Does reductive information increase satisfaction with scientific explanations? Three preregistered tests of the reductive allure effect

Understanding information processing biases is critical for improving scientific literacy. Research suggests that people rate scientific explanations with reductive jargon (e.g., irrelevant chemistry jargon in the explanation of a biological phenomenon) as better than those without – a phenomenon known as the reductive allure (RA) effect. Here, however, in three preregistered online experiments, we were unable to replicate this reductive allure effect using similar (and in some cases identical) materials and procedures to the original demonstration of the phenomena. Our results suggest that text-based RA effects may not be as strong as previously thought and are possibly changing over time.