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A clinical psychology researcher uses a voluntary sign-up sheet to recruit participants for a study examining cognitive processing speeds during challenging puzzle tasks. In one to three sentences, apply the volunteer characteristics of 'IQ' and 'need for approval' documented by Rosenthal & Rosnow (1976) to predict how these traits might bias the performance outcomes of this study.
Question: A clinical psychology researcher uses a voluntary sign-up sheet to recruit participants for a study examining cognitive processing speeds during challenging puzzle tasks. In one to three sentences, apply the volunteer characteristics of 'IQ' and 'need for approval' documented by Rosenthal & Rosnow (1976) to predict how these traits might bias the performance outcomes of this study.
Sample answer: Since volunteers tend to have a higher IQ on average, the sample will likely perform better on cognitive processing speed tasks than the general population. Additionally, their greater need for approval might cause them to exert more effort or persist longer on the challenging puzzles, artificially inflating the performance results.
Key points:
- Volunteers on average have higher IQs, leading to higher performance on cognitive tasks compared to the general population.
- Volunteers have a greater need for approval, which can lead to increased effort or persistence on challenging tasks.
- Applying these traits shows the study's outcomes will likely be biased toward higher performance.
Feedback: Correct answers should apply the higher IQ characteristic of volunteers to predict elevated cognitive performance, and the greater need for approval characteristic to predict increased effort/persistence, explaining how these factors lead to a biased overestimation of cognitive processing speeds.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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A clinical psychology researcher uses a voluntary sign-up sheet to recruit participants for a study examining cognitive processing speeds during challenging puzzle tasks. In one to three sentences, apply the volunteer characteristics of 'IQ' and 'need for approval' documented by Rosenthal & Rosnow (1976) to predict how these traits might bias the performance outcomes of this study.