Ch. 3

(From p. 62)

State IV and DV
Operational definition of IV, DV
Statement of hypothesized relationship between IV, DV
Statement of how this relationship will be tested

Learning how to write the Introduction

eg. See PSY254 link but, expand!

e.g., Ch. 15

Stages of the Introduction:

1. introduce your topic area in a clever way

• this allows you to introduce your topic in a broad way, with the goal of getting more specific

"Beauty is only skin deep". This is something that most people have heard at some point in their life. But is this applied in the real world?" (Schuchman, Weber& Shaw, 1997)

2. What has been done on your topic in the past?

"Those perceived as attractive are evaluated more positively than less attractive individuals (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972). Similar results were found using Chinese students which indicates this phenomenon is cross-cultural (Wuensch, Chia, Castellow, Chuang & Cheng, 1993). According to research on rape, attractiveness has been found to have an effect on decisions of guilt (Jacobsen & Popovich, 1993). In further mock jury experiments, subjects in deliberation were more likely to give attractive defendants the benefit of the doubt and acquit them more than unattractive defendants (MacCoun, 1990). These findings suggest that most people do not ascribe to the notion of being only skin deep but rather beautiful people are perceived as better people all around"

3. Identify a controversy in the research, that your study will ultimately resolve.

"There is however contradictory research. In domestic violence cases, the effect of physical attractiveness played no significant role in juridical decision-making according to studies conducted by Burke, Ames, Etherington and Pietsch (1990). McKelvie and Coley (1993) found similar results. They determined that sentencing and severity of treatment of an offender previously found guilty was not a function of the attractiveness of the offender. However, McKelvie and Coley (1993) did find that psychiatric care was recommended more for less attractive robbers. These results seem to suggest that the average person believes there is something innately wrong with unattractive individuals"

• using critical analysis to identify a controversy
• contradictory research



• poor logic, bad assumptions



• operational definitions



• confounding variables



• demand characteristics



• lack of causation



• realism

Can the results they got be explained by a reason other than how they explain it? How?

Eg., "highly identified sports fans explained victory by focusing on their talents, but explained failure by focusing on bad luck."

Ask yourself what else could this be due to (other than their IV=identification)

what's the confound?	Gender
how could it have confounded the results?	Could gender explain why highly identified sports fans were using this self-serving bias e.g., men more likely to use self-serving bias given socialization
a partial concluding statement about how the IV may be related to the DV because of the confound	"therefore, high identifiers may have showed more self-serving bias because they were men"
statement on how your alteration would yield different scores on the DV	"If we were to redesign the study to include women, we might see that female high identifiers would show less self-serving bias given their socialization.

what's the confound?	Sample
how could it have confounded the results?
a partial concluding statement about how the IV may be related to the DV because of the confound
statement on how your alteration would yield different scores on the DV

4. Becoming specific:

• This study seeks to address this problem by...
• end with hypothesis for your study