Collaborative registered replication of Griskevicius et al. (2010): Can pro-environmental behavior be promoted by priming status motivation?
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: The present study presents the results of a collaborative registered replication of Griskevicius et al. (2010, Experiment 1). As part of the Collaborative Replication and Education Project, 24 student groups from six countries (N = 3,774) investigated whether pro-environmental behavior can be promoted by priming status motives (desires for social status and prestige). This large, multi-site replication showed no evidence to support the hypothesis that hypothetical pro-environmental behavior can be stimulated by having participants read a story designed to prime status motives. We performed several exploratory analyses to investigate whether extension variables (i.e., equating “green” choices with prosocial behavior, political beliefs, sampling methods, location, duration of data collection, and gender) moderated the hypothesized effect of status motives on pro-environmental choices, but these analyses produced null results. One limitation of the study is that most data collection sites did not include a manipulation check, and the one site that did found a much weaker effect (d = 0.32) than the extremely large effect originally reported (d = 3.78). As a result, it remains unclear whether the null result reflects a failure of this specific priming method or a challenge to the underlying theory. Key words: pro-environmental behavior; status motives; CREP; replication; meta-analysis
Authors: Ljiljana B. Lazarevic, Jordan Rose Wagge, Erin Michelle Buchanan, Busra Bahar Balci, Nathaniel R. Greene, Michal Folwarczny, Aleksandra Lazić, Stephen Charles Want, Seungyeon Lee, Megan Raddatz, Eric Hehman, Adriana Gentile, Marija Petrović, Paul De Luca, Andrew J. Kelly, Karine Talbot, Jessica Tobia, Lisa Chalik, Lily Tsoi, Joey Florence, Sophia Christin Weissgerber, Niklas Schouler, Laurianne Buron, Cody D Christopherson, Johanna Richter, Karina Senftner, Adam Pazda, Peter Allen, Francesca Kingston, Valdimar Sigurdsson, Jon E. Grahe
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4413824880