A social psychologist seeks to determine the relationship between a paper-and-pencil measure of prejudice and people’s attitudes toward racial profiling as a crime deterrent. At the beginning of the...

A social psychologist seeks to determine the relationship between a paper-and-pencil measure of prejudice and people’s attitudes toward racial profiling as a crime deterrent. At the beginning of the semester, students in a general psychology class are asked to complete six different questionnaires. Among the questionnaires is a measure of prejudice. Later in the semester, students are invited to take part in an experiment examining attitudes about criminal behavior and law enforcement tactics. As part of the experiment, students complete a questionnaire asking about attitudes toward racial profiling as a crime deterrent. The researcher wishes to find out if scores on the prejudice measure obtained earlier will predict people’s attitudes about racial profiling. Higher scores on the prejudice measure indicate greater prejudice, and higher scores on the profiling scale indicate greater support for racial profiling. Scores on both measures are obtained for 22 students as follows:

A Draw a scatterplot showing the relationship between these two measures.

B Inspect the scatterplot and comment on the presence or absence of a linear trend in the data.

C Calculate a correlation coefficient for these data and comment on the direction and strength of the relationship.

D On the basis of the correlational analysis, the researcher concludes that prejudicial thinking causes people to support racial profiling by law enforcement agencies. Comment on this conclusion based on what you know about the nature of correlational evidence.