An Excess of Positive Results: Comparing the Standard Psychology Literature With Registered Reports

Selectively publishing results that support the tested hypotheses (“positive” results) distorts available evidence for scientific claims. For past decade, psychological scientists have been increasingly concerned about degree of such distortion in their literature. A new publication format has developed to prevent selective reporting: In Registered Reports (RRs), peer review and decision publish take place before are known. We compared published RRs ( N = 71 as November 2018) with a random sample hypothesis-testing studies from standard literature 152) psychology. Analyzing first hypothesis each article, we found 96% positive reports but only 44% RRs. discuss possible explanations this large difference suggest plausible factor is reduction bias and/or Type I error inflation RR