Adversarial collaboration
Definition: A collaboration where two or more researchers with opposing or contradictory theoretical views —and likely diverging predictions about study results— work together on one project. The aim is to minimise biases and methodological weaknesses as well as to establish a shared base of facts for which competing theories must account.
Related terms: Collaboration, Many Analysts, Many Labs, Preregistration, Publication bias (File Drawer Problem)
References:
- Bateman, I., Kahneman, D., Munro, A., Starmer, C., & Sugden, R. (2005). Testing competing models of loss aversion: An adversarial collaboration. Journal of Public Economics, 89(8), 1561–1580. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2004.06.013
- Cowan, N., Belletier, C., Doherty, J. M., Jaroslawska, A. J., Rhodes, S., Forsberg, A., & Logie, R. H. (2020). How do scientific views change? Notes from an extended adversarial collaboration. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(4), 1011–1025. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620906415
- Kerr, N. L., Ao, X., Hogg, M. A., & Zhang, J. (2018). Addressing replicability concerns via adversarial collaboration: Discovering hidden moderators of the minimal intergroup discrimination effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 78, 66–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.05.001
- Mellers, B., Hertwig, R., & Kahneman, D. (2001). Do frequency representations eliminate conjunction effects? An exercise in adversarial collaboration. Psychological Science, 12(4), 269–275. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00350
- Rakow, T., Thompson, V., Ball, L., & Markovits, H. (2014). Rationale and guidelines for empirical adversarial collaboration: A Thinking & Reasoning initiative. Thinking & Reasoning, 21(2), 167–175. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2015.975405
Originally drafted by: Siu Kit Yeung
Reviewed by: Matt Jaquiery, Aoife O’Mahony, Charlotte R. Pennington, Flávio Azevedo, Madeleine Pownall**;** Martin Vasilev