Practice applying the issues in
Kantowitz

1. A social psychologist interested in the effects of alcohol abuse conducted the following study. He mailed questionnaires to the homes of workers who had been laid off from a local automobile plant. The surveys were mailed at various time intervals and the workers were asked to fill them out anonymously and return them. Information about the amount of alcohol consumption before and after the layoff was obtained. Fifty percent of the surveys were completed and returned during the course of the research. The researcher found a very strong positive relationship between alcohol consumption and duration of unemployment. In his report the researcher stated that, "the conditions of unemployment produce a tendency for people to increase their intake of alcohol." If you were the editor in charge of deciding whether this work should be published, what would your judgment be? Explain.

2. An experimenter interested in behavior modification decided to develop a new cure for fingernail biting. The cure he devised was a variant of cognitive or covert behavior modification in which the client was supposed to think about unpleasant events each time he or she bit a fingernail. Specifically, the experimenter had college-aged participants who bit their nails come to his office for a training session. The participants were instructed to think about the horrible mutilation of their fingers each time they chewed on a fingernail. Furthermore, they were supposed to think about how childish and immature the habit was, and they were also supposed to imagine how revolting and disgusting the chewing of fingernails was. The psychologist examined the nails of his participants prior to the onset of the treatment and again three weeks later. The results showed that 87% of the students had significantly better fingernails two weeks later. The researcher concluded that the experiment was a success. The covert thoughts caused a marked decrease in nail biting. Do you agree with this conclusion? Explain.

3. A student researcher hypothesizes that people who listen to classical music are more intelligent than those who do not. To test this hypothesis, she questions 1000 participants about their music listening habits and obtains their SAT scores. In support of her hypothesis, she finds that these two variables are highly correlated. In general, the more classical music a student listened to, the higher his or her SAT score was.

The researcher then claims that “the data prove that listening to classical music increases a person’s intelligence.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Please explain.

4. A researcher is interested in studying the effect of environmental stress on the performance of various cognitive tasks. The environmental stressor is the temperature level in the experimental chamber. The researcher selects three different temperatures (40 F, 70 F, and 90 F) for the levels of stress to be included in the experiment. Because the experimenter worked at an all male school, only male participants were in the study. The task selected for the first experiment is a forced-choice reaction time task in which one of two stimuli requiring a quick response is presented on each trial. Participants are instructed to respond quickly and accurately.

The psychologist thinks that stress will lead to a decrease in reaction time. The psychologist does not have a lot of money in his grant so he decides to test each participant in each condition during the 90-minute testing session. Each participant is first tested in the 90 condition, then the 70 condition, and finally in the 40 condition. Each participant is given 30 trials per condition.

The results showed that the participant mean reaction times for the three conditions were as follows:

TemperatureMean Reaction Time

40 F430 msec

70 F487 msec

90 F525 msec

Statistical analyses of the mean reaction times revealed that each of the three conditions was reliably different from the other two conditions. The researcher concluded that thermal stress increases reaction time (makes responses slower).

(a) Please clearly list the independent and dependent variable(s).

(b) Should the researcher’s conclusion be accepted? Please explain why or why not.