Registered Reports

Authors who wish to publish their work with us have the option of a registered report. With this format, acceptance in principle happens before the research outcomes are known. As a result, publication bias is neutralized, as are incentives for practices that undermine the validity of scientific research.

As adoption of registered reports is growing, two pieces in this issue take stock, providing recommendations and outlining next steps. We complement these pieces with practical advice on how to prepare a successful stage 1 submission.

The publication of our first two Registered Reports marks a major milestone for Nature Human Behaviour. These studies demonstrate what many researchers know, but is often hidden from the published literature: confirmatory research doesn’t always confirm the authors’ hypotheses.

Registered Reports were introduced a decade ago as a means for improving the rigour and credibility of confirmatory research. Chambers and Tzavella overview the format’s past, its current status and future developments.

Registered reports present a substantial departure from traditional publishing models with the goal of enhancing the transparency and credibility of the scientific literature. We map the evolving universe of registered reports to assess their growth, implementation and shortcomings at journals across scientific disciplines.

In 11,407 children, Baldwin et al. report gene–environment correlations between polygenic scores for psychiatric disorders and adverse childhood experiences, as well as partial genetic confounding of associations between adverse childhood experiences and mental health.

In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Coles et al. present the results of a multicentre global adversarial collaboration on the facial feedback hypothesis.

Including participants from 45 countries, Bago et al. find that the situational factors that affect moral reasoning are shared across countries, with diminished observed cultural variation.

In a Registered Report, Altay et al. find that learning about the scientific consensus on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) reduces the gap between public opinion and scientists. This gap is also narrowed, to a greater extent, by reading counterarguments to anti-GMO arguments in a chatbot or in a list.

This Registered Report presents evidence from 87 countries and regions showing that brief emotion-regulation interventions consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a pandemic, trust in leaders is affected by how they resolve moral dilemmas. Across 22 countries, leaders’ endorsement of instrumental harm reduced public trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence increased trust.

Jones et al. examine the generalizability of the valence–dominance model of social judgements of faces in 41 countries across 11 world regions. They find evidence of both generalizability and variation, depending on the analytical method.

In this Registered Report, Isler et al. test whether religious cooperation is intuitively parochial. They find evidence of religious parochialism but not intuitive cooperation. Exploratory analyses suggest that deliberation tends to promote cooperation in general.

In a Registered Report, Eldar et al. measure pupillary responses in six different tasks to adjudicate between two accounts of biases in decision-making: do biases reflect a lack of effort and deliberation or do they arise from gradual information integration?

In a Registered Report, Horne et al. report a sham-controlled, 5-day tDCS intervention paired with cognitive training, and found evidence against tDCS-induced training enhancement or transfer to untrained tasks.

An influential 2005 study by Kosfeld et al. suggested that oxytocin increases trust in strangers. This registered replication study by some of the original authors found no effect of oxytocin on trusting behaviour under the same conditions.

In this Registered Report, Berens et al. demonstrate that forgetting predominantly involves losses in memory accessibility with little or no change in memory precision.

Whether testosterone changes responses in moral dilemmas is a long-standing question. In a Registered Report, Brannon and colleagues show that unexpectedly, exogenous testosterone increased sensitivity to norms in moral dilemmas.

Are people who know their own abilities better psychologically adjusted than people holding inaccurate views? This Registered Report by He and Côté finds no evidence of strong associations, calling this longstanding proposal into question.

Soderberg et al. asked scientists to peer review registered reports and standard articles post-publication, after information explicitly identifying the article type had been removed. Registered reports scored higher on some dimensions, including quality and rigour.