Elliot and Niesta (2008) separated a group of men into two equivalent groups and

Question

Elliot and Niesta (2008) separated a group of men into two equivalent groups and asked each man to judge the attractiveness of a woman shown in a photograph. The researchers manipulated the background for the photograph so one group saw the picture on a white background and for the other group the background was red. The woman was rated significantly more attractive when the background was red. What kind of variable is the background color for the photograph?

a. the quasi-dependent variable b. the dependent variable c. the quasi-independent variable d. the independent variable

Explanation / Answer

A true independent variable occurs when subjects arrive for the study and the experimenter randomly assigns them to groups. For example, suppose you're doing a study in which you want to find out if playing violent video games makes people more aggressive. So, 40 people show up for the study and you flip a coin and put half of them in one group and half in another. In one group you tell them to play video games and you give them violent video games to play. In the other group you tell them to play video games and you give them only non-violent games to play. Afterward you ask them to fill out an "aggressiveness" scale. This is an example of a true independent variable. The experimenter has a lot of control over the situation and if the group watching the violent video games scores higher on the aggressiveness scale, then that was probably caused by playing the violent games.

If, on the other hand, you ask people who play video games to come to a study and 40 people show up and then you ask them what kind of video games they play (violent or non-violent) and if they say violent you put them into one group and if they say non-violent you put them into another and then you do the rest of the study as described above, this is not really a true independent variable. It's a quasi-independent variable. In a sense, your subjects put themselves into the groups. In that case, you can't be as confident about the results. If the subjects who watched the violent video games scored higher on the aggressiveness scale - why is that? It could be because they just played violent video games, or it could be that they are just more aggressive people in the first place.

You just can't be as certain of what causes what when you have a quasi-independent variable.

It's the same thing with any kind of study which looks at the differences between males and females. This is a quasi-independent variable because you can't assign someone to their sex. They come to the study already as a male or female. Therefore, if you find a difference between males and females, you don't really know what caused it. IT could be biological or cultural for example.

So based on this discussion it is quasi independent variable

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