Case Study

Based on your understanding of the last name effect as a negative relationship, explain how you would expect the response times of Xavier and Adams to compare. Justify your explanation by explaining the underlying concept of a negative relationship using these specific participants.

Case context: A researcher is conducting a study on consumer behavior. They collect data on participants' last names and how quickly they respond to an email promotion. A participant named Xavier (whose last name begins with 'X', alphabetical position 2424) and a participant named Adams (whose last name begins with 'A', alphabetical position 11) both receive the promotion at the same time.

Question: Based on your understanding of the last name effect as a negative relationship, explain how you would expect the response times of Xavier and Adams to compare. Justify your explanation by explaining the underlying concept of a negative relationship using these specific participants.

Sample answer: According to the last name effect, which is a negative relationship, we would expect Xavier to respond faster to the email promotion than Adams. Xavier's last name starts with 'X', which has a high alphabetical position (2424), whereas Adams's last name starts with 'A', which has a low alphabetical position (11). In a negative relationship, as one variable increases, the other decreases. Therefore, the higher alphabetical position of Xavier's name is associated with a lower (faster) response time value, while the lower alphabetical position of Adams's name is associated with a higher (slower) response time value.

Key points:

  • Xavier is expected to have a faster response time than Adams.
  • Xavier's last name has a higher alphabetical position than Adams's last name.
  • A negative relationship means that a higher value on one variable (alphabetical position) is associated with a lower value on the other variable (response time).
  • Adams's lower alphabetical position is associated with a higher/slower response time.

Rubric: The response must correctly identify that Xavier is expected to respond faster than Adams. It must explain this prediction using the definition of a negative relationship (higher position in alphabet correlates with lower/faster response time value).

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Updated 2026-05-27

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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU

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