Xie and colleagues (2021) examined whether listening to happy stories affected feelings of closeness with the speaker. They randomly assigned participants to listen to a speaker telling a sad story or...

Extracted text: Xie and colleagues (2021) examined whether listening to happy stories affected feelings of closeness with the speaker. They randomly assigned participants to listen to a speaker telling a sad story or a happy one. Then they assessed how close the listener felt to the speaker. They found that participants who listened to the happy stories felt closer to the speaker than those who heard the sad story. a) What are the two main variables of interest in this study? How are they defined? b) What is the design used here? c) Can the researchers say that they happy story caused feelings of closeness? Why or Why not?