APA final paper

PY-325-1

Exp. Meth.& Research Design

12-2-2019

Introduction Comment by LT: Rather than putting “Introduction” here, you need to put the title of your paper.

This is a practical experiment that seeks to determine if people can be influenced by a sign and change their routine behaviors. Buck (2019) conducted a sign-influencing behavior study among concerning gender roles and found out that men are more willing to help a woman who appears to be attractive than women would helpare. Yoder, Hogue, Newman, Metz, and LaVigne et al. (2002) also conducted an experiment on door holding among genders, and it emerged that there was a strong pattern of male holding doors for female during dating and not in real every-day life. This displayed a behavioral subtlety among men because they are sexually attracted to womenthe female. Nettle, Nott, & and Bateson (2012) decided to put a sign up to scare away the ever- increasing bicycle theft in the community. The findings were that it was extremely cheap and simple to put a sign stating that there was a surveillance watching the bicycle thieves even when it was not actually there because it greatly led to the reduced theft of bicycles within the locations. This was a benefit that resulted from the engagement of psychology of the thieves to think that they were being watched when they were not. Comment by LT: Your paper should be doubled spaced. Comment by LT: When you are reviewing previous research, you need to include a bit more detail than you have. You should mention the purpose, participants, very briefly describe the methods, and then present the results/conclusions.

Ford & Torok (2008) evaluated whether a signage would influence the behavior of the people to use the stairway instead of an elevator. The findings of the authors were that the sign motivating people to use the stairway led to an 18.6% increase in the use of stairway. Larsen (1974) came up withcreated a study of conformity in the Asch experiment to demonstrate the tendency of people to conform to when exposed to social pressure of the unidentified majority. It emerged that people tend to conform to the majority pressure in the society because 64% of the participants conformed to what they deemed a majority pressure. Comment by LT: You need another paragraph that connects the previous research to why you decided to conduct your study (the rationale). Then, you need to (very) briefly provide an overview of your study, and finally, you need to provide your hypothesis (prediction) and why you are expecting those results.

Method

Participants Comment by LT: In this section you should summarize where you observed, how many people you observed in total, how many people you observed each day. You also should explain how you decided which people you should and should not observe (for example, when someone else was holding the door for somebody).

Materials Comment by LT: In this section you need to describe your sign (and include it in your appendix section at the end of your paper) and explain how and why you decided to construct it the way you did. Then, you should explain where you put the signs and why you decided to put them in those particular locations.

Procedure

I observed the entry door for more than an hour to see whether people would pull the door or press the handicap button when opening the door. There being no sign, almost everybody pressed the handicap button and waited for the door to electronically open. Only a handful individuals who were in a hurry pulled the door to open. The participants were students, visitors and teachers. During the second week, I placed a sign on the door near the handicap button indicating that it was meant for the handicap persons only and the others should pull the door to open in order to save the cost of electricity. The sign greatly influenced the behavioral change because many participants actually pulled the door handle to open the door instead of using the handicap button. Although there are a few individuals who still used the handicap button, the pulling of the door was about 96% as opposed to the previous results without the sign where only 11% of the participants actually pulled the door to open. After the signage was removed during the third week, most people who had seen the sign there still continued to pull the door handle, except for some visitors who had no idea that such a sign had been there previously. Comment by LT: You need to edit this section. Take out any references to the data (percentages of people who pressed the button) because that information belongs in your Results section. You should summarize these points: What days and hours you decided to observe and why Who did which observations What the procedure was related to observing the different doors (outside going in, middle going in, inside going out, and middle going out). You have much of the above information, but you need to edit it and organize it into the three subsections (Participants, Materials, and Procedures).

The experiment thus indicates that people are likely to conform to a sign that is directly presented at the point of action and do what they are told to do. The purpose of the study was to show that a signage improves the behavioral response of people in the society. However, it cannot be clear if people who began pulling the door after the sign really wanted to save the electricity cost or did not just want to be associated with handicap when they are not actually handicapped.

Method

Randomly choose day to observe the entryway for 3 weeks of the same hour to see how many participants press the handicap button to enter or exit the building between 4:30-5:30 pm. Week 2, a sign was placed above the handicap buttons at the same hour previously chosen on a day also randomly chosen. It was observed for participants whom resort to pressing the handicap button, as opposed to pulling or pushing the door open while measuring the effects the sign had on those observed. Week 3 the sign was removed and observed participants on a random day at the same time chosen previously to see the affects the sign had on behavior. It was predicted the sign would have significant effects on participant options to withhold from utilizing the handicap button. This experiment served its purpose by allowing researchers to observe and measure the impact signage has on behaviors.

References

Buck, J. L. (2019). Beauty is in the eEye of the dDoor oOpener: A Study of Chivalry and Female Attractiveness. University of Central Oklahoma.  

Ford, M. A., & Torok, D. (2008). Motivational signage increases physical activity on a college campus. Journal of American College Health, 57(2), 242-244.

Larsen, K. S. (1974). Conformity in the Asch experiment. The Jjournal of Ssocial

Ppsychology, 94(2), 303-304.  

Nettle, D., Nott, K., & Bateson, M. (2012). ‘Cycle thieves, we are watching you’: Impact of a simple signage intervention against bicycle theft. PloS one, 7(12), e51738.

Yoder, J. D., Hogue, M., Newman, R., Metz, L., & LaVigne, T. (2002). Exploring moderators of gGender dDifferences: Contextual dDifferences in dDoor‐hHoliding bBehavior

1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(8), 1682-1686.