Question 1

In one well-known social psychological study, research participants were asked to make very easy perceptual judgments ("Is Line A longer than Line B?"). The catch was that they were asked to do this while sitting around a table with people who continually gave incorrect responses-people who appeared to be other regular research participants. In reality, however, the other people at the table were not real participants at all; they were actually actors who were working for the experimenter and just posing as participants. The question in this research was whether or not the real research participant would conform to the group's opinion (even though the group's opinion was obviously wrong) or whether the real participant would stick to the right answer. In psychological jargon, the "actors" in this study would be referred to as ____.

Accepted Answer

The actors in this study would be referred to as confederates. A confederate is an individual who appears to be a participant in a study but is actually working on behalf of the experimenter. They play a specific role in the study, such as providing incorrect responses in a conformity study, in order to manipulate the behavior of the actual research participant.

Question 2

If a researcher conducts an experiment in which the independent variable is poorly defined (i.e., has a poor operational definition), then the experiment can be said to have ____.

Accepted Answer

Low construct validity of the cause is the correct answer because the independent variable (the cause) is poorly defined, which directly affects how well the concept being investigated is operationalized or measured. This does not necessarily speak to the internal or external validity directly, nor does it directly affect the construct validity of the effect (the dependent variable).

Question 3

True experiments have two key features that make them different from other studies. First, in a true experiment, the researcher manipulates (varies) one or more independent variables. Second, the researcher makes use of _____.

Accepted Answer

Random assignment is the second key feature of a true experiment, as it helps to control for extraneous variables and ensures that groups being compared are equal at the start of the study. Statistical testing, interactions, and priming may also be used in true experiments, but they are not unique to this type of study.

Question 4

If a study is high in internal validity, then the researcher can be fairly certain that changes in the ____ were indeed due to changes in the ____.

Accepted Answer

Internal validity refers to the degree to which a researcher can conclude that changes in the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable, and that the relationship between the two is not influenced by extraneous variables. Therefore, high internal validity is achieved when the changes in the dependent variable are clearly and directly attributable to changes in the independent variable. Option B correctly identifies the independent and dependent variables, indicating that changes in the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable, allowing for high internal validity.

Question 5

When a researcher conducts an experiment and is fairly certain that changes in the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable, that experiment is said to be high in ____.

Accepted Answer

Internal validity refers to the extent to which a researcher can confidently conclude that changes in the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable. Therefore, an experiment that is high in internal validity is one in which the researcher is fairly certain that the manipulation of the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable.

Question 6

Jackson is interested in the effects of violent movies on aggressive behavior. He has some participants in his study watch Grand Torino (his "violent" movie) and others watch Marley and Me (his "nonviolent" movie). Unfortunately, in addition to these movies being very different in their violence level, they also differ in a lot of other ways (one is a comedy, the other isn't, and so forth). This means that Jackson's study has a ____.

Accepted Answer

The fact that the two movies differ in multiple ways other than just their level of violence means that there is a confound in Jackson's study. A confound is any factor other than the independent variable that differs between the experimental and control groups and could potentially explain the results. This makes it difficult to determine whether any observed differences in aggressive behavior between the two groups are due to the violence in the movie or some other difference between the groups (such as the genre of the movie).

Question 7

In a ____, the researcher is able to manipulate an independent variable but NOT able to use random assignment.

Accepted Answer

Quasi-experiments allow for the manipulation of an independent variable, but lack random assignment to groups due to practical or ethical limitations. Field experiments involve manipulating variables in real-world settings, correlational studies do not involve manipulation of variables, and case studies involve in-depth analysis of a single individual or group.

Question 8

Researchers tend to use quasi-experimental research designs when they are able to manipulate an independent variable but NOT able to ____.

Accepted Answer

Quasi-experimental designs are used when researchers are unable to use random assignment, which is an essential feature of true experimental designs. Due to this limitation, the quasi-experimental design can often lead to less control over confounding variables, which results in a weaker causality claim than those of true experimental designs. Random sampling, statistical tests, and the number of research participants are not related to the ability to manipulate an independent variable.

Question 9

Dr. Zink and Dr. Vasquez are designing a new study. They have come up with a good hypothesis for the study, but they are having trouble thinking of operational definitions for their variables. In other words, they are concerned that their research might be low in ____.

Accepted Answer

Construct validity refers to how well a test or experiment measures up to its claims. If Dr. Zink and Dr. Vasquez are struggling with operational definitions for their variables, it means they might have difficulty ensuring that their study accurately assesses the theoretical constructs they're interested in, thus affecting the study's construct validity.

Question 10

Suppose that you are conducting an experiment to see whether receiving negative feedback from an authority figure will increase eating behavior. After writing an essay, half of your research participants are given negative feedback from a professor, and half are given encouraging feedback. All participants are then placed in a room with a large container of cookies and their eating behavior is observed. In this study, an operational definition for the dependent variable might be ____.

Accepted Answer

The dependent variable in this study is the eating behavior of the participants, which is observed and measured by the number of cookies each participant eats. A and D are not relevant as they pertain to the independent variable (the type of feedback) and a procedural detail (how long the feedback was given). B is not relevant to the study at all.

Question 11

What is the main advantage of an experiment over a correlational study?

Accepted Answer

The main advantage of an experiment over a correlational study is that the researcher is better able to draw conclusions about cause and effect. In correlational studies, researchers can only determine if there is a relationship between variables, but cannot determine if one variable causes the other. In experiments, researchers can manipulate an independent variable and observe the effect on a dependent variable, which allows for stronger conclusions to be made about causal relationships.

Question 12

Dr. Taylor is conducting a study to test the effect of a new drug on people's ability to concentrate at work. His research sample consists of 100 US adults. During a 14-week period, half of the sample is administered the drug and the other half is administered a placebo, and participants' concentration abilities are continually tracked. In the context of this study, if Dr. Taylor uses random assignment, it means that ____.

Accepted Answer

Random assignment means that each research participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each level of the independent variable. This helps to ensure that any differences in the outcome between the two groups can be attributed to the drug or the placebo and not to pre-existing differences between the groups. It does not necessarily impact the external validity or representativeness of the sample, or the statistical significance of the findings.

Question 13

Which of the following research designs allows researchers the MOST control over the variables they are studying?

Accepted Answer

Laboratory experiments are the research designs that allow researchers the most control over the variables they are studying. In a laboratory experiment, researchers have the ability to manipulate the independent variable and control extraneous variables, which allows them to establish causal relationships between variables. Quasi-experiments and field experiments have less control over variables, as quasi-experiments involve a pre-existing or naturally occurring independent variable, and field experiments involve manipulating variables in real-world settings, which can lead to extraneous variables. Correlational studies only examine the relationship between variables without manipulating them, so they have even less control over variables.

Question 14

Suppose that you are planning to conduct a study to look at the effect of pet ownership on empathy, but that you cannot find any good measures of empathy (all of the measures that you find seem to fall short of your understanding of what empathy is, or to miss the mark completely). Unless you can find a measure that you are satisfied with, your research may end up being low in ____.

Accepted Answer

Without a good measure of empathy, it is difficult to establish the construct validity of the effect (the relationship between pet ownership and empathy). This could weaken the overall construct validity of the study. However, internal validity (the degree to which a study measures what it intends to measure) and external validity (the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other populations or settings) may not be affected as much by a lack of a good measure of empathy. The construct validity of the cause (pet ownership) is assumed to be established since it is the independent variable being manipulated in the study.

Question 15

In psychology, the word "confederate" is used to refer to ____.

Accepted Answer

In psychology, the word "confederate" usually refers to a research assistant who poses as a participant during the course of a research study in order to help create a certain situation. They are often used in social psychology experiments to manipulate social situations and measure the effects on participants' behavior and attitudes.

Question 16

Dr. Pow is interested in whether exposure to TV advertisements has a different impact on girls' self-image than it does on boys' self-image. To examine this question, she conducts a quasi-experiment. Why doesn't Dr. Pow conduct a true experiment instead?

Accepted Answer

Dr. Pow cannot conduct a true experiment because gender is not a variable that can be manipulated or randomly assigned.

Question 17

Suppose that you are working as a research assistant for a social psychologist. To assist her with a research study, the social psychologist asks you to stand in a laboratory waiting room with research participants, act as though you are a research participant yourself, and then pretend to have an epileptic seizure. (The social psychologist is interested in how many people will try to help you.) In other words, your task is to be a ____ in the research.

Accepted Answer

A confederate is a person who is working with the researcher and appears to be a research participant, but is actually helping to carry out the study in some way. In this case, the research assistant is pretending to have a seizure to see how many participants will help, making them a confederate in the study.

Question 18

Suppose that a cereal manufacturer tried out a new cereal box design for a few months, and-during the same time period-notices that its sales have tripled. One of the cereal executives, Mr. Correl, boasts that the new cereal box must have sparked the increase in sales. But another executive, Mr. Scien, points out that the increase could be due to the new advertising campaign that the company is using, or to new distribution practices that have taken hold, or to the fact that more and more people are eating cereal these days. That is, Mr. Scien suggests that the company's "test" of the new cereal box design is low in ____.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Suppose that a cereal manufacturer tried out...

Question 19

A study is said to have internal validity if the researcher can be relatively confident that ____.

Accepted Answer

Internal validity refers to the extent to which changes in the dependent variable are actually caused by the independent variable and not some other factor. Therefore, option B is the best choice. Option A refers to external validity, which refers to whether or not the findings can be generalized to other populations; option C refers to construct validity, which refers to whether the operational definitions of the variables are accurate; and option D refers to sampling validity, which refers to whether the sample was representative of the population of interest.

Question 20

A(n) ____ is someone who works for a researcher by serving as an "actor" in the research (e.g., pretending to be another research participant, and being mean to other research participants in order to see how participants respond to meanness).

Accepted Answer

A confederate is someone who works with a researcher by pretending to be another research participant or by performing specific actions as part of the research design. They serve as "actors" in the research, and their behavior is controlled and manipulated by the researcher to test various hypotheses or theories.

Quiz 1: The Mission and the Method

If a researcher conducts an experiment in which the independent variable is poorly defined (i.e., has a poor operational definition) , then the experiment can be said to have ____.