Question

A psychologist conducted a study at her home during an annual activity of children wearing masks and going door-to-door receiving candy. Some of the children arrived alone, while others arrived in a group. Over the course of the night, the psychologist asked half of the children to remove their masks when they arrived at her door. The remaining half kept their masks on. The psychologist told every child to take only one piece of candy. She then went inside the house, leaving the bowl of candy outside. This gave children the opportunity to take additional candy. The psychologist measured the percentage of children who took additional candy. The psychologist’s hypotheses were that children would take more candy when they were alone and that children would take more candy when they were masked. The results are shown in the graph; assume all differences are significant.

A. Identify the operational definition of the dependent variable in this study.

B. Explain how the data support or do not support each of the psychologist’s hypotheses.

C. Explain why the psychologist cannot generalize her findings to all children.

D. Explain why the study is not a naturalistic observation.

Answer 1

The graph is attached.

Answer:

a) Dependent variable is the variablr that is measured by the psychologist.

Here the dependent variable can be said to be the number of children who collected additional candy.

b) The hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 here are:

H1 : The children would take more candy when they were alone.

H2: The children would take more candy when they were masked.

From the data given(graph attached), the data does not support the hypothesis 1, because from the graph the percentage of children taking additional candy is higher when they are in group.

The given data supports the hypothesis 2 which states that the children would take more candy when they were masked.

c) The psychologist cannot generalize her findings to all children because she only used children in her neighborhood. This can be called sampling bias.

d) This study is not a naturalistic behaviour because the psychologist is manipulating a variable. She may choose to increase or decrease the number of masked or unmasked children.

e)

i) Modeling: In this case, the children may take additional candy because they saw others doing so.

ii) Deindividuation: The chances of the children taking additional candy when they were in group is more likely, because they felt anonymous. That's why the percentage of children who took extra candy was higher when they were in group.

iii) Lawrence Kohlberg’s preconventional stage:

In this case a child may not take additional candy because of avoidance of punishment.