Simple SPSS which is urgent

Researcher Instructions & Stimulus Materials – Summer, 2023

WhatsApp Cheating Study: Perspective Taking

Instructions: This Summer, we will conduct a series of studies that look at participants’ feelings about

academic cheating and whether those feelings differ depending on whether the participant imagines

being a cheater or a non-cheater. These studies will focus on several different psychological concepts

(primarily “perspective-taking,” but with touches of self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance

theory as well) to see if participants who imagine cheating find that conduct more acceptable than

participants who imagine not cheating. Your study will do this by randomly assignment participants to

one of three conditions.

In all conditions, participants will read a WhatsApp chat session between three users (Users #1, #2,

and #3) who are discussing whether to cheat on a midterm exam by using an answer key easily found

online. User #1 is eager to use the answer key. User #2 is more hesitant about using the answer key

but eventually agrees. User #3 refuses to use the answer key. While participants will read the same

chat involving all three Users, we will ask participants to take the perspective of one of those three

Users. That is, we will ask them to imagine they are either User #1, User #2, or User #3. They will

then complete a questionnaire that asks them about their impressions of cheating from both their own

perspective as well as the perspective of the WhatsApp User they imagined being. In general, we

predict that participants who take the perspective of a cheater (either the eager or hesitant cheater)

will find the cheating more acceptable than those who take the perspective of a non-cheater.

1). For your first experimental study, you will play the role of researcher, and you will collect data

from three different participants (though you will combine your data with other class members, so

your final data set will have nearly 140 people!). There are two phases to this study. In the first phase,

you will orally ask participants if they are willing to participate in a research study. In the second

phase, participants will complete a survey. To run this study, use the following steps:

A). Your first task is to approach three different participants (not all at the same time!). They must

be people that you do not know and cannot have taken a psychology research methods class during

the Fall, 2022 semester or the Spring and Summer 2023 semester.

DO NOT complete this study yourself and try to use only FIU students or strangers as

participants (no family / friends for this study – You will use them in a later replication study

toward the end of the semester).

B). Phase I: Informed Consent

1). Informed Consent:

o Ask the potential participant if they are willing to participate in a study for your research

methods class. You will get their informed consent verbally. Tell them:

“Hello, I am conducting a study for my research methods class. I was wondering if you would be

willing to participate. The study takes about five to ten minutes. There are no risks to participating,

and the main benefit is that I can complete my class assignment. Will you participate?”

o An oral Yes or No response is fine. If they say no, thank them and find a different

participant. If they say yes, move to the next step (Phase II – Questionnaire).

C). Phase II: “Questionnaire”

1). General Instructions

o After getting participant’s oral informed consent, randomly give them ONE of the three

“Research Study – Florida International University – Summer 2022” documents. (When

you print out the document, look for middle bottom corner of each document). One third

of our research participants will be in the “Eager Cheater” condition, one third will be

in the “Hesitate Cheater” condition, and one third will be in the “Non Cheater”

condition. Participants should not know what condition they are in.

o Ask participants to follow the instructions at the top of the questionnaire. Tell them they

can go at their own pace, but to carefully read both the instructions and the WhatsApp

chat on the first page. Make sure they complete all questionnaire parts (though note that

they can leave some demographic questions blank if they do not want to provide those

details).

2). Questionnaire

o Study Instructions

▪ In this section, all participants read the same instructions about the general

purpose of the study and the tasks they will complete. They will ALL read:

Thank you for participating. In this study, we want you to read the WhatsApp chat

below between three students discussing an upcoming midterm exam for one of their

classes. However, we want you to imagine that YOU are one of the chat members.

▪ While ALL questionnaires include the same instruction you see above, the rest

of the instruction differs depending on which condition the participant reads.

• In the “Eager-Cheater” condition (User #1), participants read the following:

That is, we want you to imagine that you are User #1. As you read the chat session

(which takes over several phone screens from A to D), think about how you would

feel if you were User #1. When you finish, answer the questions that follow.

• In the “Hesitant-Cheater” condition (User #2), participants read the

following:

That is, we want you to imagine that you are User #2. As you read the chat session

(which takes over several phone screens from A to D), think about how you would feel

if you were User #2. When you finish, answer the questions that follow.

• In the “Non-Cheater” condition (User #3), participants read the following:

That is, we want you to imagine that you are User #3. As you read the chat session

(which takes over several phone screens from A to D), think about how you would feel

if you were User #3. When you finish, answer the questions that follow.

o WhatsApp Chat

▪ Participants will read the same WhatsApp chat (mocked-up to look like four

cell-phone screens on each questionnaire labeled from Screen A through Screen

D – See the picture below). This chat details a conversation between three Users

regarding cheating on a midterm exam.

• Participants in the “Eager-Cheater” condition will take the perspective

of User #1, who introduces the possibility of using an exam answer key

available online for an upcoming midterm exam. User #1 provides

several justifications for using the answer key, including 1). The exam

hasn’t changed in years; 2). The professor said students could use

online resources; and 3). The answer key is easy to find online.

• The “Hesitant-Cheater” starts off hesitantly, noting reservations about

the source of the answer key and noting that using the answer key

seems “a bit sketchy”. However, this hesitant-cheater eventually agrees

to use the answer key, rationalizing that decision (e.g. it doesn’t really

seem like cheating since they are not paying for the answer key).

• The “Non-Cheater” consistently notes that using the answer key seems

like cheating and refuses to use it.

o Manipulation Reinforcement

▪ Participants will complete a short open-ended question to reinforce the User

manipulation. The stem question states: “In your own words, summarize the

position of User #1 (or #2 or #3) when it comes to using the answer key. In your

mind’s eye, visualize clearly and vividly what User #1 (or #2 or #3) might be

thinking and feeling, and what User’s intentions and goals are.” (Note: This is

based on the imagine-other form of perspective taking used in prior studies.)

o Part A: Your Opinions

• All participants rate the same six statements regarding their personal

thoughts and feelings about cheating. All statements are identical across

the three study conditions using a scale ranging from 1 (Strongly

Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree). There are two questions in section. Q

2 focuses on 5 specific cheating elements. We will summate

participants’ responses from 5 elements and use the summation as Q2

score.

o Part B: Ratings

▪ In this section, participants rate their impressions about the WhatsApp user

they imagined being using a scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7

(Strongly Agree).

To standardize the hypothesis and data analysis, I restrict your first

measured DV as Part A Q1 “Cheating”, and second measured DV as Part A

Q2 “Acceptable”.

o Part C: Demographic Information

▪ In this section, participants provided their demographic information.

o Part D: Recall

▪ In this section, we ask participants to recall the final decision of the user

whose perspective they were asked to take (Eager-Cheater, Hesitant-Cheater,

Non-Cheater). This is an important question since it provides our official

study manipulation check (to see if participants paid attention to our

manipulation).

D). Once participants complete the questionnaire, debrief them regarding the WhatsApp cheating

study. That is, tell them about the study conditions and hypothesis. Read the following:

“This study investigates perceptions of cheating by focusing on perspective-taking research,

or the idea that asking people who put themselves in the shoes of another person can lead

them to identify with that person and develop a sense of a shared-identity. This led to our

research question: If participants take the perspective of a person who engaged in a

questionable action (like cheating), will they alter their attitude about that questionable action

so that the behavior seems more acceptable?

In our study, we asked participants to read a WhatsApp chat between three Users who were

discussing whether to use an online answer key for an upcoming midterm exam. While the

three Users debated whether using the answer key was cheating, User #1 was eager to use the

answer key (Eager-Cheater condition), User #2 was initially hesitant to use the answer key

but eventually agreed to use it (Hesitant-Cheater condition), and User #3 refused to use it

(Non-Cheater condition). We asked participants to take the perspective of one of these three

Users, essentially putting themselves in the shoes of that User. We then asked them to rate

their own thoughts about cheating as well as the potential thoughts of the original User.

Since cheating is often viewed negatively, participant opinions about cheating should differ

depending on their study condition. That is, if participants take the perspective of someone

who used the answer key (either eagerly or hesitantly), they may rationalize that behavior

and conclude that it was not cheating. Their rationalizations may be based on a wide variety

of justifications (e.g. the answers are already easy to find; the professor did not bother to

change the exam each semester; the user is not paying for the answers, etc.). In contrast, if

participants take the perspective of someone who did not use the answer key, they are likely

to conclude that using the answers was cheating. Here are our predictions in this study:

Generally, if participants take the perspective of an eager-cheater or a hesitant-cheater, then

they will more strongly disagree that using an answer key is cheating than those who take the

perspective of a non-cheater, with little to no differences expected between the eager-cheater

and hesitant-cheater conditions. Conversely, if participants take the perspective of an eager-

cheater or a hesitant-cheater, then they should more strongly agree that using an answer key

is acceptable than those non-cheaters.

Once again, thank you for participating in this study!

Hold onto the completed questionnaires, as you will use them in an upcoming lab.

You will enter data into SPSS and submit the data file as lab assignment#3.