Mediator/moderator?

Remembering a negative event with a romantic partner leads students to be in a bad mood. This, in turn, decreases relationship satisfaction. What is the mediator or moderator?

Mediator/moderator?

• Dr. Dialogue reports that children with authoritative parents increase in self-esteem as they get older. Children of indulgent parents do not increase in self-esteem with age. What is the mediator or moderator?

Experiments

• Manipulates at least one variable
• Random assignment to conditions

Control in experiments

• Experimental vs. control group
• Control over situation
• Control variable

Normal rats and rats who are unable to smell are tested in a T-maze with food as the goal. Time to the goal is recorded. Name the variables.

A social psychologist does an experiment to determine whether room temperature affects aggression. Male and female participants sit alone in a room that is either 60 degrees, 70 degrees, or 80 degrees for 30 minutes, after which their aggressive tendencies are measured. Name the variables.

Male and female confederates pretend to have locked their keys in their car in a deserted parking lot. The responses of male and female bystanders (randomly assigned to either the male or the female confederate condition) are measured. Name a problem of external validity. Name a potential confound.

Advantages/disadvantages of experiments

• Control
• Causality
• May not be real world (field exps.)
• May be impossible for some variables
• Reactivity

Reactivity

• Hawthorne effect
• Demand characteristics
• Placebo effect

Ways to reduce reactivity

• Field exps.
• Deception
• Disguise DV
• Adequate controls
• Blind to hypothesis
• Simulated exp.
• Question at debriefing

Experimenter bias

• Ways to reduce
• Train experimenter
• Protocol
• Run all conditions together
• Automate the study
• Double blind study