47.375 RESEARCH III: LABORATORY

Dr. Doreen Arcus

Past Experiments

Fall 2001

Shay, Moms and Babies

Examined judgements of attractiveness of women (pretested to be of average attractiveness) when paired with an infant (purportedly the offspring) who was either smiling or crying

Harding and Kim, Victim Deposition Credibility

Examined gender of victim in audiotaped depositions describing crimes and relation to amount of empathy evoked in raters and whether it related to sex role identity

Flaherty and Marolda, Prompting and Self Esteem

Paired prompts (easy-difficult) with anagrams that were easy or difficult and assessed self esteem before and after.

Caples and Holloway, Effects of Cosmetics on Facial Attractiveness

Enhanced the digitized images of faces rated as average in attractiveness and included both plain and made-up images in a large number of faces to see whether attractiveness ratings varied. Also administered shyness inventories to see if judgments varied by personality.

Chenevert and Greathouse, Judgments of Criminality

Varied race of perpetrator in descriptions of criminal activity and asked participants to provide sentencing recommendations

Coyne and Jones, The Effect of Background Music on Task Performance

Varied type of music (classical-electronic) and tempo (fast-slow) to examine variation in reading comprehension for introverts and extraverts

Lussier and Linnehan, Remembering the Most Wanted

Examined the “Mozart effect” on memory for information paired with faces (“wanted” posters) by having participants complete tasks with either classical music or nothing playing in the background

Hutchins, Symptoms, Overt Behavior, and Mental Illness

Varied sex and sexuality of individuals depicted in scenarios in which the persons behavior was described as reflecting personality disorder (DSM-IV) to examine raters judgments of degree of mental illness and expressed empathy toward the person depicted

Seavey, Attitudes toward Exercise

Examined change in attitudes toward exercise after viewing a videotape extolling either the physical or psychological benefits of exercise and used the Bem Sex Role Inventory to see if attitudes or attitude change was related to sex role identity

Jamieson, Rivetts, and Rondeau, Hiring Decisions

Examined likelihood participants would hire applicants for paramedic positions by pairing digitized photos with resumes with gender and weight of the applicants varied.