Video: Extraneous and Confounding Variables
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Confounds
Activity: Identifying Confounds
This activity gives students practice identifying confounds in several descriptions of research. This activity should take approximately 10 minutes. Students could work individually or in groups to identify the confound in each scenario. An answer key is provided. Please click here for the file.
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Exemplar Study: Do Graphic Warnings Make Cigarettes Less Cool? (Mixed Design)
This study examined the effectiveness of graphic warnings (i.e., pictures) for reducing the appeal of tobacco products. In the study, researchers exposed smokers and nonsmokers to combinations of large versus small warning labels and the inclusion versus omission of graphic pictures on three types of tobacco products. For the within-subjects component, each participant saw advertisements
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Exemplar Study: Does Cuteness Make Us Careful? (Mixed Design)
This article examined how the perception of cuteness influences behavioral carefulness, enhancing people’s ability to care for infants. While researchers took physiological measures of heart activity and skin conductance, they exposed participants to a slide show of pictures of either infant animals (kittens and puppies) previously judged as very cute or adult animals (cats and
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Exemplar Study: Can You Accurately Judge Romantic Interest? (Mixed Design)
This study sought to determine whether a third party could discern romantic interest between two strangers. To test this, male and female observers watched video clips of speed-dating situations to determine the individual speed dater’s level of romantic interest toward the speed-dating partner. Participants observed clips of different lengths (10 vs. 30 s), and from
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Exemplar Study: Texting to Ostracize (Factorial Design)
This study sought to determine if a woman’s appearance influences perceptions of her ability to perform a job. Undergraduates rated photographs of women as part of a 2 (Career: office assistant vs. CEO ) X 2 (Appearance: professional attire vs. sexual attire) design. Participants rated photos along several dimensions such as grade point average, organizational
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Exemplar Study: How Does Attire Influence Perceptions of Women in the Workplace? (Factorial Design)
This study sought to determine if a woman’s appearance influences perceptions of her ability to perform a job. Undergraduates rated photographs of women as part of a 2 (Career: office assistant vs. CEO ) X 2 (Appearance: professional attire vs. sexual attire) design. Participants rated photos along several dimensions such as grade point average, organizational
Exemplar Study: Must Be Love on the Brain (Within-Subjects/Repeated-Measures Design)
This research focused on the brain functioning of people in love. Participants who rated themselves as being intensely in love, viewed a photo of their beloved, did a distracter task, and then viewed a photo of a neutral acquaintance while researchers took functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI). Each participant repeated the procedure six times. When
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Exemplar Study: Can Using Obscenities Make You More Persuasive? (Multigroup Design)
This multigroup experiment examined the use of an obscenity on thepersuasiveness of a pro-attitudinal message and on perceptions of thecommunicator. Participants watched one of three versions of a video inwhich the speaker advocated lowering tuition at another university. In thefirst version, the speaker used the word “damn” at the beginning of themessage. In the second
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Exemplar Study: Social Exclusion and Prosocial Behavior (Multigroup Design)
This article indicated that being excluded from social groups leads todecreases in prosocial behavior. Participants received either no feedback on apersonality measure or one of three types of false feedback that indicated afuture full of rewarding relationships, loneliness, or unfortunate accidents.Participants receiving the social exclusion feedback were unwilling tovolunteer for further lab experiments and, after
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Exemplar Study: Tipping in Restaurants (Two-group Design/Simple Experiment)
To evaluate the effect that a helpful message from a server might have on restaurant tips, the server either wrote a message about an upcoming dinner special on the back of the dining check or left it blank. Dining parties who received a check with the helpful message tipped a higher percentage of the final
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Exemplar Study: Smells Like Clean Spirit (Two-group Design/Simple Experiment)
In three studies, the authors examined unconscious influence of smell on behavior. Study 3 used a two-group design to examine the direct effect of citrus scent (exposed vs. nonexposed) on cleaning-related behaviors. The judges recorded the frequency of participants’ crumb removal while eating. Holland, R. W., Hendriks, M., & Aarts, H. (2005). Smells like clean
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