ArticlePsychology, public policy, and law : an official law review of the University of Arizona College of Law and the University of Miami School of Law2025
Four (and a Half) Preregistered Failures to Replicate the Weapon Focus Effect in Online Samples.
Article in Psychology, public policy, and law : an official law review of the University of Arizona College of Law and the University of Miami School of Law, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Four (and a Half) Preregistered Failures to Replicate the Weapon Focus Effect in Online Samples.Psychology, public policy, and law : an official law review of the University of Arizona College of Law and the University of Miami School of Law · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Prior research suggests that witnesses have worse memory for armed compared to unarmed perpetrators, a finding known as the Weapon Focus Effect (WFE). Because many legal professionals and eyewitness experts believe that the presence of a weapon has harmful effects on witness memory, determining the generality of this effect is of great importance. Initially, the current investigation was concerned with identifying moderators of the WFE. However, because we were unable to replicate the WFE, subsequent experiments focused on investigating the effect's replicability in the context of online samples. In total, we conducted five pre-registered experiments ranging from 100 to 800 participants each (
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.