The DOI matches its Crossref record; 96 of the 96 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Behavioural science is unlikely to change the world without a heterogeneity revolution
Open accessAbstract
In the past decade, behavioural science has gained influence in policymaking but suffered a crisis of confidence in the replicability of its findings. Here, we describe a nascent heterogeneity revolution that we believe these twin historical trends have triggered. This revolution will be defined by the recognition that most treatment effects are heterogeneous, so the variation in effect estimates across studies that defines the replication crisis is to be expected as long as heterogeneous effects are studied without a systematic approach to sampling and moderation. When studied systematically, heterogeneity can be leveraged to build more complete theories of causal mechanism that could inform nuanced and dependable guidance to policymakers. We recommend investment in shared research infrastructure to make it feasible to study behavioural interventions in heterogeneous and generalizable samples, and suggest low-cost steps researchers can take immediately to avoid being misled by heterogeneity and begin to learn from it instead. Behavioural science increasingly informs policy, but findings are not always replicated. Bryan et al. describe an emerging heterogeneity revolution. They recommend that researchers use heterogeneity in treatment effects to develop more robust theories of causality and strengthen the field.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kuhn, T. S., & Schlegel, R. (1963) · Physics Today · doi:10.1063/1.3050879 · Cited by 35,538
Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science
Open Science Collaboration (2015) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aac4716 · Cited by 8,515
A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance
Steele, C. M. (1997) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.52.6.613 · Cited by 6,770
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797611417632 · Cited by 6,567
Statistics and Causal Inference
Holland, P. W. (1986) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1080/01621459.1986.10478354 · Cited by 5,293
Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response
Bavel, J. J. V., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., Crockett, M. J., Crum, A. J., Douglas, K. M., Druckman, J. N., et al. (2020) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0884-z · Cited by 4,964
The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms
Schultz, P. W., Nolan, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2007) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01917.x · Cited by 3,643
A manifesto for reproducible science
Munafò, M. R., Nosek, B. A., Bishop, D. V. M., Button, K. S., Chambers, C. D., Percie du Sert, N., Simonsohn, U., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Ware, J. J., & Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2017) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-016-0021 · Cited by 3,397
Social norms and energy conservation
Allcott, H. (2011) · Journal of Public Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.03.003 · Cited by 2,802
Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., & Fong, G. T. (2005) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.845 · Cited by 2,452
Research works printed but not linked: 11
- Science that can change the world. Nat. Hum. Behav. 3, 539–539 (2019). · doi:10.1038/s41562-019-0642-2
- Martin, S. & Ferrere, A. Building behavioral science capability in your company. Harvard Business Review (4 December 2017).
- Karlan, D., Tanita, P. & Welch, S. Behavioral economics and donor nudges: impulse or deliberation? Stanford Social Innovation Review https://ssir.org/articles/entry/behavioral_economics_and_donor_nudges_impulse_or_deliberation# (2019).
- Visser, P. S., Krosnick, J. A. & Lavrakas, P. J. in Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology (eds Reis, H. T. & Judd, C. M.) 223–252 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).
- Walton, G. M. & Crum, A. J. (eds) Handbook of Wise Interventions: How Social Psychology Can Help People Change (Guilford Press, 2020).
- Thaler, R. H. & Sunstein, C. R. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Penguin Books, 2008).
- Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A. & LeMahieu, P. G. Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better (Harvard Education Press, 2015).
- Tipton, E., Yeager, D. S., Iachan, R. & Schneider, B. in Experimental Methods in Survey Research: Techniques that Combine Random Sampling with Random Assignment (eds Lavrakas, P. J. et al.) Ch. 22 (Wiley, 2019).
- Alexander, S. Links 12/19 Slate Star Codex https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/02/links-12-19/ (2019). · doi:10.1016/s1464-2859(19)30072-0
- Overbye, D. A giant takes on physics’ biggest questions. The New York Times (15 May 2007). · doi:10.1063/pt.5.021118
- Cho, A. Higgs boson makes its debut after decades-Long search. Science 337, 141–143 (2012). · doi:10.1126/science.337.6091.141
Cited by
Social media use and well-being: What we know and what we need to know
Valkenburg, P. M. (2022) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.12.006 · Cited by 373
A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress
Yeager, D. S., Bryan, C. J., Gross, J. J., Murray, J. S., Krettek Cobb, D., H. F. Santos, P., Gravelding, H., Johnson, M., & Jamieson, J. P. (2022) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04907-7 · Cited by 225
Self-citationWhere and with whom does a brief social-belonging intervention promote progress in college?
Walton, G. M., Murphy, M. C., Logel, C., Yeager, D. S., Goyer, J. P., Brady, S. T., Emerson, K. T. U., Paunesku, D., Fotuhi, O., Blodorn, A., et al. (2023) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.ade4420 · Cited by 131
Self-citationA Guide for Calculating Study-Level Statistical Power for Meta-Analyses
Quintana, D. S. (2023) · Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/25152459221147260 · Cited by 95
Human detection of political speech deepfakes across transcripts, audio, and video
Groh, M., Sankaranarayanan, A., Singh, N., Kim, D. Y., Lippman, A., & Picard, R. (2024) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-024-51998-z · Cited by 89
Metadata
- Authors
- Bryan, C. J., Tipton, E., & Yeager, D. S.
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2021-07-22
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 980-989
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3186944330
- Cited by
- 537
- References
- 96
- FWCI
- 62.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- Licence
- www.springernature.com/gp/researchers/text-and-data-mining (tdm)
- www.springernature.com/gp/researchers/text-and-data-mining (vor)
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Behavioural science is unlikely to change the world without a heterogeneity revolution. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41562-021-01143-3
- The paper
- Bryan, C. J., Tipton, E., & Yeager, D. S. (2021). Behavioural science is unlikely to change the world without a heterogeneity revolution. Nature Human Behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01143-3
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
