Open minds, tied hands: Awareness, behavior, and reasoning on open science and irresponsible research behavior

Knowledge on Open Science Practices (OSP) has been promoted through responsible conduct of research training and the development of open science infrastructure to combat Irresponsible Research Behavior (IRB). Yet, there is limited evidence for the efficacy of OSP in minimizing IRB. We asked N=778 participants to fill in questionnaires that contain OSP and ethical reasoning vignettes, and report self-admission rates of IRB and personality traits. We found that against our initial prediction, even though OSP was negatively correlated with IRB, this correlation was very weak, and upon controlling for individual differences factors, OSP neither predicted IRB nor was this relationship moderated by ethical reasoning. On the other hand, individual differences factors, namely dark personality triad, and conscientiousness and openness, contributed more to IRB than OSP knowledge. Our findings suggest that OSP knowledge needs to be complemented by the development of ethical virtues to encounter IRBs more effectively.