A Researcher Conducts an Experiment in Which Half of the Number

A researcher conducts an experiment in which half of the number of participants read a story designed to reduce prejudice (story group) , whereas the other half read material unrelated to prejudice (control group) . After reading the material, half of the participants describe a minority group while alone, and the other half describes a minority group in the presence of their peers. The dependent variable is the number of positive statements made about the minority group. The mean number of positive statements in the four conditions was: $\begin{array}{l}&\text { Alone }&\text { Peer }\\\text { Control } & 1 & 2 \\\text { Story } & 5 & 1\end{array}$ Although the final conclusions would be based on statistical significance tests, these results indicate a(n) _____.

A) lack of effect of the control versus story variable
B) main effect of the alone versus peer group variable
C) absence of interaction between the two variables
D) increase in prejudice among participants in the story group