I read the paper, and agree with your impression of its quality. With training, it is possible to navigate a shaky field like social psychology, so I'll provide my estimates here.
The paper was written in 2013, so it's not pre-registered.
The sample size of 39 is suspicious given its date. People became upset about junk papers two years before, so the authors should have known better. However, I would hesitate to draw conclusions about the integrity of the paper's authors, because each participant was paid $60, which makes expanding the sample size somewhat expensive.
The authors declared no conflicting interests, but I looked up the first author and he has major conflicts of interest.
Combining these factors, I'd adjust the p-value from .02 to .45, if it were a pre-registered paper which you have pre-committed to read. This paper is worthless.
The paper was written in 2013, so it's not pre-registered.
The sample size of 39 is suspicious given its date. People became upset about junk papers two years before, so the authors should have known better. However, I would hesitate to draw conclusions about the integrity of the paper's authors, because each participant was paid $60, which makes expanding the sample size somewhat expensive.
The authors declared no conflicting interests, but I looked up the first author and he has major conflicts of interest.
The last author, DeSteno, is ranked very poorly at https://replicationindex.com/2021/01/19/personalized-p-value....
Combining these factors, I'd adjust the p-value from .02 to .45, if it were a pre-registered paper which you have pre-committed to read. This paper is worthless.