Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability.

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world.

a b s t r a c tIn emotion regulation (ER) research, participants are often trained to use specific strategies in response to emotionally evocative stimuli. Yet theoretical models suggest that people vary significantly in strategy use in everyday life. Which specific strategies people choose to use, and how many, may partially depend on contextual factors like the emotional intensity of the situation. It is thus possible -even likely -that participants spontaneously use uninstructed ER strategies in the laboratory, and that these uninstructed choices may depend on contextual factors like emotional intensity. We report data from four studies in which participants were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal to regulate their emotions in response to pictures, the emotional intensity of which varied across studies. After the picture trials, participants described which and how many strategies they used by way of open-ended responses. Results indicated that while a substantial proportion of participants in all studies described strategies consistent with cognitive reappraisal, a substantial proportion also endorsed uninstructed strategies. Importantly, they did so more often in the context of studies in which they viewed higher-intensity pictures. These findings underscore the importance of considering uninstructed ER choice in instructed paradigms and situational context in all studies of ER.

Emotional eating is defined as an increase in eating following negative emotion. Self-reported emotional eating has been associated with physical-health concerns. However, experimental studies indicate that negative-mood inductions do not reliably lead to increased eating in healthy eaters, not even among those with a high desire to eat when emotional. We argue that experimental studies will help us understand emotional eating only if they account for the following ideas: (a) Emotional eating may require that people learn to associate emotion with eating, (b) emotional eating may follow only specific discrete emotions, and (c) emotional eating may depend on social context. Each of these points suggests a fruitful direction for future research. Specifically, future studies must acknowledge, identify, and account for variations in the extent to which people have learned to associate emotions with eating; assess or elicit strong discrete emotions; and systematically examine the effect of social context on emotional eating.