In Defense of Diligence: A Rejoinder to Pelham and Carvallo (2011)

In Simonsohn (2011) I reported the results from 14 studies that suggest all existing evidence of implicit egotism in marriage, job, and location decisions is spurious. Lack of diligence by Pelham and colleagues explains in great part why the confounds behind their findings were not addressed in time. They almost never included controls, were dismissive of blatant alternative explanations, and on occasion misreported factual information that made confounds appear less important. Their rebuttal is similarly lacking in diligence. The specific empirical concerns it raised are contradicted by evidence, logic, or both. It reported misleading examples and inaccurate facts (some regarding the authors' own data). In this rejoinder I address all specific issues they raised about the empirics of my article. I then provide perhaps the most striking example of lack of diligence in their earlier work. I close on a constructive note, providing 2 concrete suggestions on how to analyze data in future implicit egotism studies.