Question

Dr. Jeffries, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. She provides lists of 20 words to two groups of participants. The emotion group is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). The neutral group is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). Each group studies the words for 3 minutes. Then, after a 5-min distractor task (watching a video about nature), Dr. Jeffries then measures how many words each group is able to remember. Which of the following is the independent variable in Dr. Jeffries’ study?
A) The emotional or neutral word list.
B) The length of the distractor task.
C) The number of words remembered.
D) The number of words on the list.

Answer 1

Answer:

A) The emotional or neutral word list.

Explanation:

In research there are two types of variables:

• The independent variable refers to the variable that the researcher can manipulate and that will have an effect on the dependent variable.
• The dependent variable is the variable that is being affected by the independent variable and it's the one that the researcher cannot control.

In this example, Dr. Jeffries gives a lists of 20 words to two different groups, one list is very emotional in content and the other is a neutral list. Then he measures how many words each group can remember. We can see that the variable that he can manipulate is the list they are given and the emotional content of each one (which will have an effect on memory, according to him). Thus, the independent variable is the emotional or neutral word list.

Answer 2

Answer:

A) The emotional or neutral word list

Explanation:

An independent variable in a research study, is the variable which when manipulated or changed, brings a change or effect on the dependent variable that is measured. In order words, the independent variable is the variable that is being manipulated, especially in an experimental research design.

In the experiment conducted by Dr. Jeffries, as we can see in the question above, the variable that is manipulated here is the "emotional or neural word list". Therefore, the independent variable in Dr Jeffries' study is the emotional or neutral word list.