Read this made-up research paper: How watching

Read this made-up research paper: How watching foreign movies or TV shows can help people be more empathetic. By Jacquez Moving When it comes to deciding how to spend our free time, a few leisure activities typically top the list. A representative survey showed that watching TV shows or movies is one of the most popular pastimes among Canadians. And according to the survey, when Canadians watch TV shows or movies, approximately 20% of people reported that they watch foreign movies or TV shows, delving into the lives and minds of fictional characters from other cultures. And this is good news! Over recent years, researchers from the University of North claimed that “there is absolutely no better way to develop empathy for other people than watching foreign TV shows or movies”. In Study 1, the researchers, led by Dr. Bail Yuhi, recruited a sample of 200 undergraduate students. These students participated in research studies to receive course credit. Dr. Yuhi deemed the sample diverse and representative, with participants varying in terms of their ethnicity, age, gender, and socio-economic status. Dr. Yuhi asked the participants to report on how many foreign TV shows or movies they watch per year. The participants reported that on average, they watch about 4 per year. Dr. Yuhi also gave the participants a standardized questionnaire called, ‘Sensitivity Scale (SS). The SS is designed to assess people’s accuracy to predict the feelings of other people, as well as their attitudes toward helping other people. The questions on the SS include, “I find it easy to predict other people’s feelings”, “I am willing to help other people when help is needed.” Higher scores on the SS suggest higher emotional sensitivity. Based on self-report, the participants scored an average/mean of 12.45 out of 20 on the SS. To make a comparison, Dr. Yuhi then recruited another sample of participants. Dr. Yui posted an advertisement titled, ‘Requesting for Your Help, Please!’, with enough details about research participation, on two specific websites: foreignmovieforlife.ca and iloveforeignmovies.ca. The two websites are online platforms that people pay yearly subscriptions to join and post reviews and recommendations for others or share information about TV shows or movies they have watched and loved. Dr. Yuhi’s advertisement was to invite these website’s members to volunteer to participate in research. From the two websites, Dr. Yuhi recruited a second sample of 200 participants, equally diverse as the undergraduate students in terms of age, ethnicity, gender, and SES. The participants recruited from these two websites reported that on average, they watch 20 foreign TV shows or movies per year, a higher average score than the student sample’s, which was about 5 per year. And based on self-report, this second sample of 200 participants scored 16.31 out of 20 on the Sensitivity Scale (SS), a higher average score than the student sample’s, which was 12.45 out of 20. From Study 1, Dr. Yuhi and colleagues shared the findings and concluded, “The results comparing the average scores between groups showed that watching more foreign TV shows or movies can cause people to be more empathetic and helpful”. Dr. Yuhi added, “My colleagues and I think this is because watching Foreign movies or shows about a fictional person gives people a view inside someone else’s head. People get to see what the characters’ perspective on the world is like, how they think, and what they feel. And this helps them practice using the parts of their brain that help to understand real people”. To see if similar findings would be found, Dr. Yuhi and colleagues conducted another study (Study 2) to show that watching foreign movies or TV shows about fictional characters lets people feel the world through the characters’ eyes and ears. In this study, a sample of 200 research participants were asked to watch a short clip of a foreign film. In this clip, the main character nervously played a trombone at a concert. While watching the film clip, participants had their brain activities measured with a device (an electroencephalogram, EEG). Watching the film activated the regions of left and right temporal lobes in the brain, the areas of the brain involved in auditory experiences. From Study 2, Dr. Yuhi and colleagues shared the findings and concluded, “So, the EEG measurement of brain activity showed that when participants watched a main character playing trombone at a concert, it caused their brains to mirror and simulate that same experience of being at a concert, which then helps them understand what the character in the film is feeling. Watching foreign TV shows or movies is the way to help develop empathy.” And the benefits of watching foreign films or shows don’t seem to be limited by age. In the last study (Study 3), Dr. Yuhi recruited and randomly assigned school-aged children to two groups. For the control group, Dr. Yuhi was introduced to the children by their teacher who explained that Dr. Yuhi was a visitor to their school. Dr. Yuhi then pretended to accidentally drop a large collection of DVDs being carried, and the teacher in the classroom asked the children to volunteer to help Dr. Yuhi pick them up. About 40% of the children in this control group volunteered. For the experimental group, a similar introduction to the children by their teacher was staged. After the children were introduced to Dr. Yuhi and before Dr. Yuhi pretended to accidentally drop the DVDs, Dr. Yuhi interacted with the children and watched together one of the DVDs, a short foreign film depicting a fictional story about a man who feels bad and embarrassed because he is often clumsy and breaks or drops things. Then afterwards, when Dr. Yuhi dropped the DVDs and the teacher in the classroom asked the children to volunteer to help Dr. Yuhi, about 80% of the children did so. “This is really interesting”, said Dr. Yuhi, “because all the children in both groups were being watched by their teacher – so you would think they would all be feeling equal pressure to be helpful”. Dr. Yuhi added, “but the difference in helping behavior was 40% versus 80% between the two groups. Watching the foreign film really seemed to have a big impact on whether or not more children actually helped.” Dr. Yuhi concluded, “My colleagues and I think that by watching a foreign film about how bad it feels to be clumsy, the children developed more empathy for clumsy people, and so were more willing to help me out when I dropped the DVDs.” Dr. Yuhi repeated, “as you can see, there is absolutely no better way to develop empathy for other people and be helpful than watching foreign TV shows or movies”. Then answer below: a) identify and describe 2 of the 6 principles of scientific thinking that the research fails to follow. The research may do a good job of following some of these 6 scientific principles, but there are some that it does not do a good job of following. Your job is to try to find the scientific principles that the research does not do a good job of following. ● For each principle, first, you should describe the principle in your own words (e.g., describe in your own words what it means to rule out an alternative explanation). ● Then you should explain exactly why you think the research does not do a good job of following that principle (e.g., describe the alternative explanation that the research did not rule out). ● Finally, you should say what would need to be done to make sure the research follows the principle (e.g., say how the research might rule out the alternative explanation). b) identify and describe 2 of the 6 issues related to research methodology. The research description also contains one (or more) issues related to research methodology. So, identify and describe flaws in research methodology or flaws in the conclusions made using the research methodology. You are expected to: ● In your own words, you should first define the issue related to research methodology (e.g., confounding variables). ● Then, you should provide a clear explanation of how there are flaws specifically in the research description, regarding the select issue. Be sure to describe the relevant example(s) from the research description. ● Finally, you should provide specific suggestions of what the researcher needs to do to improve the research methodology regarding the issue. Useful Resources: The six guiding principles are: 1. Ruling out rival hypotheses/Ruling out alternative explanations 2. Correlation is not causation 3. Falsifiability 4. Replicability 5. Extraordinary claims 6. Parsimony (a.k.a. Occam’s razor) 1. Ruling out rival hypotheses/ Ruling out alternative explanations Usually the results of any single study are consistent with several different hypotheses. Additional research is often needed to decide which hypothesis is best supported. When looking at a pattern of results that has been reported from a study, it is important to ask, “are there any alternative hypotheses that could explain this pattern of data?” That is, we should consider whether there are any other reasons why the researchers might have found the particular results that they found in their study. Maybe there was a confounding variable in an experiment that could offer a different explanation for the results, other than the one that the researchers have given. The rival hypotheses that are most important to acknowledge are those that could explain the specific pattern of results that has been found in the study. It is useful to consider how we could attempt to rule out these alternative hypotheses. 2. Correlation isn’t causation When two things are associated with each other – known as a correlation between two things (a statistical association), it does not necessarily mean there is a cause and effect relationship between them. If a pattern of results was produced simply by measuring two different things and comparing them, we cannot say anything for sure about whether one of these things caused the other; all we can say is that the two things go together. Also, when a causal claim (e.g., A causes B) is made from a correlation, it’s always important to ask whether the causal connection could be reversed (i.e., B causes A) or whether a third variable could explain the relationship (i.e., A and B do not cause each other; instead C causes A and B to go together). If there is Assignment #2 Guidelines, PSY102 more than one possible pattern of cause-and-effect that could result in a correlation, we cannot use that correlation as evidence that any one specific pattern is necessarily true. 3. Falsifiability Scientific claims must be falsifiable, i.e., capable of being disproved. In other words, we should be able to think of a way to test whether or not a claim is true; there should be data we can collect that tell us if our hypothesis is likely to be true or false. For a claim to be falsifiable, it has to be stated prior to collecting evidence. If the claim is made in such a way that there’s no good way to test it, the claim is not really scientific. In science, we should always be open to the possibility that our ideas are wrong. If there is no data that could convince us that our ideas are wrong, then our ideas are not properly scientific. 4. Replicability Scientific findings must be capable of being duplicated following the same methodology. In other words, will it be possible for independent scholars to duplicate the study? Are the research methods used in the study described succinctly and clearly enough for other independent scholars to replicate and verify the results? In science, other people must be able to follow the methods and should get similar results. In addition, the most reliable claims are those that have converging evidence for them. We can only really be confident in a claim if it has been tested in multiple different ways and all of them point to the same effect. The more incidents that a research finding is replicated using different participants in different settings, the more the research claim is validated. 5. Extraordinary claims Is the evidence as convincing as the claims? Science is, for the most part, a cumulative process, where new claims represent small advances over older ones. A claim that contradicts what we already know through prior evidence, or that seems to promise to completely explain or solve a complex problem in a new way, must have a lot of evidence to back it up. The bigger the claim, the more evidence must be provided. Assignment #2 Guidelines, PSY102 6. Parsimony (a.k.a. Occam’s razor) If two hypotheses explain a phenomenon equally well, in science we generally prefer the simpler explanation. The simpler explanation is not necessarily correct, but we should start by using that explanation and only make a more complicated one when the simple explanation cannot account for our results. In other words, we shouldn’t make our explanations more complicated than necessary. In addition to the six guiding principles to scientific thinking, a number of issues related to research methodology have been discussed in this course. Below are some examples of things you might look for in the research description: (Remember though that not every issue will relate to the research description) 1. Lack of a control group 2. Confounding variables 3. Unrepresentative or biased sample 4. Validity of the measures 5. Social desirability bias/positive impression management 6. Reactivity 1. Lack of a control group Remember that in experimental designs, experimental groups are created by manipulating the independent variable (e.g., different durations of very loud music played to research participants) to try to determine the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable (e.g., to test if playing loud music for a long time increases irritability in participants). However, we also need to study a control group for which the independent variable has not been manipulated (in this case, a group of participants who did not listen to any music). It is the comparison of the experimental group with the control group that tells us the effect of the manipulation of the independent variable. If the research description describes an experiment, was there a control group? If lacking a control group, how might that change the interpretation of the study findings? 2. Confounding variables In experimental designs, when conducting an experiment, a confounding variable is something that systematically differs between the experimental and control groups, which confounds (or confuses) our interpretation of the study. In other words, the presence of a confounding variable means that we can’t be sure whether the independent variable (i.e., the thing we deliberately Assignment #2 Guidelines, PSY102 manipulated between the experimental and control groups) or the confounding variable (i.e., something that also varies between the experimental and control groups, but which we did not mean to vary) is responsible for the results of the study. If the research description describes an experiment, does that experiment contain a confounding variable? If it does, could the confounding variable be an alternative explanation for the results of the study? 3. Unrepresentative or biased sample Unrepresentative or biased sample refers to the possibility that the sample of participants in the research description may not reflect the full range of people about whom we are interested in making conclusions (i.e., the population). In other words, is it possible that the researchers studied only a small and/or biased sample of people? Using which method was the sample of participants recruited? Did the researchers use any necessary methods to try to minimize the bias? And if the researchers make claims about Canadian people in general, but there was something about the sample of people they studied that made them different from the general population, then this is potentially a problem. If researchers studied a biased sample, try to think about how the biased sample may have affected the results that the researchers found. 4. Validity of the measures Validity of the measures refers to the of whether or not we are sure that we are really measuring the thing we want to measure. For example, if a study claims to show an influence on people’s creativity, try to think about whether or not the measures that are used are really measures of creativity. Do they measure everything we might want to call creativity or not? Do they even measure creativity at all, or are they perhaps measuring something else instead? So, in general, try to think about what the researchers claim to have measured. Then, compare what they say they have measured with what they actually measured. Are those things the same, or are the researchers’ measures not really measuring what they say they are? 5. Social desirability bias/positive impression management Social desirability bias/positive impression management refers to the possibility that people may not always tell the truth when asked questions or may attempt to improve their performance on a task to impress the experimenter. In other Assignment #2 Guidelines, PSY102 words, is it possible that participants in the research description intentionally gave untruthful answers in response to questions in order to look good? Consider what effect this might have on the results from the researcher’s study. Perhaps the researchers will end up obtaining results that won’t reflect people’s behavior outside of their specific study. 6. Reactivity Reactivity is for when a research procedure selected for the study changes participants’ behavior. In observational designs, observation is the main research procedure selected for the study. And reactivity refers to how the act of observing someone might change their behaviour and in turn, also change the data you collect about them. In thinking about this issue, consider whether it is possible that the participants in a study might have changed their behaviour just because they knew that they were being observed by the researcher. Also consider, if participants probably did change their behaviour because they knew they were being observed, what effect that might have on the results from the study. If participants react to being observed by changing their behaviour, then researchers may no longer be studying the kind of natural behaviour that they really wanted to observe SCIENCE HEALTH SCIENCE NURSING PSYCHOLOGY CPSY605

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