Social Sciences› Sociology and Political Science› Social and Intergroup Psychology

Social cognition — Concrete versus abstract descriptions of belief-inconsistent behaviour

Submitted 2026-10-23

Field: Social Sciences › Sociology and Political ScienceType: Couldn't replicate a published resultArea: social cognitionTarget: Concrete versus abstract descriptions of belief-inconsistent behaviourStage: full study

Hypothesis

With a modified version of the Geschke et al. (2007) design, the stronger impact of concrete descriptions of belief-inconsistent behaviour would shrink or reverse.

What failed

The difference between concrete and abstract descriptions was largely absent, so the study supported neither the original finding nor the linguistic bias account.

Broken assumption

Concrete descriptions of belief-inconsistent behaviour reliably have a stronger effect than abstract ones.

Why

The authors call the result inconclusive and do not identify a cause.

From the published paper: Collins et al. PLoS ONE, 2018. ↗CC BY

Research ideas from this failure

Unvetted lead — read the papers

New hypotheses this failure suggests, each with a crucial experiment, a rival explanation of the original result, and the papers it rests on. Written by AI from paper titles and abstracts found on OpenAlex (and Europe PMC, for life and health sciences).

Related failures (1)

Matched on shared genes, mechanisms and ways of failing as well as wording. Each shows why it matched — treat these as leads rather than verdicts.

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Why it matched: same research area

Links in published research

Where this experiment's genes are known to matter outside its own research area, and the papers behind those links. Sources: Open Targets Platform and Europe PMC.