Question

Dr. kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. he provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. he puts the names of all the participants in a hat. the first 20 names he assigns to group a and the last 20 he assigns to group b. group a is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e. g., passion, murder). group b is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e. g., houseplant, desk). he then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. he finds that group a remembers 15% more words than group b. which of the following is the independent variable in dr. kang's study?
a) the length of the distraction task
b) the number of words remembered
c) the emotional or neutral word list
d) the number of words on the list

Answer 1

Answer:

c) the emotional or neutral word list

Explanation:

In research, we usually have two different types of variables:

• The independent variable is the one that the researchers can control and that will have an effect on another variable.

• The dependent variable is the one that cannot be control and that is affected by the independent variable. Researchers observe this variable to see how it changes. This is the variable that will be tested or measured.

In other words, the independent variable has an effect on another one and it can actually be controlled by researchers.

In this example, Dr. Kang wants to examine the effects of emotion on memory. In other words, how emotions affect memory. He proceeds to hand a list of words with very emotional content to a group of subjects and a list of neutral words to another group and then measures how many words each group is able to remember. We can see that he thinks emotional words will have an EFFECT on emotion. Also, he can control this variable by handing different lists (emotional or neutral words) to each group. Therefore, this is the independent variable. ( c. the emotional or neutral word list)