A registered replication study on body-ownership, perceptions, and attitudes [Stage 1 Registered Report Protocol]

In a seminal paper, Banakou et al. (2013) showed that illusory ownership of a child’s body experienced through virtual reality (VR) changes perceptions and attitudes. The illusion of having the body of a 4-year-old child led participants to overestimate object sizes and react faster when associating the self with child-like attributes in an Implicit Association Test. The paper has become a model for conducting experimental embodiment research, and has impacted the study of how bodies shape minds considerably. Despite its massive impact, the study is underpowered, does not control for demand characteristics, and uses unvalidated subjective scales. The evidence of behavioral effects caused by the embodiment is therefore uncertain. To address this, we will perform a large-scale partial replication, updated to refined methodological practices with regard to objective and subjective measures, controlling for demand characteristics, and increasing the statistical power to 95%.