Chris Hartgerink

Who they are

Cyberball is a deliberately trivial procedure. A participant plays a simple ball-tossing game online with two others who, after a few throws, stop passing to them. The others are not real. The exclusion lasts a couple of minutes and costs nothing. The reason the paradigm matters is that even this produces measurable distress, and the 2015 meta-analysis is what fixed how large and how general that effect is across the literature rather than within any one study.

The wider work is in meta-science and research integrity, which is the study of how research is conducted, reported and corrected rather than the study of any individual researcher. That distinction is worth keeping in view: findings in this field are statements about the state of a literature, and they are not accusations against the people whose papers make up that literature.

Key papers

Hartgerink, C. H. J., and colleagues (2015), meta-analysis of 120 Cyberball studies, PLOS ONE, 11,869 participants. The paper that established the size and the generality of the ostracism effect. Hartgerink is first author.

Key ideas

The ostracism effect is large and general. The 2015 meta-analysis is the best single statement of how large, pooled across 120 studies rather than argued from any one.

A trivial exclusion is enough. The paradigm works precisely because nothing is at stake, which is what makes the result about belonging rather than about loss.

Credit the first author. The paper is habitually attributed to its senior author, which is the same error this site tracks elsewhere.

Meta-science describes literatures, not individuals. Findings about reporting or integrity across a field are not claims about any particular researcher in it.

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