drawer. He then argues that, because of this, our findings should be discounted. We propose that, instead of engaging in a statistical fishing expedition, Francis should have simply asked us for our file drawer. If he had done so, he would have quickly realized that a meta-analysis of all our studies (both published and unpublished) shows that the effect we reported is highly reliable. We suggest that when the answer is out there, it makes more sense to ask for it than to estimate it.