PSYC 2021 Lecture 2: VARIABLE INFORMATION
12 Mar 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
A true independent variable occurs when subjects arrive for the study and the experimenter randomly assigns them to groups. For example, suppose you"re doing a study in which you want to ind out if playing violent video games makes people more aggressive. So, 40 people show up for the study and you lip a coin and put half of them in one group and half in another. In one group you tell them to play video games and you give them violent video games to play. In the other group you tell them to play video games and you give them only non- violent games to play. Afterward you ask them to ill out an. This is an example of a true independent variable. The experimenter has a lot of control over the situation and if the group watching the violent video games scores higher on the aggressiveness scale, then that was probably caused by playing the violent games.
