Multilab Replications Provide Theoretical and Methodological Insight but Not Necessarily About the Studies They Seek to Replicate: Comment on Rife et al. (2025)

Abstract

Rife et al. conducted a multilab replication of Trafimow and Hughes (Experiment 3) to examine whether mortality salience produces higher death-thought accessibility immediately after imagining one’s own death or after a time delay. Like Trafimow and Huges, Rife et al. found that thinking about death without delay produced higher death-thought accessibility than when thinking about death with delay or thinking about dental pain. This pattern occurred regardless of whether participants were randomly assigned the original Trafimow and Hughes word-generation death-thought-accessibility measure or assigned a word-fragment death-thought-accessibility measure more commonly used in the literature. However, we argue that regardless of whether multilab replications produce results consistent with the original replicated study, they offer weak insight into the integrity and empirical plausibility of the original study. Instead, multilab replications provide valuable theoretical and methodological information regarding the span of effect created by the procedural elements shared among the set of replication studies. This information, in turn, permits clearer theoretical inference when using similar procedural elements to investigate theoretically related phenomena. Moreover, multilab replications are often conceived as a defense against false-positive empirical results and theoretical interpretations, but Rife et al.’s results reveal they may be better suited for protecting against false-negative empirical results and theoretical interpretations.