HLTH 8247 Week 10 Replication Appraisal Example

Replication Appraisal: A Charge Nurse Leadership Program Built on Ego Depletion and Power Posing, Checked Against What Large Replications Have Since Found, and What the Curriculum Can Still Stand On

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 8247: Social Psychology

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Replication Appraisal: A Charge Nurse Leadership Program Built on Ego Depletion and Power Posing, Checked Against What Large Replications Have Since Found, and What the Curriculum Can Still Stand On

The Program

A hospital invented for this appraisal runs a leadership course for new charge nurses. Two of its sessions rest on well-known social psychology findings. The first teaches that self-control is a limited resource: after a demanding stretch of decisions, willpower runs low, so charge nurses should schedule difficult conversations early in the shift and protect their energy. The second teaches power posing: standing in an expansive posture for two minutes before a difficult meeting raises confidence and changes stress hormones, so charge nurses should try it before speaking up to physicians or managers. The appraisal checks both claims against the replication evidence.

The Replication Context

In 2015, the Open Science Collaboration reported attempts to replicate 100 studies published in three psychology journals. Nearly all of the originals, 97%, had reported significant results; only 36% of the repeat attempts reached significance, and the repeated effects averaged roughly half the original size (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). The project did not show that any particular finding was false, and replication can fail for many reasons, including differences in samples or procedures. But it showed that a single published study, even a famous one, is weaker evidence than it appears, and that findings used in training should be checked against later work.

Claim 1: Ego Depletion

The ego depletion idea comes from experiments such as the studies of Baumeister et al. (1998), in which participants who first resisted a tempting food, or completed another effortful task, persisted less on a later puzzle. The model treats self-control as drawing on a limited resource that becomes depleted. Many studies followed, and an early meta-analysis reported a medium-sized effect. But a multilab preregistered replication, conducted across 23 laboratories with more than 2,000 participants using a standardized procedure, found an effect close to zero (Hagger et al., 2016). The debate continues, and some researchers argue the standardized task was not a strong test. For a training program, the safe conclusion is that the evidence for a general depletion effect is much weaker than the original studies suggested.

Claim 2: Power Posing

Carney et al. (2010) reported that people who held expansive postures for a few minutes showed higher testosterone, lower cortisol and more risk-taking than those who held constricted postures. The finding spread widely through a popular talk. A replication with a much larger sample found no effect on hormones or on risk-taking, although participants did report feeling somewhat more powerful (Ranehill et al., 2015). The hormonal claim, which the program uses to explain why posing works, has not held up.

What the Curriculum Can Still Stand On

Removing these claims does not empty the sessions. The practical advice in the first session, to schedule hard conversations when the charge nurse is less rushed and to build breaks into long shifts, can be justified by ordinary workload and fatigue considerations without the depletion model. The second session's goal, helping new charge nurses feel ready to raise concerns, is better served by preparation and rehearsal: writing the key point in one sentence, practicing it with a colleague and knowing the escalation route. These rest on skills training, which does not depend on a contested finding.

The course could also teach the replication story itself. Charge nurses read evidence-based practice guidance and hear claims about what works. Learning that famous findings can fail to replicate, and how to tell a single study from a body of evidence, is a durable leadership skill.

Should the Overall Replication Rate Be Cited?

The 36% figure is widely quoted, but it applies to one sample of studies from three journals in one year. It should be cited as such, not as a rate for all of psychology, and paired with the specific replication evidence for each claim the program uses.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252-1265. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252

Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. J. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363-1368. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610383437

Hagger, M. S., Chatzisarantis, N. L. D., Alberts, H., Anggono, C. O., Batailler, C., Birt, A. R., Brand, R., Brandt, M. J., Brewer, G., Bruyneel, S., Calvillo, D. P., Campbell, W. K., Cannon, P. R., Carlucci, M., Carruth, N. P., Cheung, T., Crowell, A., De Ridder, D. T. D., Dewitte, S., ... Zwienenberg, M. (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546-573. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616652873

Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251), Article aac4716. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716

Ranehill, E., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Leiberg, S., Sul, S., & Weber, R. A. (2015). Assessing the robustness of power posing: No effect on hormones and risk tolerance in a large sample of men and women. Psychological Science, 26(5), 653-656. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614553946