Mark Rubin

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Verified

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• PhD, MSc
• Professor at Durham University

One justification for preregistering research hypotheses, methods, and analyses is that it improves the transparent evaluation of the severity of hypothesis tests. In this article, I consider two cases in which preregistration does not improve this evaluation. First, I argue that, although preregistration may facilitate the transparent evaluation o...

Popper's (1983, 2002) philosophy of science has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the wake of the replication crisis, offering a philosophical basis for the ensuing science reform movement. However, adherence to Popper's approach may also be at least partly responsible for the sense of "crisis" that has developed following multiple unexpected r...

The inflation of Type I error rates is thought to be one of the causes of the replication crisis. Questionable research practices such as p-hacking are thought to inflate Type I error rates above their nominal level, leading to unexpectedly high levels of false positives in the literature and, consequently, unexpectedly low replication rates. In th...

Metascientists have studied questionable research practices in science. The present article considers the parallel concept of questionable metascience practices (QMPs). A QMP is a research practice, assumption, or perspective that has been questioned by several commentators as being potentially problematic for metascience and/or the science reform...

Research on questionable research practices (QRPs) includes a growing body of work that questions whether they are as problematic as commonly assumed. This article provides a brief and selective review that considers some of this work. In particular, the review highlights work that questions the prevalence and impact of QRPs, including p-hacking, H...

The status-legitimacy hypothesis posits that low-status groups more strongly endorse social hierarchies and disadvantageous systems (i.e., engage in system justification), particularly under extreme societal inequality. Buchel et al. (2021) found supportive evidence for this hypothesis based on a 28-nation survey (N = 48,802). However, other large-...

I respond to Goeman’s (2022) review of my recent article: “When to adjust alpha during multiple testing: A consideration of disjunction, conjunction, and individual testing” (Rubin, 2021b). Goeman argues that I misdefine studywise error rates as only entailing weak error control. He argues that studywise error rates should entail strong error contr...

Preregistration has been proposed as a useful method for making a publicly verifiable distinction between confirmatory hypothesis tests, which involve planned tests of ante hoc hypotheses, and exploratory hypothesis tests, which involve unplanned tests of post hoc hypotheses. This distinction is thought to be important because it has been proposed...

Although the presence of mental health stigma associated with seeking help has been demonstrated in many parts of the world, this work has largely been from an independent perspective (i.e., “I will be perceived as crazy”) rather than from an interdependent perspective (i.e., “My family will be viewed negatively”). Interdependent stigma of seeking...

The benefits of positive intergroup contact for intergroup attitudes are well‐established. Yet individual and group self‐segregation practices demonstrate that opportunities for intergroup contact are not sufficient for contact uptake; and persistent institutionalized segregation reinforces and compounds this problem. Hence, we need to understand w...

There is evidence that people with multiple stigmatized identities sometimes experience psychological invisibility—perceivers show difficulty remembering information about these targets (e.g., their faces, spoken statements). In three experiments (total N = 397; within-subject design), we examined how North African gay men’s invisibility is impacte...

An important distinction to make when assessing the impact of social media use on mental health is whether the use is passive (e.g., browsing) or active (e.g., posting). Recent research suggests that the connection between passive social media use and mental ill-being is inconsistent, with some research finding a significant negative association, w...

The world is witnessing the highest level of displacement of people on record. Public discourse often uses labels to describe people on the move such as ‘migrants’, ‘asylum seekers’, or ‘refugees’ interchangeably. A preregistered study in nine countries (Australia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U...

This review considered experimental studies that used an intersectional framework in order to examine (1) how perceived relationship between the categories in a given intersection impacts the perception of its members and (2) how intersectional person perception has been studied through different cognitive processes. A systematic search in database...

Why do poorer and less educated Asians trust their institutions of governance more than their richer and well educated counterparts, despite their disadvantaged position within society? System justification theory (SJT) assumes that this trust is driven by a system-level motivation that operates independently from social identity needs. In two nati...

System justification theory (SJT) assumes that social identity theory (SIT) cannot fully account for system justification by members of low-status (disadvantaged) groups. Contrary to this claim, we provide several elaborations of SIT that explain when and why members of low-status groups show system justification independent from any separate syste...

This document supplements our reply to Jost et al.'s (2023) rejoinder to our initial article on the social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA; Rubin et al., 2023). We respond to issues that we did not address in our main reply. Specifically, we argue that: (1) like SIMSA, Tajfel (1981) considered general, non-ideological, psychological proce...

A substantial body of research indicates that higher education students from lower social class backgrounds tend to have poorer health than those from higher social class backgrounds. To investigate sleep as a potential mediator of this relationship, online survey responses of students from five large Australian universities, one Irish university a...

In this article, we reply to Jost et al. (Citation2023) rejoinder to our article reviewing evidence for the social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA; Rubin et al., Citation2023). We argue that (1) SIMSA treats system justification as the outcome of an interaction between general social psychological process and specific historical, politica...

Members of disadvantaged groups sometimes support societal systems that enable the very inequalities that disadvantaged them. Is it possible to explain this puzzling system-justifying orientation in terms of rational group-interested motives, without recourse to a separate system motive? The social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA) claims...

The Independent‐Interdependent Problem‐Solving Scale is based on Cross et al.'s conceptualisation of relational‐interdependent self‐construal. The IIPSS provides a relatively context‐free measure of people's tendencies to solve problems independently or with the help of others. Because previous investigations have not provided extensive evidence fo...

Around a third of fly‐in fly‐out (FIFO) workers in Australia experience relatively high levels of psychological distress. Although a wide range of associated workplace stressors have been proposed in this context, it is unclear to what extent FIFO workers perceive these stressors as having an impact on their mental health. Identifying the issues th...

Why do voters seek to change the political landscape or to retain it? System justification theory (SJT) proposes that a separate system motive to preserve the existing order drives support for the status-quo, and that this motivation operates independently from personal and collective interests. But how does this explanation apply to recent populis...

This paper outlines a multifaceted national workplace mental health research program that incorporated assessment of individual level, work characteristics and organisational factors on mental health among workers in the resources sector within Australia and internationally. This multistep program included: identification of level of mental health...

Kerr ([1998]) coined the term 'HARKing' to refer to the practice of 'hypothesizing after the results are known'. This questionable research practice has received increased attention in recent years because it is thought to have contributed to low replication rates in science. The present article discusses the concept of HARKing from a philosophical...

Despite social class being a burgeoning area of research in the higher education literature, there is no single comprehensive measure of social class in university student populations. Most previous research has included objective single-item measures (e.g., parent education or occupation) to assess social class and then sorted students into distin...

When reporting tests of significance, researchers might claim to have conducted a two‐sided test when in fact they have conducted two one‐sided tests. Mark Rubin explains the confusion and how to avoid it.

The present research aimed to investigate the relative effectiveness of three types of alcohol reduction intervention. Participants were 354 university students from an Australian university. After completing an initial survey, they were randomly assigned to either (a) follow national guidelines for alcohol consumption, (b) set their own personal a...

Scientists often adjust their significance threshold (alpha level) during null hypothesis significance testing in order to take into account multiple testing and multiple comparisons. This alpha adjustment has become particularly relevant in the context of the replication crisis in science. The present article considers the conditions in which this...

While considering the role of group-level factors as predictors of collective action, research has overlooked the role of group prototypes in determining willingness to engage in collective action. To begin to investigate this area, we conducted two correlational studies ( Ns = 141 and 98) in high schools examining the association between prototypi...

This study evaluated the dimensionality, invariance, and reliability of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale–21 (DASS-21) within and across Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, Romania, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United States (N = 2,580) in college student samples. We used confirmatory factor analyses to compare the fit of four diffe...

The World Health Disability Assessment Scale (WHODAS‐2.0) has widely been accepted as the standard measure of disability. However, psychometric testing is mostly performed in developed countries. This paper aims to assess the psychometric properties (reliability, validity) of the WHODAS‐2.0 among consumers of mental health services in Ghana. Two tr...

It has been established that people from lower social classes tend to have poorer mental well-being compared with people from higher classes. Research also suggests that people from the lower classes are also less socially integrated. This research investigated the role of social integration in the relationship between social class and mental well-...

The replication crisis has caused researchers to distinguish between exact replications, which duplicate all aspects of a study that could potentially affect the results, and direct replications, which duplicate only those aspects of the study that are thought to be theoretically essential to reproduce the original effect. The replication crisis ha...

This research draws from three distinct lines of research on the link between emotions and intergroup bias as springboard to integrative, new hypotheses. Past research suggests that emotions extrinsic to the outgroup (or "incidental"), and intrinsic to the outgroup (or "integral"), produce valence-congruent effects on intergroup bias when relevant...

There is a large body of research demonstrating that working-class students are less socially integrated than their middle-class peers at higher education institutions. The present research investigated the role that institution type may play in the relationship between social class and social integration. In particular, we investigated theories re...

Why do women support social and economic arrangements that disadvantage them? System justification theory (SJT) proposes that an autonomous system-level motive is responsible for this tendency, beyond any group-interested considerations (e.g. hope of future group advancement). The social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA) disputes the exist...

Previous research has found a positive association between social class and mental health among university students. Various mediators of this association have been proposed. However, the extent to which students perceive these mediators as having an impact on their mental health has not been investigated. It is important to investigate this issue...

Fisher (1945a, 1945b, 1955, 1956, 1960) criticised the Neyman-Pearson approach to hypothesis testing by arguing that it relies on the assumption of "repeated sampling from the same population." The present article considers the responses to this criticism provided by Pearson (1947) and Neyman (1977). Pearson interpreted alpha levels in relation to...

Preregistration entails researchers registering their planned research hypotheses, methods , and analyses in a time-stamped document before they undertake their data collection and analyses. This document is then made available with the published research report to allow readers to identify discrepancies between what the researchers originally plan...

Older students have reported a series of barriers to starting their higher education experience. However, quantitative evidence suggests that older students, particularly older women, have unique approaches to learning that enhance their satisfaction with their higher education studies. The current study sought to extend these findings by quantitat...

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower stat...

This integrative review aimed to identify and synthesize evidence on workplace stress and resilience in the Australian nursing workforce. A search of the published literature was conducted using EMBASE, MEDLINE, CINAHL (EBSCO), PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus. The search was limited to papers published in English from January 2008 to December...

The present study undertook an exploratory investigation of the causes of risk-taking among Australian coal miners. A range of safety culture and climate variables were measured in a survey of open-cut and underground coal miners from New South Wales and Queensland. A repeat survey of 233 of these miners was conducted an average of 10 months after...

Organizational factors are considered part of the broader human factors domain and have long been suspected to have a significant influence on individual and group behavior in the workplace, although there is little research on their influence in mining workplaces. This paper provides an update of a systematic literature review (SLR), reported acco...

University represents a pathway to upward social mobility for many working-class people. However, this distinctly middle-class environment also provides a number of unique social psychological challenges for working-class students. Working-class university students are often in the minority group at university, they are often the first in their fam...

University represents a pathway to upward social mobility for many working-class people. However, this distinctly middle-class environment also provides a number of unique social psychological challenges for working-class students. Working-class university students are often in the minority group at university, they are often the first in their fam...

Organizational factors have long been suspected to have the greatest influence on individual and group behavior in the workplace, although there is little research on their influence in mining workplaces. In addition, there is little research on the influence of organizational factors on residual risk management in the mining industry. Consequently...

The debate between the proponents of SIMSA and SJT does not pivot on whether system justification occurs – we all agree that system justification does occur. The issue is why it occurs? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) assumes that system justification is motivated by a special system justification motive. In contrast, the soc...

Online supplementary Appendix

Do the disadvantaged have an autonomous system justification motivation that operates against their personal and group interests? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) proposes that they do, and that this motivation helps to (a) reduce cognitive dissonance and associated uncertainties and (b) soothe the pain that is associated with...

The debate between the proponents of SIMSA and SJT does not pivot on whether system justification occurs – we all agree that system justification does occur. The issue is why it occurs? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) assumes that system justification is motivated by a special system justification motive. In contrast, the soc...

The present study investigated the mediating role of sense of belonging in the relations between workplace sexism and (a) mental health and (b) job satisfaction. Participants were 190 women from a large Australian trade union that represented mainly male-dominated jobs. They completed an online survey that contained measures of sexism, sense of bel...

Organizational factors are considered part of the broader human factors domain that links three aspects of industrial set-ups, namely, the job, the individual and the organization and how these impact on employee health and safety. The broader human factors domain in the context of sociotechnical systems has attracted a lot of research in the past...

Do the disadvantaged have an autonomous system justification motivation that operates against their personal and group interests? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) proposes that they do, and that this motivation helps to (a) reduce cognitive dissonance and associated uncertainties and (b) soothe the pain that is associated with...

Is support for societal systems amongst the disadvantaged driven by an (un)conscious system justification motive that is independent from self-interests? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) is unique in its affirmative answer to this question. SJT proposes (a) that support for societal systems operates in the service of maintaini...

Is support for societal systems amongst the disadvantaged driven by an (un)conscious system justification motive that is independent from self-interests? System justification theory (SJT) is unique in its affirmative answer to this question. SJT proposes (a) that support for societal systems operates in the service of maintaining the status quo, (b...

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that thoughts of death trigger a concern about self-annihilation that motivates the defense of cultural worldviews. In contrast, uncertainty theorists propose that thoughts of death trigger feelings of uncertainty that motivate worldview defense. University students (N = 414) completed measures of the chronic...

Past research is limited by a focus on intimacy in positive intergroup contact. This study tested whether intergroup intimacy counteracts or amplifies the detrimental effects of negative intergroup contact on outgroup attitudes. Participants from five Central European countries (N = 1,276) described their intergroup contact with, and attitudes towa...

System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) proposes that people have an inherent motive to support societal systems, even at the expense of their personal and group interests. However, the evidence for this system justification motive is mixed, and a close examination of the relevant propositions yields some important theoretical incons...

The present research investigated different types of social class identification as moderators of the negative relation between social class and mental health problems. Psychology undergraduates (N = 355) completed an online survey that included measures of social class, mental health and well-being, and three aspects of social class identification...

Gelman and Loken (2013, 2014) proposed that when researchers base their statistical analyses on the idiosyncratic characteristics of a specific sample (e.g., a nonlinear transformation of a variable because it is skewed), they open up alternative analysis paths in potential replications of their study that are based on different samples (i.e., no t...

Social network stigma refers to the perceived negative views about seeking help for mental health problems that are held by those closest to an individual, such as family and friends. This form of stigma predicts help-seeking attitudes and intentions beyond other forms of stigma, and is predominantly measured using the Perceptions of Stigmatization...

Hypothesizing after the results are known, or HARKing, occurs when researchers check their research results and then add or remove hypotheses on the basis of those results without acknowledging this process in their research report (Kerr, 1998). In the present article, I discuss 3 forms of HARKing: (a) using current results to construct post hoc hy...

This article (a) clarifies the arguments put forward in Rubin, M. (2017). Do p values lose their meaning in exploratory analyses? It depends how you define the familywise error rate. Review of General Psychology, 21, 269-275. doi: 10.1037/gpr0000123 and (b) provides a response to Robidoux, S. (2017). Do p values lose their meaning in exploratory an...

System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994) proposes that people have an inherent motive to support societal systems, even at the expense of their personal and group interests. However, the evidence for this system justification motive is mixed, and a close examination of the relevant propositions yields some important theoretical incons...

Several researchers have recently argued that p values lose their meaning in exploratory analyses due to an unknown inflation of the alpha level (e.g., Nosek & Lakens, 2014; Wagenmakers, 2016). For this argument to be tenable, the familywise error rate must be defined in relation to the number of hypotheses that are tested in the same study or arti...

Owuamalam, Weerabangsa, Karunagharan, and Rubin (2016) found that Malaysians associate people in low status group with anger more than their higher status counterparts: the hunchback heuristic. But is this belief accurate? Here, we propose the alternative possibility that members of low-status groups might deliberately suppress anger to counter thi...

An exploratory measure of multiple motives (EMMM) is presented. The EMMM enables researchers to make quick exploratory assessments of a relatively large number of general motives. It includes 14 single-item self-report measures that assess self-control, self-esteem, sensation-seeking, the need for acquisition, the need for affect, the need for cogn...

Constant decision-making underpins much of daily life, from simple perceptual decisions about navigation through to more complex decisions about important life events. At many scales, a fundamental task of the decision-maker is to balance competing needs for caution and urgency: fast decisions can be more efficient, but also more often wrong. We sh...

We examine predictors of outgroup partner “fit” (the extent to which an individual is seen as representative of a group), and whether fit determines generalization from a discrete intergroup communication experience to intentions for future contact with the outgroup. In an experiment, 288 undergraduate students imagined a conversation with an older...

The current study investigated the extent to which gender-based workplace issues were associated with women miners' mental health and job satisfaction. Participants were 263 women miners from Australian and other international mines sites owned by an Australian-based mining company. They completed an online survey that contained measures of gender-...

This research tested the potential for self-affirmation on left- and right-wing political values to increase behavioral intentions to provide help and assistance to refugees. We present a pilot study defining left- and right-wing values, and a main study in which participants completed either a self-affirmation task, a group-affirmation task, or pa...

Stigma is an important barrier to seeking psychological services worldwide. Two types of stigma exist: public stigma and self-stigma. Scholars have argued that public stigma leads to self-stigma, and then self-stigma is the primary predictor of attitudes toward seeking psychological services. However, this assertion is largely limited to U.S. sampl...

We examined a proposition based on social identity theory that socially creative appraisals of rejection can boost the well-being of strongly identifying ethnic migrants. First, we piloted this proposition amongst women (N = 80) and found that strong (but not weak) group identifiers who considered the positive views that society holds about their s...

The recent global recession revealed a huge social-class divide between the economic outcomes of the affluent and their less endowed counterparts. Although this divide has bred social unrest in some societies, in many others such disturbances have been absent. Two mainstream theories of intergroup relations offer competing propositions for this par...

Collectivism is a sociocultural variable that predicts how people relate to social groups. Cities are social groups. Hence, collectivism should predict how people relate to cities. To test this prediction, the researchers sampled 1660 residents of four cities in three countries. Participants completed an online survey containing measures of collect...

Working-class students tend to be less socially integrated at university than middle-class students (Rubin, 2012a). The present research investigated two potential reasons for this working-class social exclusion effect. First, working-class students may have fewer finances available to participate in social activities. Second, working-class student...

The Perceived Awareness of the Research Hypothesis (PARH) scale is a 4-item quantitative self-report method for measuring the potential influence of demand characteristics in research situations. It can be used to help to refute the idea that observed effects are due to demand characteristics. The present article describes the PARH scale and discus...

This brief commentary discusses the following paper: Bonnot, V., & Krauth‐Gruber, S. (2017). System‐justifying behaviors: When feeling dependent on a system triggers gender stereotype‐consistent academic performance. It is proposed that (1) manipulations of system dependency may also manipulate social identity salience, (2) measures of system depen...

The Perceived Awareness of the Research Hypothesis (PARH) scale is a 4-item quantitative self-report method for measuring the potential influence of demand characteristics in research situations. It can be used to help to refute the idea that observed effects are due to demand characteristics. The present article describes the PARH scale and discus...

This study examined the relationship between sexual content in music and sexual cognitions and risk among emerging adults in the USA and Australia. Music content was examined via lyrics, videos and social media. It was hypothesised that there would be a positive association between sexual content in music and sexual cognitions and risk. Sexual cont...

In a landmark 1994 publication in the British Journal of Social Psychology, Jost and Banaji proposed the existence of a novel, fundamental system justification motive that drives social behaviors. More specifically, they proposed (a) that people have an epistemic need to support social hierarchies and societal systems, (b) that this system justific...

Prior research has found that the higher one's perceived status in society, the better one's mental health and well-being. The present research used a longitudinal design to investigate whether social contact with friends mediated this relation between subjective social status and mental health and well-being among first-year undergraduate students...

Across societies, there is a tendency to associate members of low status groups with anger, and to associate members of high status groups with calm (i.e. the hunchback heuristic), but there is no empirical documentation for this phenomenon. Thus, in a pilot study (N = 30) we validated the stimuli that we generated to test the existence of a hunchb...

The present study explored the interactive effect of age and gender in predicting surface and deep learning approaches. It also investigated how these variables related to degree satisfaction. Participants were 983 undergraduate students at a large public Australian university. They completed a research survey either online or on paper. Consistent...

Loneliness is a public health concern that increases the risk for several health, behavioral and academic problems among adolescents. Some studies have suggested that adolescents with an ethnic minority background have a higher risk for loneliness than adolescents from the majority population. The increasing numbers of migrant youth around the worl...

On what basis do people form their social identities? To investigate this issue, the present research investigated cross-cultural differences in self-stereotyping, a key outcome of social identification. In particular, the research tested the hypothesis that in-group ties are a stronger predictor of self-stereotyping among people from individualist...

System justification theory (SJT) proposes that support for social inequality should be stronger among members of devalued groups than among members of higher status groups; that embracing the system in this way soothes anger and leads to a withdrawal of support for social change; and that these effects should occur when group interest is weak. We...

Social identity theory proposes that the need for self-esteem motivates group members to protect and enhance the positivity of their group. In this chapter, we explain this self-esteem hypothesis in detail and discuss its caveats and limitations. We also discuss recent work that proposes a dynamic relation between collective self-esteem and group-r...

We examined two strategies that people use in their social judgements—indifference and compensation. Given the average position of members of intermediate-status groups, we reasoned that an indifference strategy would characterise perceivers’ competence vs. warmth judgements of these people because they do not possess features that deviate from nor...

Utopian cities from social reform literature from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries were a serious attempt to improve living and working conditions of their time. Some of this literature included a design for a city that would be complimentary to and enhance the political philosophy of the respective authors. Four of the most famous works wh...