Structured Review of Empirical Research
jiahang lyu
EXAMPLE1_Experiment.docxASSIGNMENT 1
EXAMPLE 1: Experiment
Article: Gray, K. (2010). Moral Transformation: Good and Evil Turn the Weak Into the Mighty. Social Psychological and Personality Science,1(3), 253-258
· NOTE: This example assignment was completed using experiment 1 in this paper. Remember that if you read a paper that includes multiple studies like this example paper does, you should choose only one to evaluate.
1. The research examines the impact of doing good on agency.
2. The researcher expected that people would be more agentic after doing an act of good compared to those who did not do a good act.
3. The authors used an experiment to test their hypothesis.
4. Experiments allow for conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships between variables. So in this study in particular, the researcher was able identify whether or not doing a good act causes a person to be more agentic.
5. Because experiments are highly controlled, they can often be more artificial and may not apply to “the real world” outside of the lab setting.
6. Participants included people near a subway station; N= 91
7. The primary independent variable was doing a good act. More specifically, participants assigned to the virtuous condition donated the $1 they were given (doing an act of good), whereas those in the control condition were not given an option to donate any money (no act of good). The primary dependent variable was agency.
8. The independent variable, doing a good act, was measured by participants’ $1 donation to the charity, UNICEF. The dependent variable, agency, was measured by the length of time they held a 5 lbs. weight.
9. Results showed that participants in the virtuous (good act) condition held the 5 lbs. weight longer than participants in the control (no good act) condition. This finding is consistent with the researcher’s hypothesis that doing good leads to more agency/personal strength.
