Reading the news on the Internet, Johan comes across the headline, "When Stress is Increased, Men Rush Ahead, Women More Cautiou
s." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Lighthall et al., 2011.) In this study, men and women were asked to perform a decision task as many times as possible in a set period, in either a stressed or unstressed condition. In the unstressed condition, men and women performed similarly. However, in the stressed condition, the number of decision tasks performed by menincreased while the number performed by women decreased. Which of the following is a variable in this study?
a. the amount of stress
b. the cause of the stress
c. the length of the set period
d. the decision task type
Variable: In psychological research or experiment, the term variable is defined as something that can either be varied or changed, for example, a value or characteristics. A variable is being used in an experiment to determine to see the effect of the change to one thing will cause the change in the other thing or not.
Types of variables:
1. Independent variables: controlled or manipulated.
2. Dependent variables: gets affected by the independent variable.
3. Control variables: constant.
In the question above, the variable is the amount of stress.
