Exam 2: Doing Social Psychology Research

Natasha finds that men speak more often in the classroom than do women, and that this is true both when they are assigned to sit in the front of the room and the back of the room.Natasha's study has found a statistically significant effect for

To examine the impact of mood on prosocial behavior, Leila had participants watch a video intended to put them in either a positive or neutral mood before asking them to make a donation to a fictitious charity.Which of the following is the operational dependent variable in this study?

Megumi is running an experiment on the impact of noise level on subsequent aggressive behavior.In one condition, participants experience a loud, annoying noise while trying to complete a task, and then are given a chance later to give another ostensible participant a noise blast, too.In the other condition, the participants do not experience the noise while trying to complete their task; the loud room is also lit more brightly than the quiet room.This difference in the level of light is an example of a(n)

Vera thinks that having pets increases psychological functioning and well-being.To test this, one group of randomly selected nursing home residents is each given a pet while a second group is not.Over two months, the overall level of psychological functioning is evaluated on a daily basis.What is the independent variable in this study?

Britney believes that exposure to violent television increases aggressive behavior by making people's own aggressive thoughts more accessible.Christina believes that violent television increases aggressive behavior by impairing people's cognitive abilities, which in turn makes them worry less about the consequences of their behavior as well as more likely to have aggressive thoughts.If we knew that violent television indeed increases aggressive behavior but knew nothing else on this topic, which of the two theories should we prefer?

The best solution to the problem of experimenter expectancy effects is

Hypotheses must be all of the following except

A factor other than the independent variable that varies between conditions of an experiment is called a(n)

Which of the following correlation coefficients reflects the strongest meaningful relationship?

The purpose of using control groups is to

Which of the following is not a testable hypothesis?

The reliance of many social psychology studies on college student participants poses a threat to

All social psychological research must begin with a(n)

A social dilemma experiment often involves an economic decision-making task in which participants must decide to cooperate or compete with their partner based on various payoffs.Although the format of the experiment does not resemble the real-world decisions participants may make, it is very involving, and participants often become highly competitive.Based on this description, a social dilemma experiment has

According to standard convention, a researcher must be ___ percent sure that the difference she observed between experimental conditions was not simply the result of chance in order to conclude that the difference is statistically significant.

A subject variable in the Ashton-James et al.(2009)study was

The problem with Freudian theory was that

A television producer is interested in whether women like soap operas more than sitcoms.The producer uses a random number table to select a sample of 100 households, and then makes phone calls to these households every afternoon for three weeks.Of those who were home when the producer called, 75% reported they liked soap operas more than sitcoms.Which of the following might raise questions about the results?

In an experiment, the independent variable is _______ while the dependent variable is _______.

Explain the difference between random sampling and random assignment, and indicate how these procedures affect a study's internal and external validity.