Question

Harrison et al. are conducting a study assessing the ability of depressed versus non-depressed participants to remember negative emotions in a short story about a family whose car breaks down. They plan to ask participants to read the story and then make a list of the emotions expressed in the story. Before beginning the study, they make a list of negative emotions (e.g., sadness and anger) that they will record from the participants’ responses. In this example, negative emotions are the ________. a. operational definition b. significant variable c. independent variable d. dependent variable

Answer 1

Answer:

d. dependent variable

Explanation:

In research, the independent variable is the variable that can be manipulated by the researchers and which will have an effect on another variable that is called the dependent variable. (Therefore, the variable in which the affect is perceived is called the dependent variable).

The researchers don't really  have control over the dependent variable but it is the one that it's being tested and see how it responds to the independent variable.

In this example, the researchers want to see if depression has an effect on the negative emotions being remembered. We can see that they want to see if depression will have this effect. Therefore, since depression might affect the remembering of negative emotions, the negative emotions would be the dependent variable.