Assignment1: Structured Review of Empirical Research

Deadline: Week 4 before the start of your scheduled recitation (see course calendar in syllabus).

Submission policy:
This assignment must be submitted using the Turnitin submission link in your TA’s Blackboard page. Assignments will not be accepted via email under any circumstances. Late assignments, even if by 1 second late, will not be accepted. Technology-related problems will not be an acceptable excuse for failing to submit this assignment by the deadline. Be sure you give yourself plenty of time to resolve any computer issues or questions ahead of the deadline. Please note: Pop-up blockers might prevent a proper upload of your assignment (e.g., turn off your pop-up blocker or use a different internet search engine). No assignments will be accepted even if you have a screenshot of your submission attempt before the deadline, or even if you provide the “last modified” date in a Word doc. Bottom line, the only way you will earn credit is if you submit the assignment before the deadline via Turnitin. You will know you successfully submitted this assignment when you receive an email confirmation from Turnitin; if you do not receive confirmation, you did not properly submit your assignment. It is your responsibility to ensure you properly submitted your assignment.

Academic Integrity policy reminders:
Assignments are to be done entirely independently. If you have questions, ask your TA or Professor Houck for help. Do NOT share your assignment in any form with any student for any reason. Do not ask others for their work. Responses must be in your own words – do not copy/paste things from your article or quote what the researchers say. Doing so violates the academic integrity expectations for this course, and will result in a referral to the Center for Learning and Student Success (CLASS) – the office that handles academic integrity cases.

Purpose:
One of the goals of this course is to teach you how to critically evaluate psychological research. To help accomplish this goal, this assignment involves you evaluating an empirical research paper from a psychology journal.

Directions:

· You must choose an article from the list of options provided at the end of these instructions. If you choose an article that is not on the list, you will receive 0 credit and will not be given an opportunity to redo your work.

· Type your answers to each question provided below (double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font). Failure to use proper grammar and spelling will result in an automatic 2-point deduction.

· Oftentimes empirical papers describe multiple studies within the same paper, so if you choose to read a paper that includes more than one study, please choose only one study to evaluate.

· Do NOT include the actual questions when you submit your assignment to Turnitin. Simply provide the answers, numbering each question on your page.

This assignment is worth a total of 20 points. I encourage you to review the two example assignments I provided to you on Blackboard. This will give you a good sense of what your answers should generally look like.

Please contact your TA with any questions you may have about this assignment.

Questions:

1. Describe what this research is about. What was the purpose of the study? (You should find a description of the study’s aim/purpose in the introduction section of your article.) (2 points)

2. State the primary hypothesis. What did the researchers expect to find? (You should find a description of the study’s hypotheses in the introduction section of your article. Often, but not always, there is a separate section in the article labeled “expectations” or “hypotheses”.) (2 points)

3. Did the researchers use an experiment or a correlational design to test the primary hypothesis? (You should find a description of the research design in the procedure and/or methods sections of the article. As discussed in lecture and in the text, true experiments involve random assignment to conditions or groups; correlational studies investigate associations between variables.) (2 points)

4. Describe one advantage of this research design. (See your lecture notes/text for the advantages of experiments and correlational studies.) (2 points)

5. Describe one limitation of this research design. (See your lecture notes/text for disadvantages of experiments and correlational studies.) (2 points)

6. Who participated in the study, and how many participants were used? (Most typically this information is in the procedure or methods section of the article. N=number of participants) (2 points)

7. If the researchers used an experimental design, what were the primary independent and dependent variables? If a correlational design was used, what variables were measured? (See your lecture notes for a description and examples of independent vs. dependent measures. Sometimes in research articles independent variables are called ‘manipulations’ and dependent measures are called ‘outcome variables’.) (2 points)

8. Describe how the researchers operationalized each primary variable. In other words, how did the researchers measure each variable? (See your text for a description and examples of variables and operational definitions.) (2 points)

9. What did the researchers find? Briefly summarize the main results in your own words. (You will find this information in the results/discussion sections of the article.) (2 points)

10. Describe one limitation of the study. (You will find this information in the discussion and/or conclusion sections of the paper.) (2 points)

List of articles you can choose to read and evaluate

1. Aydin, N., Krueger, J. I., Fischer, J., Hahn, D., Kastenmüller, A., Frey, D., & Fischer, P. (2012). “Man’s best friend:” how the presence of a dog reduces mental distress after social exclusion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 446-449. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.01

2. Barry, A. E., Howell, S. M., Riplinger, A., & Piazza-Gardner, A. K. (2015). Alcohol use among college athletes: Do intercollegiate, club, or intramural student athletes drink differently? Substance use & Misuse, 50(3), 302-307. doi:10.3109/10826084.2014.977398

3. Benka, J., Nagyova, I., Rosenberger, J., Van der Klink, J., Groothoff, J., Van Dijk, J. (2014). Is coping self-efficacy related to psychological distress in early and established rheumatoid arthritis patients? Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 26(3), 285-297. doi:10.1007/s10882-013-9364-y

4. Carpusor, A. G., & Loges, W. E. (2006). Rental discrimination and ethnicity in names. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36(4), 934-952. doi:10.1111/j.0021-9029.2006.00050.x

5. Dorfman, A., Eyal, T., & Bereby-Meyer, Y. (2014). Proud to cooperate: The consideration of pride promotes cooperation in a social dilemma. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 105-109. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2014.06.003

6. Kane, H. S., McCall, C., Collins, N. L., & Blascovich, J. (2012). Mere presence is not enough: Responsive support in a virtual world. Journal of experimental social psychology, 48(1), 37-44.

7. McCarthy, R. J., Coley, S. L., Wagner, M. F., Zengel, B., & Basham, A. (2016). Does playing video games with violent content temporarily increase aggressive inclinations? A pre-registered experimental study. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 67, 13-19. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2015.10.009

8. Musher-Eizenman, D. R., Holub, S. C., Miller, A. B., Goldstein, S. E., & Edwards-Leeper, L. (2004). Body size stigmatization in preschool children: The role of control attributions. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 29(8), 613-620.

9. Stillman, T. F., Baumeister, R. F., Lambert, N. M., Crescioni, A. W., DeWall, C. N., & Fincham, F. D. (2009). Alone and without purpose: Life loses meaning following social exclusion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 686-694. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.03.007

10. Wei, W., Ma, J., & Wang, L. (2015). The ‘warm’ side of coldness: Cold promotes interpersonal warmth in negative contexts. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54(4), 712-727. doi:10.1111/bjso.12108

ASSIGNMENT1

EXAMPLE 1: Experiment

Article: Gray, K. (2010). Moral Transformation: Good and Evil Turn the Weak Into the Mighty. Social Psychological and Personality Science,1(3), 253-258

·
NOTE:
This example assignment was completed using experiment 1 in this paper. Remember that if you read a paper that includes multiple studies like this example paper does, you should choose only one to evaluate.

1. The research examines the impact of doing good on agency.

2. The researcher expected that people would be more agentic after doing an act of good compared to those who did not do a good act.

3. The authors used an experiment to test their hypothesis.

4. Experiments allow for conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships between variables. So in this study in particular, the researcher was able identify whether or not doing a good act causes a person to be more agentic.

5. Because experiments are highly controlled, they can often be more artificial and may not apply to “the real world” outside of the lab setting.

6. Participants included people near a subway station; N= 91

7. The primary independent variable was doing a good act. More specifically, participants assigned to the virtuous condition donated the $1 they were given (doing an act of good), whereas those in the control condition were not given an option to donate any money (no act of good). The primary dependent variable was agency.

8. The independent variable, doing a good act, was measured by participants’ $1 donation to the charity, UNICEF. The dependent variable, agency, was measured by the length of time they held a 5 lbs. weight.

9. Results showed that participants in the virtuous (good act) condition held the 5 lbs. weight longer than participants in the control (no good act) condition. This finding is consistent with the researcher’s hypothesis that doing good leads to more agency/personal strength.

10.

This study only looked at the effect of doing a good act on agency, but did not test the effect of doing an evil act on agency. Subsequent studies in this paper investigated acts of evil.