Registered Replication Report: Rand, Greene, and Nowak (2012)

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Social Psychology
• Experimental Economics

Background:

• The social heuristics hypothesis suggests time pressure promotes cooperation.
• Previous studies on time pressure and cooperation have yielded mixed results.
• Replication attempts have shown inconsistent findings regarding time pressure's effect on cooperation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the reliability of the effect of time pressure on cooperative decisions.
• To investigate the size and variability of time pressure's influence on cooperation.
• To conduct a Registered Replication Report (RRR) of critical conditions from Rand et al. (2012).

Main Methods:

• Combined data from 21 preregistered replications of a specific economic game condition.
• Employed an intent-to-treat analysis including all assigned participants.
• Conducted a compliant-only analysis mirroring the original study's methodology.

Main Results:

• The intent-to-treat analysis showed a negligible difference (-0.37 percentage points) in contributions under time pressure.
• The compliant-only analysis yielded a smaller difference (10.37 percentage points) compared to the original study (15.31 percentage points).
• Observed differences between original and replication data suggest potential selection biases.

Conclusions:

• The findings do not support a causal effect of time pressure on increasing cooperation.
• Selection biases may explain the results observed in the original study.
• The reliability of time pressure as a determinant of cooperative behavior is questionable.