title: The burden of secrecy? No effect on hill slant estimation and beanbag throwing.
abstract: Slepian, Masicampo, Toosi, and Ambady (2012, Experiment 1) reported that participants who recalled a big secret estimated a hill as steeper than participants who recalled a small secret. This finding was interpreted as evidence that secrets are experienced as physical burdens. In 2 experiments, we tried to replicate this finding, but, despite larger power, did not find a difference in slant estimates between participants who recalled a big secret and those who recalled a small secret. This finding was further corroborated by a meta-analysis that included 8 published data sets of exact replications, which indicates that thinking of a big secret does not affect hill slant estimation. In a third experiment, we also failed to replicate the effect of recalling a secret on throwing a beanbag at a target (Slepian et al., 2012, Experiment 2). Together, our findings question the robustness of the original empirical findings.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department.
authors.forename: Diane
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pecher
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department.
authors.forename: Heleen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: van Mierlo
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam.
authors.forename: Rouwen
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cañal-Bruland
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zeelenberg
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D003219:Confidentiality; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D055815:Young Adult