Peer Review History
Original SubmissionJanuary 22, 2020 |
---|
PONE-D-20-01585 Pain(less) Cleansing: Vicarious Pain Experience Reduces Guilt and Sadness but not Shame PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Bocian, Let me start by apologizing for the delay in sending you this action letter. I was contacted by the editorial office on August 7th 2020 with the request to take over the handling of your manuscript as academic editor. After agreeing, I saw that the previous academic editor already secured one review and made a huge effort to find a second reviewer. However, the second review did not materialize. Fortunately, I could consult a colleague whose expertise is related to the topic of your paper. This allowed me to obtain a second review at very short notice. Both reviewers agree that there is merit in your work but recommend a major revision before the paper can be accepted. Hence, I decided to not let you wait any longer and to send you the reviews with the request to submit a revised version of your paper that takes the comments of the reviewers into account. The reviewers provide many helpful suggestions on how you could improve your manuscript by changing the build up of your arguments or by resolving ambiguities and conceptual issues. Do not feel obliged to follow every single suggestion of the reviewers but please do use their comments in a constructive way with the aim of creating a drastically improved version of your paper. I did notice, however, that the raw data of your studies are not available in the supplementary materials. It is standard policy of PLOS ONE that data are made publicly available unless there are valid reasons for not doing so (see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability ). Please consult our guidelines and make the data available in line with those guideline or inform us why this is not possible. A final small comment related to the power issue raised by Reviewer 2: please delete the phrase that you did not calculate power “because it was not required back then”. It suffices to say that you did not calculate power before the start of the study. Once more, on behalf of our journal, I apologize for the delay in taking action. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 31 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Jan De Houwer Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. Please update your Methods section to indicate whether your ethics committee approved the consent procedures (or lack thereof) in the study. Your ethics statement must appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please also ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics section of your online submission will not be published alongside your manuscript. 3. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Please see attached document for comments Reviewer #2: Thank you for receiving the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Pain(less) Cleansing: Vicarious Pain Experience Reduces Guilt and Sadness but not Shame” which presents a set of interesting experimental studies aimed at testing whether observing someone else’s’ pain reduces emotions of guilt in the observer. I was intrigued by the topic of the research and the rigorous approach of several experimental studies to better understand the underlying mechanism of the main finding. However, there are still several methodological and conceptual concerns that I would like to see addressed before I can recommend this manuscript for publication. Main points: 1. One of the main methodological concerns is the sample size of each study. The authors provide post hoc power calculations, but it is unclear how they arrived at these numbers or what they mean. Please provide a more detailed account of the power that was achieved by the current sample per study. Please follow the steps outlined by Daniel Lakens here and explain how likely it was to observe a significant effect, given your sample, and given an expected or small effect size and report all parameters entered in G*Power: http://daniellakens.blogspot.com/2014/12/observed-power-and-what-to-do-if-your.html. a. It is a bit unclear why the authors report f effect sizes when their main analyses are repeated measures ANOVAs. 2. A conceptual issue relates to the idea that “mere observation of others in pain produces a full experience of pain in the observer” (p. 4). That statement seems hyperbolic and scientifically incorrect based on the research cited. It is true that observing someone else in pain activates similar neural regions than direct experience of pain, but it is also clear that the actual experience of observing someone else in pain and experiencing pain oneself is qualitatively quite different. For instance, no one would confuse whether they experienced pain themselves or they saw someone else experiencing pain. Moreover, the authors did not assess in any way what emotional reaction the participants had to the video of someone else in pain, how “painful” they experienced watching it, or how they were affected by it. In my mind, these are crucial variables to test the hypothesis the authors put forward. Could the authors comment? a. Similarly, the authors keep speaking of “experiencing vicarious pain” without assessing it and is therefore speculative. I would prefer if the authors change this to “observing someone else in pain” or “vicarious pain perception” throughout the whole manuscript and in the title as this more clearly describes the manipulation which was employed. 3. There are several grammatical and language errors in the text, and the manuscript would profit from professional academic proofreading. Minor points: 1. P. 2 “pain observation affected participants’ feelings of guilt” Please state the direction of the effect 2. P. 6 “shame and pain experience share the same neural underpinnings” What does that mean and why does that mean it would not be affected? 3. P. 7 “would be observed after watching an exciting and neutral movie clip” Why not use an arousing negative clip as a comparison? It would make the claim stronger that the guilt reduction is in response to pain alone. 4. P. 8 “asked to write about the last time” How long were the participants required to write? Did all participants write for the required time? 5. P. 8 Please include a paragraph on the actual design of the study. All studies employed (at least in part) a between-subjects design yet this is not explicitly stated anywhere. Also, the n of each group is not stated or how participants were randomized. Lastly, please refer to between-subject levels as “groups” rather than “conditions” throughout the manuscript. 6. P. 9 “they were told to put their stories in an envelope” What was the cover story and what did the participants think would happen with the stories? Were they told that they were kept confidential? 7. P. 9 “were measured with two items” Please state the exact wording, scale and labels of the items used. 8. P. 9 Please include a separate paragraph one the exact statistical analyses that were carried out per study, including the dependent and independent variables, their levels and the used alpha-level. 9. P. 10 “we conducted an ANOVA” Please specify what type of ANOVA (in this case a repeated measures ANOVA) 10. P. 11 “the participants’ level of sadness decreased after the pain manipulation” This is a very surprising finding and definitely requires further elaboration in the discussion. Earlier research shows that watching someone else in pain elicits unpleasant emotions and it is likely that one would feel sad for someone else in pain (especially with high empathy levels). So how do you explain a reduction in sadness when observing someone else in pain? 11. P. 11 In general, there are quite a few post-hoc comparisons. Did the authors employ any post-hoc corrections such as Holm-Bonferroni to correct for multiple testing? This is especially relevant since the studies are likely underpowered. 12. P. 11 “apart from inducing sadness in this condition, we also elicited guilt” Please elaborate. What do you mean? 13. P. 11 “(Bastian et al., 2011 (…)” bracket missing 14. P. 13 “We changed the way guilt and sadness was measured” Why did the authors choose to change their measurements throughout the studies? If they want to present it as a replication of Study 1 it seems counterintuitive to change the methodology. Please provide arguments for doing so. 15. P. 13 “was measured with four items” How were these items combined in a single outcome variable? Since this is an entirely new measure, please provide psychometric properties (e.g. Cronbach’s Alpha). 16. P. 14 Did you assess perceived pain intensity or empathy levels at any point? 17. P. 16 “past studies proved” Please avoid the word “proved” in scientific writing. 18. P. 18 “Finally, using Bayesian interference” The authors introduce a whole new set of statistical analyses here. Please be consistent throughout your studies in the analyses employed and if not, provide a clear rationale for changing method of analysis. 19. P. 22 “might help people deal with aversive feelings of guilt.” The notion that people watch violent shows because of feelings of guilt is highly speculative and far-fetched. I would reduce this last paragraph. Instead, I would be interested in practical or clinical implications of this research as these are currently missing in the discussion and introduction. ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 1 |
PONE-D-20-01585R1 Pain(less) Cleansing: Watching Other People in Pain Reduces Guilt and Sadness but Not Shame PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Bocian, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. Both reviewers have again evaluated the manuscript. Reviewer 1 appreciates the revisions that you made but lists a number of remaining issues. Reviewer 2 repeats a number of points of his earlier review and asks you to clearly state in a cover letter how you have addressed each of his/her comments. I therefore invite you to revise the paper a second time based on the remaining comments of the reviewers. Please make an extra effort in clearly communicating for each individual point how you addressed that point. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 17 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Jan De Houwer Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Thank you for again receiving the opportunity to review the revised version of the manuscript entitled “Pain(less) Cleansing: Vicarious Pain Experience Reduces Guilt and Sadness but not Shame”. Unfortunately, the authors did not provide a point-by-point reaction to my reviewer comments. This includes my main comment Nr. 2, and all the minor points. In general, please respond to each point individually, indicate where in the text you made changes responding to it, or provide an argument why you felt no change were necessary. Ideally, if the changes are not too substantial (e.g., rewriting a whole part of the text), please quote the text in the response to the reviewer letter with page and line number. This makes it a lot easier to see how the individual points were handled and saves a lot of time in the review process. I again included my original comments below. Main points: 1. One of the main methodological concerns is the sample size of each study. The authors provide post hoc power calculations, but it is unclear how they arrived at these numbers or what they mean. Please provide a more detailed account of the power that was achieved by the current sample per study. Please follow the steps outlined by Daniel Lakens here and explain how likely it was to observe a significant effect, given your sample, and given an expected or small effect size and report all parameters entered in G*Power: http://daniellakens.blogspot.com/2014/12/observed-power-and-what-to-do-if-your.html. a. It is a bit unclear why the authors report f effect sizes when their main analyses are repeated measures ANOVAs. 2. A conceptual issue relates to the idea that “mere observation of others in pain produces a full experience of pain in the observer” (p. 4). That statement seems hyperbolic and scientifically incorrect based on the research cited. It is true that observing someone else in pain activates similar neural regions than direct experience of pain, but it is also clear that the actual experience of observing someone else in pain and experiencing pain oneself is qualitatively quite different. For instance, no one would confuse whether they experienced pain themselves or they saw someone else experiencing pain. Moreover, the authors did not assess in any way what emotional reaction the participants had to the video of someone else in pain, how “painful” they experienced watching it, or how they were affected by it. In my mind, these are crucial variables to test the hypothesis the authors put forward. Could the authors comment? a. Similarly, the authors keep speaking of “experiencing vicarious pain” without assessing it and is therefore speculative. I would prefer if the authors change this to “observing someone else in pain” or “vicarious pain perception” throughout the whole manuscript and in the title as this more clearly describes the manipulation which was employed. 3. There are several grammatical and language errors in the text, and the manuscript would profit from professional academic proofreading. Minor points: 1. P. 2 “pain observation affected participants’ feelings of guilt” Please state the direction of the effect 2. P. 6 “shame and pain experience share the same neural underpinnings” What does that mean and why does that mean it would not be affected? 3. P. 7 “would be observed after watching an exciting and neutral movie clip” Why not use an arousing negative clip as a comparison? It would make the claim stronger that the guilt reduction is in response to pain alone. 4. P. 8 “asked to write about the last time” How long were the participants required to write? Did all participants write for the required time? 5. P. 8 Please include a paragraph on the actual design of the study. All studies employed (at least in part) a between-subjects design yet this is not explicitly stated anywhere. Also, the n of each group is not stated or how participants were randomized. Lastly, please refer to between-subject levels as “groups” rather than “conditions” throughout the manuscript. 6. P. 9 “they were told to put their stories in an envelope” What was the cover story and what did the participants think would happen with the stories? Were they told that they were kept confidential? 7. P. 9 “were measured with two items” Please state the exact wording, scale and labels of the items used. 8. P. 9 Please include a separate paragraph one the exact statistical analyses that were carried out per study, including the dependent and independent variables, their levels and the used alpha-level. 9. P. 10 “we conducted an ANOVA” Please specify what type of ANOVA (in this case a repeated measures ANOVA) 10. P. 11 “the participants’ level of sadness decreased after the pain manipulation” This is a very surprising finding and definitely requires further elaboration in the discussion. Earlier research shows that watching someone else in pain elicits unpleasant emotions and it is likely that one would feel sad for someone else in pain (especially with high empathy levels). So how do you explain a reduction in sadness when observing someone else in pain? 11. P. 11 In general, there are quite a few post-hoc comparisons. Did the authors employ any post-hoc corrections such as Holm-Bonferroni to correct for multiple testing? This is especially relevant since the studies are likely underpowered. 12. P. 11 “apart from inducing sadness in this condition, we also elicited guilt” Please elaborate. What do you mean? 13. P. 11 “(Bastian et al., 2011 (…)” bracket missing 14. P. 13 “We changed the way guilt and sadness was measured” Why did the authors choose to change their measurements throughout the studies? If they want to present it as a replication of Study 1 it seems counterintuitive to change the methodology. Please provide arguments for doing so. 15. P. 13 “was measured with four items” How were these items combined in a single outcome variable? Since this is an entirely new measure, please provide psychometric properties (e.g. Cronbach’s Alpha). 16. P. 14 Did you assess perceived pain intensity or empathy levels at any point? 17. P. 16 “past studies proved” Please avoid the word “proved” in scientific writing. 18. P. 18 “Finally, using Bayesian interference” The authors introduce a whole new set of statistical analyses here. Please be consistent throughout your studies in the analyses employed and if not, provide a clear rationale for changing method of analysis. 19. P. 22 “might help people deal with aversive feelings of guilt.” The notion that people watch violent shows because of feelings of guilt is highly speculative and far-fetched. I would reduce this last paragraph. Instead, I would be interested in practical or clinical implications of this research as these are currently missing in the discussion and introduction. ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.
|
Revision 2 |
Pain(less) Cleansing: Watching Other People in Pain Reduces Guilt and Sadness but Not Shame PONE-D-20-01585R2 Dear Dr. Bocian, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Jan De Houwer Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-20-01585R2 Pain(less) Cleansing: Watching Other People in Pain Reduces Guilt and Sadness but Not Shame Dear Dr. Bocian: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Jan De Houwer Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
Open letter on the publication of peer review reports
PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.
We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.
Learn more at ASAPbio .