(Mis)estimation of the modal number of desired sexual partners

Arthur G. Shapiro; Rubie M. Peters; Anthony H. Ahrens

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0315291

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 14, 2023
5 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Mary Diane Clark, Editor PONE-D-23-30826(Mis)estimation of the modal number of desired sexual partnersPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shapiro, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS One. It is an interesting topic. The article is well written and has a nice logical flow. The reviewers have issues as noted in their reviews so please respond to their concerns. If you could include just a bit more about how to address the confusion among the measures of central tendency and how to teach our students to recognize that and initially check for normality so that we select the correct stats. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 19 2024 11:59PM. 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I have several easy comments. 1--check all of your spacing as you have some issues with that. 2--you do not need statistics in your discussion. Please remove those. [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: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A 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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: The topic of the manuscript is interesting, but revision is needed in all sections: Introduction The authors seem to wish to talk about two separate topics: perceptual illusions and use of the arithmetic mean to provide the average of a data set. Although the two topics are related in their study, the Introduction fails in telling the reader why this is so. In fact, the issue of the arithmetic mean is not handled well by the authors (see Discussion). Study 1 The X-axis in the figures is very confusing. Were you trying to use a logarithmic scale so that a power function becomes a straight line? If so, this is not clear. Also, the resulting curves do not approximate straight lines. Wouldn’t a linear axis be just as good while being much easier to understand? Is the mean for men really greater than 500? This does not look right. Study 2 This is very confusing. Strong rewriting is recommended. Study 3 Please clarify why the reader should be impressed by the fact that, after being told what the expected answer would be, the participants tended to give the expected answer. Discussion The authors make a big deal out of the fact that the mode can be different from the arithmetic mean. Any reasonable researcher looks at the data before running any type of analysis. In the case of these data, it is evident that the distribution is skewed. This will cause the researcher not only to choose the mode (or median) over the mean but also to remember that most statistical tests (and definitely the ANOVA) assume that the data are normally distributed (in which case the mean and the mode are the same) and that the result of the test is not reliable if the data don’t pass the normality test. An interesting topic for discussion is whether people who are not trained in statistics have a bias towards the mean. A different set of questions would be needed, however, to differentiate a bias towards the mean from a bias towards normal distributions. And, of course, one could argue that bias is not the correct word because a preference for normal distributions derives from the fact that most distributions are normal (height, weight, intelligence, beauty, etc.). As for the main research finding that most people would ideally like to have one partner for life even though they (especially men) have many more, did the authors consider that the adverb "ideally" introduced a fundamental bias in the answers given by the participants? In a country where polygamy is illegal (even if serial monogamy is silently accepted), an ideal relationship is expected to be singular. Reviewer #2: This manuscript presents a successful replication of a 2002 paper reporting a mis-estimation effect for participants estimating the modal number of preferred sexual partners. A second pseudo-replication study employing altered participant instructions investigates a possible explanation for the effect (misunderstanding of the question posed), and a third study tests the effect of exposure to information about the central tendency in a previous sample on participant reports. I very much enjoyed reading this manuscript, and in particular thought the relation of the reported results to the general underlying issue of reported means potentially concealing different distributions (e.g., in fig 5) very well-handled and potentially useful. The standard of writing is excellent and the arguments are clearly presented throughout. Besides noting the lack of justification of sample size, I have only some comments regarding the presentation of results. 1) Some justification of sample size will need to be provided to meet journal requirements (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication). In Study 1, for example, it is stated that an aim was to collect a “sufficiently large” sample, but there is no details are provided (e.g., what effect size the sample would be sufficient to detect). 2) In some of the results and discussion, non-significant p values appear to be interpreted as evidence for null results. For example, p.11, line 11 “There were no differences in the mean rank of predictions …p = .053”. A non-significant p value cannot be interpreted (in isolation) as evidence for the null because no distinction is made between evidence for not effect and there simply being no evidence for an effect (i.e., because the sample is not large enough to detect an existing effect). I recommend rephrasing (in the results and discussion) any interpretation of non-significant p values which could be taken to suggest a claim of evidence for the null. For example, p.12 “Men and women’s predictions do not differ from each other”. While this might be read as "there was no evidence that men and women's predictions differ", as phrased it could be interpreted as a claim that men and women's predictions do not differ (and they may well differ in a larger sample, if the study is under-powered to detect an existing difference). Alternatively, claims of evidence for no difference could be tested using an appropriate method such as equivalence testing or Bayes factors, e.g., see https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gby065. 3) P.11, line 5 “only a marginal effect of gender” The p value is .079. At a conventional alpha of .05, both this and the smaller p value of .053 reported further down the same page these are non-significant. 4) I think it would be useful to report confidence intervals alongside point estimates (e.g., for correlation coefficients and mean differences). 5) Data are only available in a proprietary format (SPSS .sav files). For accessibility I suggest also uploading data files as .csv files. ****** 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. 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Revision 1
15 Oct 2024 Author Response September 22, 2024 Dear Professor Clark, We thank you for your time and effort editing our manuscript. We have responded below to comments from the two reviewers. We thank both reviewers for their efforts and believe they have contributed to an improved paper. As you mentioned in your summary statement: “Reviewer 1 challenges you about the common issues with people not checking for normality and Reviewer 2 has fewer issues but some important issues.” We think that our phrasing may have led Reviewer 1 to a simplistic view of our thesis because of some of our phrasing. We have tried to correct this misapprehension by modifying the stress of one paragraph in the introduction and one paragraph in the discussion. The two major issues were, as the editor summarized, “don’t people just check for normality,” and why are we “making a big deal out of the fact that the mode can be different from the arithmetic mean.” As to the first point, it is hard to check normality on multivariate studies with many cells (although this process is improved with violin plots), but even if a researcher finds nonnormality, what do they do about it? Often researchers are not concerned about normality because the central limit theorem shows that the sample means will be an unbiased estimate of the statistic in which they are interested ( we cite specific text from an SPSS manual in our response to specific comment below but one of us taught intro stats for twenty years, and he could find many more examples). Our figure 5, therefore, highlights a different approach to the problem that arises when methodologically, researchers are not concerned with the shape of population distributions. But more importantly, the section related to Figure 5 is not simply about normality or about the difference between the mean and the mode. We are trying to stress that just as summary statistics can arise from wildly diverse types of data samples (see Anscombe's quartet (Anscombe, 1973) and Cairo’s “Datasaurus” (Matejka & Fitzmaurice, 2017)), significant differences between sample means can also arise from diverse forms of population distributions. Anscombe and Cairo’s Datasaurus attract (justly) a lot of attention and are often used as lead-ins to data science talks. Oddly, our figure five may be the first paper to show that these ambiguities also apply to comparisons between summary statistics. We think that, while not entirely shocking when pointed out, is an important addition to the field and is directly germane to interpretations of our experiments. Reviewer two had important suggestions about the analysis of the data. We have responded to these suggestions and have done a thorough reanalysis of the data in the paper. In some instances we found very small and inconsequential discrepancies from our previous draft. We have substituted the new numbers. Lastly, we have checked the spacing on the document, and have removed the statistic in the discussion, as per your suggestion. Sincerely, Arthur Shapiro, Anthony Ahrens, and Rubie Peters Response to Reviewer 1 Introduction The authors seem to wish to talk about two separate topics: perceptual illusions and use of the arithmetic mean to provide the average of a data set. Although the two topics are related in their study, the Introduction fails in telling the reader why this is so. In fact, the issue of the arithmetic mean is not handled well by the authors (see Discussion). We thank the reviewer for this comment. We think it is a misreading to say that we are or may be seeking to draw a comparison between the illusions and the “use of the arithmetic mean to provide the average of a data set.” We see how the reader could have come to this interpretation, particularly if the reader were taking their cue from the first sentence of the final section–which overemphasized the “mean.” We therefore revised the leading sentence to read “The problem of using a single summary statistic to describe the central tendency of skewed distributions is illustrated in the distribution for survey responses to the following question” By removing the word “mean” from that topic sentence we hope that others will not be misled. The other part of the issue has to do with the definition of “illusion.” Colloquially, people talk about illusions in terms of a difference between perception and reality. More recently, the Shapiro lab has been part of a discussion concerning the utility of other frameworks for considering visual illusions. One such framework is that illusions arise not only from “differences between perception and reality” but also from “conflicts between possible constructions of reality” (Shapiro & Hedjar, 2019; Shapiro, 2021). As we note in the introduction and in the discussion, in the studies presented here, the conflict arises because the different measures of central tendency convey different information, and like many visual illusions, the perception of events will depend on which type of information is given more weight. Study 1 The X-axis in the figures is very confusing. Were you trying to use a logarithmic scale so that a power function becomes a straight line? If so, this is not clear. Also, the resulting curves do not approximate straight lines. Wouldn’t a linear axis be just as good while being much easier to understand? Thank you for the comment. The scale reflects the idea that human scaling of numbers is closer to a Fechner (that is, logarithmic) response function than to linear response function. An observer is more likely to differentiate between 1 vs 2 than they are to differentiate between large numbers, say, 523 vs 524. The curves do not approximate straight lines, nor were they designed to do so. Rather, the curves show that the distributions of judgments are skewed, with particular and systematic differences between observed and expected frequency. In addition, in studies 2 and 3, participants were asked to give percentages of people who desired a given number of partners (e.g., 32-63). Thus, for figures 3 and 4, the x-axis displays the exact range of possible desired partners for which participants were to give estimates. We believe there is some advantage to using similar scales for estimates for the three studies. Is the mean for men really greater than 500? This does not look right. We have double checked, and the mean is correct. There were two outliers in this data set. One younger male reported desiring 20000 partners, and one older male reported desiring 10000 partners. No one else wanted more than 300 partners. These two participants raised the mean. This is part of the reason that we report a Kruskal-Wallis test as well as an ANOVA. We have added this point about extreme responses on p. 12. Study 2 This is very confusing. Strong rewriting is recommended. Thank you for this comment. We have made some changes to the introduction of study 2, removing the term “innumeracy,” which we might have caused confusion. We have balanced this reviewer's response to that of the second reviewer, who wrote, “The standard of writing is excellent and the arguments are clearly presented throughout,“ and with the comments of other reviewers who gave us feedback on this section. Study 3 Please clarify why the reader should be impressed by the fact that, after being told what the expected answer would be, the participants tended to give the expected answer. We are uncertain of the reviewer’s concern here. We did not tell participants what the “expected” answer was. Rather, consistent with other research using social norms interventions, we gave participants information about others’ desired number of partners. Perhaps the reviewer is concerned that the experimental results (with conditions affecting reported number of partners) are due to demand characteristics. This is an important point that holds for much of social norms intervention literature. We had, indirectly, addressed this point by recommending that future research include behavioral data. We have made this explicit by adding “so as to preclude transitory demand effects” to our discussion of the need for behavioral data on p. 27. Discussion The authors make a big deal out of the fact that the mode can be different from the arithmetic mean. Thank you for this comment. The response indicates to us the importance of the inclusion of Figure 5 (and accompanying text) in the document. The standard way of presenting data in the psychological literature is as averages (i.e, means) with confidence intervals. The main argument of this section is not that mean and modes are different in skewed distributions, but rather that the standard methods of summarizing data are inherently ambiguous as to the shape of the underlying population distribution. While this point, too, should be obvious, we think that our method of presenting (i.e, figure 5) is unique, and points to an important issue in the psychology literature and is directly relevant to the interpretations of our experiments. “Any reasonable researcher looks at the data before running any type of analysis. This will cause the researcher not only to choose the mode (or median) over the mean but also to remember that most statistical tests (and definitely the ANOVA) assume that the data are normally distributed (in which case the mean and the mode are the same) and that the result of the test is not reliable if the data don’t pass the normality test.” We have two responses: 1. Do researchers always look at their data? Certainly, most do for small studies, but we would be surprised if this is the case for multivariate studies, particularly with very large data sets (the movement towards violin plots in the neuroscience literature is a noted improvement). 2. Even if researchers do find skewed sample distributions, what are they supposed to do? Most researchers are interested in finding a comparison between the summary statistics (are means of the sample distributions different from each other?); methodologically, they are not interested in what is going on with the population distributions. See, for instance, the SPSS guide for the Shapiro-Wilk Test (https://www.spss-tutorials.com/spss-shapiro-wilk-test-for-normality/). This guide has a section titled “Limited Usefulness of Normality Tests” in which the author states, “So if sample sizes are reasonable, normality tests are often pointless. Sadly, few statistics instructors seem to be aware of this and still bother students with such tests.” The reason for this comment is that because of the central limit theorem, “many test results are unaffected by even severe violations of normality.” The SPSS guide is not alone. Most commentary on normality tests has some claim about not needing to know the shape of the population distribution in order to estimate a population parameter. Our section related to figure 5 is a way to show that confidence intervals are ambiguous as to shape underlying population distribution. So, as we mention in the section, the same way that Datasaurus shows that summary stats may hide important trends, the differences between summary stats shown in the standard techniques can also hide important trends. Lastly, this idea is important to us because it has led to a new line of research in one of our laboratories. We find it remarkable that such ambiguities are not being discussed in relation to the replication crisis in psychology. An interesting topic for discussion is whether people who are not trained in statistics have a bias towards the mean. A different set of questions would be needed, however, to differentiate a bias towards the mean from a bias towards normal distributions. And, of course, one could argue that bias is not the correct word because a preference for normal distributions derives from the fact that most distributions are normal (height, weight, intelligence, beauty, etc.). The question of the degree to which people who are not trained in statistics in general have a bias toward the mean is potentially of interest. But as the reviewer notes, we would need to do a different set of studies to test that proposition. In our paper, we raise the topic of bias toward normal distributions as one of several explanations for relatively weak judgments about distributions that are not normal. In particular, we raise this topic when we describe a 1985 paper by Nisbett and Kunda, and work by others trying to understand what they found. We are fairly agnostic about whether the Nisbett/Kunda formulation of bias toward normality is the process underlying the biases our paper found. We considered adding further discussion of this idea, but in our judgment it would take us beyond the scope of the paper. We note also that we are unsure if most distributions are, in fact, normal. It is hard to know the universe of distributions, and so it is hard to know the distribution of distributions. In the paper we note that some important distributions are not normal. That there are such distributions seems to us a good reason to explore how people think about those non-normal distributions regardless of whether they are the most common form of distribution. As for the main research finding that most people would ideally like to have one partner for life even though they (especially men) have many more, did the authors consider that the adverb "ideally" introduced a fundamental bias in the answers given by the participants? In a country where polygamy is illegal (even if serial monogamy is silently accepted), an ideal relationship is expected to be singular. We thank the reviewer for this observation. We used the word “ideally” so as to be consistent with previous research on this topic (e.g., Buss & Schmitt, 1993). It is possible that other ways of wording the topic would yield different judgments of how many sexual partners a given person would desire. We have added this point in our discussion on p. 27. Response to Reviewer 2 This manuscript presents a successful replication of a 2002 paper reporting a mis-estimation effect for participants estimating the modal number of preferred sexual partners. A second pseudo-replication study employing altered participant instructions investigates a possible explanation for the effect (misunderstanding of the question posed), and a third study tests the effect of exposure to information about the central tendency in a previous sample on participant reports. I very much enjoyed reading this manuscript, and in particular thought the relation of the reported results to the general underlying issue of reported means potentially concealing different distributions (e.g., in fig 5) very well-handled and potentially useful. The standard of writing is excellent and the arguments are clearly presented throughout. Besides noting the lack of justification of sample size, I have only some comments regarding the presentation of results. 1) Some justification of sample size will need to be provided to meet journal requirements (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication). In Study 1, for example, it is stated that an aim was to collect a “sufficiently large” sample, but there is no details are provided (e.g., what effect size the sample would be sufficient to detect). We thank the reviewer for this point. We need enough participants to get a reasonably good estimate of the mode. That the modal number of desired partners is 1 across all 12 of the groups (3 (study) x 2 (age) x 2 (gender)) gives some confidence that we have correctly identified the mode. We also needed to know the degree to which participants underestimated how many people would choose the mode. Therefore, the key statistic in the first study is that only 9.8% of participants correctly identified 1 as the mode. In the two places in which we mention taking steps to have a “sufficiently large” sample, the context is our decision to limit our sample to heterosexual individuals. For instance, in the first study we had 267 heterosexual participants but only 17 who identified as gay/lesbian. There was only 1 older gay male, and having a single participant in this category precluded being able to describe a Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers_ Shapiro, Peters, Ahrens.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315291.r002
10 Nov 2024 Decision Letter - Mary Diane Clark, Editor PONE-D-23-30826R1(Mis)estimation of the modal number of desired sexual partnersPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shapiro, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. One of the reviewers gave you an accept and I also reviewed the paper. I have a few minor editing issues I need you to fix. If you can take care of these I can recommend publication. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 25 2024 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Mary Diane Clark, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: before I sent the paper out for review, I reviewed it and found just a few things that I need yo to fix. Plus One doesn't have an editor so I need you to clean up just a few things for us it should only take about an hour or two--here are my issue that need cleaned up: Page 5 end of first partial paragraph THE median and mean Page 5 u (e.g., educational tests; Ho& Yu, 2015) In your marked up version on page 5 the sentence makes no sense to me there is something wrong there Both in terms OF. The OF seem like it is needed Then I can’t find what the both is Seems like y our Galton quote needs a page number End of page 6 The present study is an orphan header and need two lines of text below it Same with Method at the end of the next page In study one why did you use an ANOVA when you knew the distribution was skewed. Also, with numbers this large Field states that most of them have already approached normal --- Page 12---your r stat has an extra space after the ( Page 16 in the mark-up looks like you have deleted some parts that need to be in—please check Page 20 you have 4four—you need to have only 1 or the other. Given that mostly you are using numbers the 4 might be the best Page 25 to many lines between last paragraph and last heading----last heading is also an orphan Page 26 Trafimov with the red line needs and & Page 31—men really had a mean of 73.8? I thought tha average was 7 [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 #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. 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Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. 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 #2: (No Response) ****** 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 #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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315291.r003
Revision 2
13 Nov 2024 Author Response Response to editor’s comments: Page 5 end of first partial paragraph THE median and mean Added. Thank you. Page 5 u (e.g., educational tests; Ho& Yu, 2015) … In your marked up version on page 5 the sentence makes no sense to me there is something wrong there … [sic[ Your comment wasn’t exactly clear to us, but we understand that the topic sentence could have been clearer. We have therefore reorganized and shortened the sentence and merged the paragraph. The end of the paragraph now reads: “Questions about how to characterize distributions are particularly important because many distributions in the social sciences are skewed (Ho & Yu, 2015; Heathcote, Popiel, & Mewhort, 1991), and reliance on the mean to describe skewed distributions can lead to misinterpretations (Balota & Yap, 2011; Micceri, 1989; Wiedermann et al., 2022).” Seems like your Galton quote needs a page number. Galton’s 1907 Nature article is less than two pages long. (https://galton.org/essays/1900-1911/galton-1907-vox-populi.pdf) End of page 6 The present study is an orphan header and need two lines of text below it Same with Method at the end of the next page We have moved the header to the next page. In study one why did you use an ANOVA when you knew the distribution was skewed. Also, with numbers this large Field states that most of them have already approached normal — ANOVAs are statistical tests based on the sampling distribution of the mean. Thanks to the central limit theorem, the sampling distribution of the mean will be normally distributed even with skewed population distributions. Page 12---your r stat has an extra space after the ( Fixed. Thank you. Page 16 in the mark-up looks like you have deleted some parts that need to be in—please check We have checked this section, and it seems as if we have removed only the section that we intended. We agree that the marked-up version was hard to follow in this section, but the regular version was satisfactory.. Page 20 you have 4four—you need to have only 1 or the other. Given that mostly you are using numbers the 4 might be the best The “4four” is an artifact in the marked version. It seems that it should be written out as “four.” Per APA 7 guidelines: Section 6.32, use numerals to express numbers 10 or above (e.g., 11, 23, 256); Section 6.33, write out numbers as words to express numbers up to nine (e.g., three, seven, eight). There are some exceptions (numbers that represent time, etc.). Page 25 to many lines between last paragraph and last heading----last heading is also an orphan Fixed. Thank you Page 26 Trafimov with the red line needs and & Fixed. Thank you Page 31—men really had a mean of 73.8? I thought tha average was 7 The average for men across all three studies was 73.8, but the mode was still 1.0. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Additional Editor Comments_ Plos article.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315291.r004
19 Nov 2024 Decision Letter - Mary Diane Clark, Editor PONE-D-23-30826R2(Mis)estimation of the modal number of desired sexual partnersPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shapiro, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 03 2025 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Mary Diane Clark, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Here you go--if you simply change the discussion it will be a great paper. Besr Diane [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315291.r005
Revision 3
20 Nov 2024 Author Response In response to your comments, we have modified the General Conclusion section of the manuscript so that it more directly calls attention to our findings. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers R2_ Shapiro, Peters, Ahrens.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315291.r006
25 Nov 2024 Decision Letter - Mary Diane Clark, Editor (Mis)estimation of the modal number of desired sexual partners PONE-D-23-30826R3 Dear Dr. Shapiro, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Mary Diane Clark, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you so much for working with us on making the suggested changes. The manuscript is now clearer and contributes important information to the literature. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315291.r007
Formally Accepted
9 Dec 2024 Acceptance Letter - Mary Diane Clark, Editor PONE-D-23-30826R3 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Shapiro, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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 customercare@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. Mary Diane Clark Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315291.r008

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