{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/6t7pw","title":"Are effect sizes reported in highly cited emotion research overestimated relative to larger studies and meta-analyses addressing the same questions?","abstract":"<p>We assessed whether the most highly-cited studies in emotion research reported larger effect sizes compared to meta-analyses and the largest studies on the same question. We screened all reports with at least 1000 citations and identified matching meta-analyses for 40 highly-cited observational and 25 highly-cited experimental studies. Observational studies had effects greater on average by 1.42-fold (95% CI 1.09 to 1.87) versus meta-analyses and 1.99-fold (95% CI 1.33 to 2.99) versus largest studies on the same questions. Experimental studies had fold-increases of 1.29 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.63) versus meta-analyses and 2.02 (95% CI 1.60 to 2.57) versus largest studies. There was substantial between-topic heterogeneity, more prominently for observational studies. Highly-cited studies uncommonly (12/65 topics, 18%) had the largest weight in meta-analyses. They were frequently (31/65 topics, 48%) the earliest published on the topic. Highly-cited studies may offer, on average, exaggerated estimates of effects in both observational and experimental designs.</p>","journal":"Open MIND","year":2021,"id":742,"datarank":0.10397207708399181,"base_score":0.6931471805599453,"endowment":0.6931471805599453,"self_citation_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0549,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-02-10","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":7205,"name":"Raluca Georgescu","orcid":"0000-0001-8329-0063","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":7204,"name":"Ioana Alina Cristea","orcid":"0000-0002-9854-7076","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}