Registered Replication Report: Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998).

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Replication Science

Background:

• The "professor" priming study by Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) suggested category-based priming influences cognitive performance.
• Previous replications indicated smaller effects and a potential gender difference, with men showing the effect and women not.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a large-scale, multi-laboratory direct replication of the "professor" vs. "soccer hooligan" priming study.
• To investigate whether priming influences general-knowledge trivia task performance.
• To examine potential gender moderation of the priming effect.

Main Methods:

• A multi-laboratory Registered Replication Report involving 40 laboratories, with data from 23 meeting inclusion criteria (N = 4,493).
• Participants were primed with either the "professor" (intelligence-associated) or "soccer hooligan" (lack of intelligence-associated) category.
• Performance was assessed using a 30-item general-knowledge trivia task.

Main Results:

• No significant overall difference in trivia performance was found between the "professor" and "soccer hooligan" priming conditions (0.14% effect size).
• Meta-analytic results indicated no moderation of the priming effect by gender.
• Supplementary analyses of all 40 labs (N = 6,454) also yielded non-significant findings.

Conclusions:

• The robust effect of "professor" priming on trivia performance reported by Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) was not replicated in this large-scale, multi-laboratory study.
• The findings suggest that subtle category priming may have limited or no impact on general-knowledge performance.
• This registered replication provides important evidence regarding the reproducibility of priming effects in social psychology.