Suppose you conducted a study to test the hypothesis that social pressure affects memory accuracy. You set up a study where participants view a video of a person robbing a convenience store. Then half...

Suppose you conducted a study to test the hypothesis that social pressure affects memory accuracy. You set up a study where participants view a video of a person robbing a convenience store. Then half of the participants watch a video of other “participants” discussing the crime. In reality, the “participants” in the video are part of the experiment, and some of the details of the crime that are discussed are inaccurate. The actual participants are told they should consider other people’s perspectives on the crime because it is difficult for any one person to accurately remember all the details. The other half of the participants do not view the video discussion of the crime but are also told that it is difficult for any one person to accurately remember all the details of the crime. Thirty min after viewing the original crime video, all participants are given a recognition memory test about details of the crime. For this study, answer the following questions:

1. What are the independent and dependent variables?

2. State the alternative and null hypotheses for this study.

3. Suppose you collected the data for this study, calculated the appropriate statistic to compare the means for the two groups (see Chapter 15 for discussion of statistical tests appropriate for this design), and obtained a p value of.013 for the statistic. What decision should be made (assuming α =.05) about the null hypothesis? What can you conclude about the independent variable from this decision?

4. Now suppose that in reality, the null hypothesis is true. What type of decision have you made in (c): correct decision, Type I error, or Type II error?