Does holding a weapon increase your aggressiveness afterward in other situations

Question

Does holding a weapon increase your aggressiveness afterward in other situations? Klinesmith investigated this question by assigning 30 male college students to one of two groups. One group of 15 men were given a facsimile handgun to hold for 15 minutes, whereas the 15 men in the other group were given a toy instead. All the men were then asked to participate in a test of taste sensitivity. Each was given a glass of water with a single drop of hot sauce to taste. Each man was also asked to add as much hot sauce as he wanted to a new glass of water to be given to the next person. The researchers measured how much hot sauce each man added, as a stand in for aggression because it correlates with the amount of pain inflicted on the next person. Do the two groups differ in the mean amount of hot sauce they add to the water?

a. Assuming that the amount of hot sauce added per person is normally distributed in each group, would an ordinary two-sample t test be a appropriate test for this analysis?

b. If not, what would be an appropriate method to use?

Explanation / Answer

a) Check the following assumptions to come to a conclusion regarding test statistic.

Independent group assumption: Randomizing the experiment gives independent groups. The 30 male college students were randomly assigned to either of the groups.

Independence assumption: This is an experiment, so there is no need to randomly select the participants, only check whether they had been randomly assigned to the treatment groups.

Randomization condition: The experiment was randomized. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment groups.

Nearly normal condition: Amount of hot sauce added per person is normally ditributed.

All the assumptions being reasonably met, one can opt for 2-sample t test.

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