Question

Dr. Sanderson is curious as to whether exposing people to violent video games causes them to be more aggressive. She assigns half her participants to play a violent video game for 5 minutes and the other half to play the same game for 25 minutes. Afterward, she has them play a board game and has a well-trained coder determine whether they are very aggressive in their playing style, barely aggressive, or not at all aggressive. She finds that a vast majority of her participants, regardless of group assignment, are rated as very aggressive. This outcome would be known as a(n) _____. floor effect ceiling effect weak manipulation outlier

Answer 1

This outcome would be known as a ceiling effect.

In psychology, the ceiling effect is when a test establishes a range too low for measuring certain variable, that is to say, is when the upper limit (ceiling) of the test is too low, inadequate and not enough for the participants that the test is evaluating.

In this case, the participants are supposed to respond differently since some played violent video games for 5 minutes and other group played for 25 minutes. Since the outcome was that the majority were rated as "very aggressive", it's an indicator that they weren't tested adequately: the range was low, and therefore, it made it easier for some participants to get the score "very aggressive".