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Narrative Impressions of Literature: The Availability Bias and the Corrective Properties of Meta-Analytic Approaches

Iowa State University, bushman{at}iastate.edu

Gary L. Wells

Iowa State University

Participants (N = 280) reviewed 20 fictional research summaries of studies examining the relation between similarity and attraction. Although there were some inconsistencies across the fictional studies, there was a positive relation overall (d = 0.2). The authors manipulated the salience of the titles and the serial order in which the studies were presented without changing the results of the studies themselves. Participants recalled the salient titles better than the nonsalient titles. Participants who were given very brief training in meta-analytic techniques gave estimates of the similarity-attraction relation that were close to the actual magnitudes. Participants who were not given such training (narrative reviewers) were influenced by the salience manipulation and gave estimates that were biased toward the studies that had salient titles. Although the salience manipulation influenced participants in the meta-analytic and narrative groups equally, memory mediated the effects of salience on estimates of effect magnitude only for the narrative review participants.

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