Registered Replication Report: Strack, Martin, & Stepper
Seventeen laboratories ran direct replications, to one pre-registered protocol, of the first study in Strack, Martin and Stepper's 1988 test of the facial feedback hypothesis, in which people rated cartoons as funnier while holding a pen in the teeth, which forces a smile, than while holding it in the lips. Pooled, the rating difference was 0.03 units, with a 95 per cent confidence interval from minus 0.11 to 0.16. The original study had reported a difference of 0.82 units on a ten-point scale.
Seventeen laboratories ran direct replications, to one pre-registered protocol, of the first study in Strack, Martin and Stepper's 1988 test of the facial feedback hypothesis, in which people rated cartoons as funnier while holding a pen in the teeth, which forces a smile, than while holding it in the lips. Pooled, the rating difference was 0.03 units, with a 95 per cent confidence interval from minus 0.11 to 0.16. The original study had reported a difference of 0.82 units on a ten-point scale.
Written from the crossref abstract record, read 2026-10-23.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
(1988).' Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), 917-928. doi:10.1177/1745691616674458. Read at the level of the abstract.