Anderson et al (1998) conducted a study to explore the \"weapons effect\" (i.e.,

ID: 3338582 • Letter: A

Question

Anderson et al (1998) conducted a study to explore the "weapons effect" (i.e., the finding that people tend to behave more aggressively in the presence of weapons). They take this a bit further by hypothesizing that people are quicker, on average, to say aggressive words after reading weapons names, than after seeing other non-weapon words. 35 undergraduates (19 men and 16 women) at the University of Missouri-Columbia volunteered to participate in this study. Participants were told by the researcher that the study was being conducted to test reading ability for various types of words. The task involved reading a word on a computer screen (the authors called this word the “prime” and it was either a weapon name like “shotgun” or a non-weapon word like “butterfly”), then saying a “target” word (either an aggressive word like “assault” or a nonaggressive word like “joke”) out loud when prompted. Each subject repeated this task 192 times so that all the possible “target” words (i.e., 24 aggressive ones and 72 non-aggressive ones) could be repeated for a weapon and a non-weapon “prime” word. The order in which the target words were presented was randomly determined for each study participant. The times it took for the participants to say the “target” words verbally after they were shown were recorded so the mean times could be compared across the different combinations of “prime” and “target” words.

QUESTION 1 What type of study is this? Experiment or Observational Study

QUESTION 2 What is the “time a participant takes to say the ‘target’ word shown on the screen” in the context of this study? Select all that apply.