Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project (XRP) to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy (osf.io/dvkpr). Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studiesas represented in our samplesuccessfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward.

For scientific theories grounded in empirical data, replicability is a core principle, for at least two reasons. First, unless we accept to have scientific theories rest on the authority of a small number of researchers, empirical studies should be replicable, in the sense that its methods and procedure should be detailed enough for someone else to conduct the same study. Second, for empirical results to provide a solid foundation for scientific theorizing, they should also be replicable, in the sense that most attempts at replicating the original study that produced them would yield similar results. The XPhi Replicability Project is primarily concerned with replicability in the second sense, that is: the replicability of results. In the past year, several projects have shed doubt on the replicability of key findings in psychology, and most notably social psychology. Because the methods of experimental philosophy have often been close to the ones used in social psychology, it is only natural to wonder to which extent the results experimental philosophers ground their theory are replicable. The aim of the XPhi Replicability Project is precisely to reach a reliable estimate of the replicability of empirical results in experimental philosophy. To this end, several research teams across the world will replicate around 40 studies in experimental philosophy, some among the most cited, others drawn at random. The results of the project will be published in a special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology dedicated to the topic of replicability in cognitive science.The official website of the project can be found here :https://sites.google.com/site/thexphireplicabilityproject/homeThe project can also be followed on social medias:https://twitter.com/XPhiReplicationhttps://www.facebook.com/XPhiReplicabilityProject/

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What leads people to believe in conspiracy theories? In this paper, we explore the possibilitythat people might be drawn towards conspiracy theories because believing in them mightsatisfy certain existential needs and help people find meaning in their life. Through twostudies (N = 289 and 287 after exclusion), we found that participants higher in the need andsearch for meaning were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. This relationship wasnot moderated by participants’ feelings of control. We also found that believing in conspiracytheories was associated with more presence of meaning (Study 1), and more precisely with aheightened feeling of mattering in the grand scheme of things (Study 2). Additionally, wefound that participants were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories that left them moreagency and allowed them the possibility to make a difference. Overall, we argue that ourresults suggest that people might sometimes be drawn towards conspiracy theories becausethey allow them to feel as if they can make a difference and have a positive impact on theworld, and thus that conspiracy theories can be used as tools to satisfy existential needs.

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