Inter-brain synchrony in teams predicts collective performance.

Despite decades of research in economics and psychology attempting to identify ingredients that make up successful teams, neuroscientists have only just begun to study how multiple brains interact. Recent research has shown that people's brain activity becomes synchronized with others' (inter-brain synchrony) during social engagement. However, little is known as to whether inter-brain synchrony relates to collective behavior within teams. Here, we merge the nascent field of group neuroscience with the extant literature of team dynamics and collective performance. We recruited 174 participants in groups of 4 and randomly assigned them to complete a series of problem-solving tasks either independently or as a team, while simultaneously recording each person's brain activity using an electroencephalography hyperscanning setup. This design allowed us to examine the relationship between group identification and inter-brain synchrony in explaining collective performance. As expected, teammates identified more strongly with one another, cooperated more on an economic game, and outperformed the average individual on most problem-solving tasks. Crucially, inter-brain synchrony, but not self-reported group identification, predicted collective performance among teams. These results suggest that inter-brain synchrony can be informative in understanding collective performance among teams where self-report measures may fail to capture behavior.

Is the Political Slant of Psychology Research Related to Scientific Replicability?

Social science researchers are predominantly liberal, and critics have argued this representation may reduce the robustness of research by embedding liberal values into the research process. In an adversarial collaboration, we examined whether the political slant of research findings in psychology is associated with lower rates of scientific replicability. We analyzed 194 original psychology articles reporting studies that had been subject to a later replication attempt (N = 1,331,413 participants across replications) by having psychology doctoral students (Study 1) and an online sample of U.S. residents (Study 2) from across the political spectrum code the political slant (liberal vs. conservative) of the original research abstracts. The methods and analyses were preregistered. In both studies, the liberal or conservative slant of the original research was not associated with whether the results were successfully replicated. The results remained consistent regardless of the ideology of the coder. Political slant was unrelated to both subsequent citation patterns and the original study's effect size and not consistently related to the original study's sample size. However, we found modest evidence that research with greater political slant-whether liberal or conservative-was less replicable, whereas statistical robustness consistently predicted replication success. We discuss the implications for social science, politics, and replicability.

Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results.

To what extent are research results influenced by subjective decisions that scientists make as they design studies? Fifteen research teams independently designed studies to answer five original research questions related to moral judgments, negotiations, and implicit cognition. Participants from 2 separate large samples (total N > 15,000) were then randomly assigned to complete 1 version of each study. Effect sizes varied dramatically across different sets of materials designed to test the same hypothesis: Materials from different teams rendered statistically significant effects in opposite directions for 4 of 5 hypotheses, with the narrowest range in estimates being d = -0.37 to + 0.26. Meta-analysis and a Bayesian perspective on the results revealed overall support for 2 hypotheses and a lack of support for 3 hypotheses. Overall, practically none of the variability in effect sizes was attributable to the skill of the research team in designing materials, whereas considerable variability was attributable to the hypothesis being tested. In a forecasting survey, predictions of other scientists were significantly correlated with study results, both across and within hypotheses. Crowdsourced testing of research hypotheses helps reveal the true consistency of empirical support for a scientific claim. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Identity leadership: Managing perceptions of conflict for collective action.

We argue that how players perceive the attack-defense game might matter far more than its actual underlying structure in determining the outcomes of intergroup conflict. Leaders can use various tactics to dynamically modify these perceptions, from collective victimization to the distortion of the perceived payoffs, with some followers being more receptive than others to such leadership tactics.

Empathic nonverbal behavior increases ratings of both warmth and competence in a medical context.

In medicine, it is critical that clinicians demonstrate both empathy (perceived as warmth) and competence. Perceptions of these qualities are often intuitive and are based on nonverbal behavior. Emphasizing both warmth and competence may prove problematic, however, because there is evidence that they are inversely related in other settings. We hypothesize that perceptions of physician competence will instead be positively correlated with perceptions of physician warmth and empathy, potentially due to changing conceptions of the physician's role. We test this hypothesis in an analog medical context using a large online sample, manipulating physician nonverbal behaviors suggested to communicate empathy (e.g. eye contact) and competence (the physician's white coat). Participants rated physicians displaying empathic nonverbal behavior as more empathic, warm, and more competent than physicians displaying unempathic nonverbal behavior, adjusting for mood. We found no warmth/competence tradeoff and, additionally, no significant effects of the white coat. Further, compared with male participants, female participants perceived physicians displaying unempathic nonverbal behavior as less empathic. Given the significant consequences of clinician empathy, it is important for clinicians to learn how nonverbal behavior contributes to perceptions of warmth, and use it as another tool to improve their patients' emotional and physical health.

Culture and nonverbal expressions of empathy in clinical settings: A systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of studies examining how culture mediates nonverbal expressions of empathy with the aim to improve clinician cross-cultural competency. METHODS: We searched three databases for studies of nonverbal expressions of empathy and communication in cross-cultural clinical settings, yielding 16,143 articles. We examined peer-reviewed, experimental or observational articles. Sixteen studies met inclusion criteria. RESULTS: Nonverbal expressions of empathy varied across cultural groups and impacted the quality of communication and care. Some nonverbal behaviors appeared universally desired and others, culturally specific. Findings revealed the impact of nonverbal communication on patient satisfaction, affective tone, information exchange, visit length, and expression decoding during cross-cultural clinical encounters. Racial discordance, patients' perception of physician racism, and physician implicit bias are among factors that appear to influence information exchange in clinical encounters. CONCLUSION: Culture-based norms impact expectations for specific nonverbal expressions within patient-clinician dyads. Nonverbal communication plays a significant role in fostering trusting provider-patient relationships, and is critical to high quality care. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Medical education should include training in interpretation of nonverbal behavior to optimize empathic cross-cultural communication and training efforts should accommodate norms of local patient populations. These efforts should reduce implicit biases in providers and perceived prejudice in patients.

Contextual sensitivity in scientific reproducibility.

In recent years, scientists have paid increasing attention to reproducibility. For example, the Reproducibility Project, a large-scale replication attempt of 100 studies published in top psychology journals found that only 39% could be unambiguously reproduced. There is a growing consensus among scientists that the lack of reproducibility in psychology and other fields stems from various methodological factors, including low statistical power, researcher's degrees of freedom, and an emphasis on publishing surprising positive results. However, there is a contentious debate about the extent to which failures to reproduce certain results might also reflect contextual differences (often termed "hidden moderators") between the original research and the replication attempt. Although psychologists have found extensive evidence that contextual factors alter behavior, some have argued that context is unlikely to influence the results of direct replications precisely because these studies use the same methods as those used in the original research. To help resolve this debate, we recoded the 100 original studies from the Reproducibility Project on the extent to which the research topic of each study was contextually sensitive. Results suggested that the contextual sensitivity of the research topic was associated with replication success, even after statistically adjusting for several methodological characteristics (e.g., statistical power, effect size). The association between contextual sensitivity and replication success did not differ across psychological subdisciplines. These results suggest that researchers, replicators, and consumers should be mindful of contextual factors that might influence a psychological process. We offer several guidelines for dealing with contextual sensitivity in reproducibility.