Dr. Anderson conducts an experiment to see whether exposure to helpful models leads to helping behavior in young children. Of th
e forty girls and boys in his study, half are exposed to helpful models while the other half watch the same models not engaged in helping behavior. In this experiment, the dependent variable is:
Helping behavior is roughly defined as providing aid or benefit to another person in which it doesen't matter what the motivation of the helper is, only that the recipient is assisted. In this experiment, that is the dependent variable. Young children will attempt to imitate those models when they are helping, like a teaching of sorts, but won't have nothing to see in them if the models aren't engaging in this helping behavior.
