Replicability of findings is at the heart of any empirical science. The aim of this article is to move the current replicability debate in psychology towards concrete recommendations for improvement. We focus on research practices but also offer guidelines for reviewers, editors, journal management, teachers, granting institutions, and university promotion committees, highlighting some of the emerging and existing practical solutions that can facilitate implementation of these recommendations. The challenges for improving replicability in psychological science are systemic. Improvement can occur only if changes are made at many levels of practice, evaluation, and reward. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Replicability of findings is at the heart of any empirical science. The aim of this article is to move the current replicability debate in psychology towards concrete recommendations for improvement. We focus on research practices but also offer guidelines for reviewers, editors, journal management, teachers, granting institutions, and university promotion committees, highlighting some of the emerging and existing practical solutions that can facilitate implementation of these recommendations. The challenges for improving replicability in psychological science are systemic. Improvement can occur only if changes are made at many levels of practice, evaluation, and reward.This target paper is the result of an Expert Meeting on 'Reducing non-replicable findings in personality research' in Trieste, Italy, July 14-16, 2012, financed by the European Association of Personality Psychology (EAPP) in the recognition of the current debate on insufficient replicability in psychology and medicine.

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In this article, we propose a new ability approach to reappraisal that focuses on individual differences in the ability to spontaneously generate different reappraisals for critical situations. Adopting concepts from the realms of creativity and divergent thinking, we developed the Reappraisal Inventiveness Test (RIT) to measure a person's fluency and flexibility in inventing as many categorically different reappraisals for an anger-eliciting situation as possible within a limited period of time. The results of two studies in which we examined the psychometric characteristics of the RIT provided evidence that the RIT produces reliable test scores. The construct validity of the RIT was confirmed by positive associations of reappraisal inventiveness with openness to experience and tests that measure divergent thinking. Moreover, RIT performance proved to be unrelated to the self-reported habitual use of reappraisal, indicating differences between ability tests and self-report measures. RIT performance was not significantly related to Neuroticism or to trait anger. In our view, this points to the notion that effective emotion regulation is a function of both the ability and the motivation to act upon one's ability to generate reappraisals for critical situations.

Encouraging patients to use cognitive reappraisal constitutes the core of modern psychotherapeutic approaches. However, evidence for specific neural correlates of the capacity for cognitive reappraisal, which is a necessary prerequisite for the effective implementation of cognitive reappraisal in everyday life, has been sparse to date. In the present study, the capacity for cognitive reappraisal was studied in terms of the participants’ inventiveness in generating alternative appraisals of anger-evoking events, and was correlated with frontal EEG alpha asymmetry recorded while the participants were generating reappraisals as well as during a common creative idea generation task. During cognitive reappraisal efforts, individuals higher on the capacity for generating cognitive reappraisals showed more left-lateralized activity in lateral prefrontal cortex, specifically in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex extending toward the frontal pole. This effect was observed independently from the activation during novel idea generation without emotional component, indicating that specific demands are implicated in the generation of reappraisals of emotional events. Taken together, the results indicate that individuals higher on the capacity for cognitive reappraisal are more capable or more prone to recruit appropriate brain regions when the situation demands coming up with alternative appraisals of stressful events. The findings may stimulate the development of more individually targeted interventions.

Background-After mechanical heart valve replacement (MHVR), long-term use of unfractionated heparin is sometimes required because vitamin K antagonists (VKA) are temporarily contraindicated or because the time to reach the target international normalized ratio is long. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of low-molecular-weight heparin treatment in these patients. Methods and Results-This work was conducted as a prospective study. We selected all patients (nϭ695) who underwent MHVR and were transferred to a postoperative cardiac rehabilitation center between January 2000 and January 2005. The study focused on patients who had not yet started VKA therapy or who had a below-target international normalized ratio despite VKA therapy. Unfractionated heparin was replaced by enoxaparin (100 IU/kg BID) until VKA treatment was fully effective. Two hundred fifty patients (60Ϯ11 years old) were enrolled 16Ϯ11 days after surgery (aortic valve replacement, nϭ190; mitral valve replacement, nϭ34; double valve replacement, nϭ26). Of these, 50% had permanent or transient atrial fibrillation, 40% had hypertension, 13% had diabetes, and 19% had a history of cardiac surgery. The mean duration of low-molecular-weight heparin treatment was 8.3Ϯ6.0 days. Patients were followed for 90 days, during which there were two major and three minor bleeding episodes and one transient ischemic attack. There were no cases of valve thrombosis and no deaths. Conclusions-After MHVR, one third of patients leave the cardiac surgery unit before VKA treatment is fully effective.Bridging anticoagulation therapy with enoxaparin appears to be feasible during this high-risk period for thromboembolism and could shorten the length of hospital stay. (Circulation. 2006;113:564-569.)

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