Psychology Assignment 2

Library Assignment Instructions – This is graded for accuracy! – 5 points!

NOTE: Make sure to upload your answers to the questions on this sheet in Canvas!

Some general rules for doing library research include:

1. Library content is continually changing, similar to Google. A Google search one day gets a certain number of results and the next day the number changes. Libraries also update and improve access to their content, so what works today may not necessarily work next year. Also, procedures may differ slightly depending on how you access the library's computer databases (e.g., a connection from home versus a dedicated terminal in the library).

2. There are often several ways of locating the same information. This assignment directs you to several resources in order to familiarize you with their existence, but it is not the only way! If you find yourself getting stuck when using one resource—and you are able to locate the information a different way—feel free to do so.

3. This assignment will not cover all of the useful library resources available to you, and the undergraduate psychology librarians will show you an even broader array of options. For now, go to the FIU library website at http://library.fiu.edu/ to get started.

STEP 1: PsycINFO:

PsycINFO is the #1 database in psychology. It is an online source for finding articles in psychology journals. Go to the library website, library.fiu.edu, and click Research: Start. You can find PsycINFO in several ways including:

1. Go to library.fiu.edu and click Research: Start. Click Subject Resources. Click PSY3213/3215: Research Methods.

2. Go directly to the Library Research Guide created for this course called PSY3213/3215: Research Methods at library.fiu.edu/psy3215.

3. Go to library.fiu.edu and click Research: Start. Click Subject Resources, followed by Psychology. Click the Databases tab on the Psychology page.

4. Click A-Z Databases from the Research: Start page. Find PsycInfo (this is what I usually do!)

There are several features in PsycINFO to help you with finding articles associated with your study. You can do a Basic Search, an Advanced Search, or browse on your own. Using Advanced Search allows you to limit your search to articles that are the most relevant, provided you have a keyword, author name, journal title, or article title already in mind.

There are numerous ways to limit your search results including:

1. to a specific range of years

2. to specific languages, methodologies, age ranges, etc.

3. to peer reviewed articles (for primary sources, which are required for Paper 1).

You can also search PsycINFO for multiple items, which may include a combination of an author’s name, journal title, or a keyword in the title or abstract of a specific article, etc. For example, to search for articles by a specific author, type in the author's last name followed by the first name (and middle initial, if you know it) in the first empty search box. In the drop-down box to the right of the search boxes, select AUTHOR(AU). If you type in “Loftus Elizabeth” and choose author, your search will find 437 articles that include her name as an author (wow, right! What a prolific writer!)

You can follow a similar procedure to locate articles by subject, title, or keyword. For example, try using the word " eyewitness" as a search term in the document title. When I did this a month ago, the results returned 1873 publications (which might have gone up since I last looked!). That is WAAAAY too many to look through! Of course, if you do only peer reviewed article, this drops a lot (but still has 1384 articles with eyewitness in the title!).

When you get results numbering in the thousands, you will want to narrow down your search. You can do this by entering different search terms or combining results from searches you have already completed. Every time you do a search, the results are saved in your "recent searches." You can combine articles in the search history to narrow down your list of articles to your specifications.

Let's say you want a list of all articles authored by Elizabeth Loftus with the word "eyewitness" in the title. You have already run searches on Loftus Elizabeth as an author and eyewitness in the title. Click on the Recent Searches link at the top of the page and you will see those previous searches listed. In the Combine Searches box, type “search #1 and search #2” and hit enter. Elizabeth Loftus’s publications regarding eyewitnesses will be shown. When I did this, it produced only 46 articles including Loftus as an author and eyewitness as a word in the title. If I look at Loftus, Eyewitness, and Peer Reviewed, this search drops to 29. This is MUCH more manageable.

Using PsycINFO, answer the following questions.

Question One (.5 points) : Using PsycINFO, locate an article authored by Fabian T. C. Schmidt and colleagues focusing on autonomy and reactance. Use “Fabian Schmidt” as an author term and one or two of the following terms in the document title: “halo”, and/or “grading” (You can look at more than one title keyword by clicking “Add a row” to allow for a third item). Select the correct, full, and correct APA-style reference* for this article on your assignment sheet. Note that the DOI is needed for APA references, so make sure to include it!

A

Schmidt, F. T. C., Kaiser, A., & Retelsdorf, J. (2023). Halo Effects in Grading: An Experimental Approach. Educational psychology,43 (2-3), 246-262. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2023.2194593

B

Halo effects in grading: An experimental approach (2023). Schmidt, F. T. C., Kaiser, A., & Retelsdorf, J. Educational Psychology,43 (2-3), 246-262. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2023.2194593

C

Schmidt, F. T. C., Kaiser, A., & Retelsdorf, J. (2023). Halo effects in grading: An experimental approach. Educational Psychology,43 (2-3), 246-262. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2023.2194593

D

Schmidt, Fabian T. C., Kaiser, Aurelia, & Retelsdorf, Jan (2023). Halo effects in grading: An experimental approach. Educational Psychology, 43 (2-3), 246-262. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2023.2194593

*For correct APA reference format, refer to the end of this library assignment document as well as the APA formatting PowerPoint presentation in Canvas

Question Two (.5 points). Recall the Schmidt et al. article from Question One above (“Halo effects in grading: An experimental approach.”). In the last paragraph on page 252, the authors discussed four “assessments” provided to participants regarding the student they were about to grade. Which of the following is NOT one of the assessments included in the vignettes that participants read?

A. Academic achievement of the student to be graded.

B. Social behavior of the student to be graded.

C. Academic behavior of the student to be graded.

D. Physical attractiveness of the student to be graded.

Question Three (.5 points). In 2023, Shengnan Ren, Sahar Karimi, Alberto Bravo Velazquez, and Jianfeng Cai published an article with the title “Endorsement effectiveness of different social media influencers: The moderating effect of brand competence and warmth”, which looks at the impact of different kinds of social media influencers (entertainment vs. informers). Find the full-text article and then choose the correct APA formatted reference from those listed below.

A

Ren, S., Karimi, S., Bravo Velázquez, A., and Cai, J. (2023). Endorsement effectiveness of different social media influencers: The moderating effect of brand competence and warmth. Journal of business research, 156, 11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113476

B

Shengnan Ren, Sahar Karimi, Alberto Bravo Velazquez, and Jianfeng Cai (2023). Endorsement effectiveness of different social media influencers: The moderating effect of brand competence and warmth.  Journal of Business Research, 156, 11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113476

C

Ren, S., Karimi, S., Bravo Velázquez, A., & Cai, J. (2023). Endorsement Effectiveness of Different Social Media Influencers: The Moderating Effect of Brand Competence and Warmth.  Journal of Business Research, 156, 11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113476

D

Ren, S., Karimi, S., Bravo Velázquez, A., & Cai, J. (2023). Endorsement effectiveness of different social media influencers: The moderating effect of brand competence and warmth.  Journal of Business Research, 156, 11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113476

Question Four (.5 points). Consider the same Li and Shen journal article from Question Three above (“Endorsement effectiveness of different social media influencers: The moderating effect of brand competence and warmth.”). In their literature review section, they discuss six hypotheses. Which of the following is a correct restatement of one of those six hypotheses?

A. Endorsements by entertainer influencers are less likely to attract a greater number of views than endorsements by informer influencers.

B. Endorsements by entertainer influencers are less likely to receive a greater number of likes than endorsements by informer influencers.

C. Endorsements by informer influencers are less likely to generate more online sales than entertainer influencers, when endorsing competent brands.

D. Endorsements by entertainer influencers are more likely to receive a greater number of comments than endorsements by informer influencers.

E. Endorsements by entertainer influencers are less likely to generate more online sales than informer influencers, when endorsing warm brands.

Question Five (.5 points) : Using PsycINFO, locate one article relevant to your Paper I: Study One Literature Review that is different from the articles in the questions above and different than any of the articles posted on Canvas for your Paper I: Study One Literature Review. This article must be a primary source (peer reviewed), reporting on original, empirical research (I do not want reviews of the field or books at this time). To find articles that look interesting, enter key words focused on the topic of your study (e.g., Halo Effect; Horns Effect; Reverse Halo Effect, Indirect Associations, Persuasion, Influencers, Social Media, etc.) There are tons of keywords for this topic – note that some of the articles in PsycInfo even list the keywords that they used for their paper). Using APA format, enter the reference on your answer sheet (Since Canvas may not allow for proper indenting or spacing, we will not mark off for that, but make sure the rest of your citation is in APA format):

Using APA format, write the reference in Canvas (Since Canvas may not allow for proper indenting or spacing, we will not mark off for that, but make sure the rest of your citation is in APA format).

Note: Make sure you examine the full list of articles PsycINFO provides. You will use that list again for Question Nine when comparing your PsycINFO search to your AI search in Step 2.

STEP 2: Using AI

With artificial intelligence (AI) becoming a widespread and useful tool for researchers, I want you to use it for your research this semester. For the questions below, use your preferred AI program. There are no restrictions regarding which AI tool you use (ChatGPT, Claude 3 Opus, Gemini, etc.), though feel free to use https://chat.openai.com/ or copilot.microsoft.com if you are unfamiliar with AI tools.

Question Six (.5 points) : Using your preferred AI tool, enter the prompt below to generate five empirical references related to your study topic this semester. Copy / paste all five references into the Canvas answer box for Question Six. For this question, your five references DO NOT need to be in APA format. However, they do need to come from peer-reviewed journals.

I am a psychology student writing a literature review paper for a study on the Halo Effect with one independent variable with three levels that focuses on how participants make decisions about a social media influencer and his sponsor when the influencer acts in a positive, negative, or control manner. The independent variable differs in terms of the influencer response in a bullying scenario. In the positive condition, participants read about a social media influencer who behaves in a negative manner (joining in and mocking a victim of bullying). In the negative condition, participants read about a social media influencer who behaves in a positive manner (assisting and encouraging the victim of bullying). In the control condition, the social media influencer appears to not notice the bullying situation. The dependent variables ask participant to rate the influencer on several dimensions (how compassionate, honest, qualified, trustworthy the influencer is) as well as rating a company that sponsors the influencer. We want to determine of the behavior of the influencer has an indirect impact on ratings about his sponsor. Provide five references from peer-reviewed journals that address this topic that might be used to write a literature review. The references must provide the author’s names, article title, date of publication, and journal name.

Question Seven (.5 points): Choose ONE of the five articles that AI generated in Question Six (select one that you feel is most relevant to your semester project) and ask AI to give you a one paragraph summary of that article that highlights the main independent and dependent variables for the study. Copy / paste that summary into Canvas.

Question Eight (.5 points): For the article you chose for Question Seven, evaluate it for accuracy and relevancy as well as for potential “AI hallucinations.” Address at least one of the following questions in two to three sentences: 1). Was the reference real or an AI hallucination? How can you tell? 2). Was the reference scholarly, empirical, and/or peer-reviewed? How can you tell? 3). Do you think the summary from AI was factual? How can you tell? 4). Is there any way for you to know where the information originally came from? How would you try to find it?

Note: Be careful with AI “Hallucinations” as AI may give you a fake resource. For example, when preparing these library instructions, AI gave me a fake reference by Rafikoya & Voromin (2025). When I asked AI to summarize the article, AI told me: “It appears there is no record of a study by Rafikova & Voromin (2025) in the APA PsycINFO database. The earlier mention of that study was likely a placeholder or fictional reference.” So, double-check any response generated by AI as we will deduct points from YOUR grade if you submit AI generated hallucinations.

Step 3: Comparing AI and PsycINFO

Question Nine (.5 points): Look over the articles provided by your PsycINFO search and compare them to the results from AI. How do the results from AI and PsycINFO differ? How are they similar? Which results do you trust and why? What are some things to look for when searching for peer-reviewed empirical studies? Write two or three sentences.

Step 4: Your Semester Study

Question Ten (.5 points) : Give me your study predictions (for your Halo Effect study). Yes, this is an easy question! All you must do is copy and paste your study one predictions (and no, you do not need to write your own predictions for study one). You can find these predictions in your Assignment #4 (Study One Materials) Research Instructions. You can find the same predictions in the lab PowerPoint presentations (Labs 1, 2, and 3). You can even find them in the Paper One instructions. Find them, copy them, paste them (and make sure to use them in Paper One as you write that paper). In other words, for Question Ten, simply paste your predictions into the Canvas question ten box so I know that you know what your predictions are! I’ll even get you started!

“We have several predictions in this study. First, …

*APA Reference Examples

a. Article Example : The following is the most common type of APA reference for an article by two or more authors.

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number (issue number if present), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Wiener, R. L., Winter, R., Rogers, M., & Arnot, L. (2004). The effects of prior workplace behavior on subsequent sexual harassment judgments. Law and Human Behavior, 28(1), 47-67. http://dx.doi.org /10.1023/B:LAHU.0000015003.72223.63

b. Book Example : The following is the most common type of APA reference for an article by two or more authors.

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher Name.

Stoneman, R. (2008). Alexander the Great: A life in legend. Yale University Press.

Bordens, K.S. & Abbott, B.B. (2008). Research design and methods: A process approach. (7th ed.). McGraw Hill.

For a good resource for references, go to:

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_articles_in_periodicals.html