Christopher Chabris
Christopher Chabris is a psychologist at Geisinger Health System, co-author of the invisible gorilla experiment, and first author of the double-blind field replications that found nothing where the warm-cup study had found an effect. Originals at 41 and 53 participants reported r = .28 and .31. The replications, at 128 and 177, found r = -.03 and .02.
Who they are
Chabris is best known for work he did as a graduate student with Daniel Simons on inattentional blindness, the experiment in which roughly half of viewers counting basketball passes fail to notice a person in a gorilla suit walking through the scene. That finding has replicated comfortably, which is worth saying in a page otherwise about things that did not.
His warm-cup replications, published in 2019 with Patrick Heck, Jaclyn Mandart, Daniel Benjamin and Simons, were designed to remove the obvious objections in advance. They were run in the field rather than in a laboratory, they were double-blind, and they used roughly three times the original samples. Bayesian analysis substantially favoured the null in both.
The paper appeared alongside a reply from Bargh and Melnikoff in the same issue, which is the right way for a dispute like this to be published.
Two corrections this site carries because they are commonly muddled. The Many Labs 3 warmth-priming null, d = .01 across 3,119 participants, replicated a different study by Szymkow and colleagues, not Williams and Bargh, and attributing it to the warm cup overstates the record. And the 2014 multi-lab replication by Dermot Lynott and colleagues, total N = 861 across three labs, was a preregistered replication published in a Social Psychology special issue, not a formal Registered Replication Report.
Chabris also works on cognitive ability, collective intelligence and behaviour genetics, and co-wrote The Invisible Gorilla with Simons.
Key papers
Key papers
Chabris, C. F., and colleagues (2019). Double-blind field replications of the warm-cup study, with 128 and 177 participants against originals of 41 and 53. The correlations found were minus 0.03 and 0.02. Chabris is first author.
Simons, D. J., and colleagues (2016), "Do brain-training programs work?", Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The exhaustive review whose verdict is that evidence of benefit beyond the trained exercises is inadequate. Daniel Simons is first author and is credited first here; Chabris is sixth author.
Chabris, C. F., & Simons, D. J., The Invisible Gorilla. The trade book the same pair wrote on the limits of attention and intuition.
Key ideas
Double-blind, in the field, at three times the sample. The replication was designed so that the standard objections could not be raised afterwards.
Publish the reply alongside. The original authors' response ran in the same issue.
Keep the record straight. Not every warmth-priming null is a test of the warm cup.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Chabris, C. F., Heck, P. R., Mandart, J., Benjamin, D. J., & Simons, D. J. (2019). Social Psychology, 50(2), 127-132.
- Lynott, D., Corker, K. S., Wortman, J., et al. (2014). Social Psychology, 45(3), 216-222.
- Williams, L. E., & Bargh, J. A. (2008). Science, 322(5901), 606-607.