Data Set 1-6: 18. Kaycee was interested in social loafing, which is that individuals do less work in groups than they do when working alone. For her Research Methods project, all participants worked in a group with two others. The task was to find words in a square display of letters. Some participants were told they would be scored individually and some were told that their effort would add to the group score. The actual analysis was on the number of words found by a group.
-In Data Set 1-6, the fact that some participants believed they would be scored individually and some believed their effort would add to the group score is the
A) independent variable
B) dependent variable
C) uncontrolled extraneous variable
D) controlled extraneous variable.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The independent variable in this study is whether participants were told they would be scored individually or as a group, as this is the condition that was manipulated by the researcher to observe its effect on the number of words found by a group.