For this discussion I want you to re-enact a famous study regarding our ability to assess what drives our decision making. You will need to first read the following description of this famous study:
Description:
In the mid-1970s, Situationist contributor Richard Nisbett with Timothy Wilson conducted one of the best known social psychology experiments of all time. It was strikingly simple and involved asking subjects to assess the quality of hosiery. Situationist contributors Jon Hanson and David Yosifon have described the experiment this way:
Subjects were asked in a bargain store to judge which one of four nylon stocking pantyhose was the best quality. The subjects were not told that the stockings were in fact identical. Nisbett and Wilson presented the stockings to the subjects hanging on racks spaced equal distances apart. As situation would have it, the position of the stockings had a significant effect on the subjects quality judgments. In particular, moving from left to right, 12% of the subjects judged the first stockings as being the best quality, 17% of the subjects chose the second pair of stockings, 31% of the subjects chose the third pair of stockings, and 40% of the subjects chose the fourththe most recently viewed pair of stockings. When asked about their respective judgments, most of the subjects attributed their decision to the knit, weave, sheerness, elasticity, or workmanship of the stockings that they chose to be of the best quality. Dispositional qualities of the stocking, if you will. Subjects provided a total of eighty different reasons for their choices. Not one, however, mentioned the position of the stockings, or the relative recency with which the pairs were viewed. None, that is, saw the situation. In fact, when asked whether the position of the stockings could have influenced their judgments, only one subject admitted that position could have been influential. Thus, Nisbett and Wilson conclude that [w]hat matters . . . is not why the [position] effect occurs but that it occurs and that subjects do not report it or recognize it when it is pointed out to them.
Your re-enactment
Now you need to replicate this famous study using 5 family members/friends/co-workers but you need to use something different than pantyhose. For example, in class I have students do a taste test of orange juice. Of course, as in the study, unbeknownst to the students in my class all of the samples are the same type of orange juice. (Don’t use a orange juice as your example.)
After you complete the replication you need to answer the following questions: Describe how you did your experiment (i.e., what product did you use?, who did you use?, etc.). Did you replicate the general findings of the Nisbett and Wilson study? That is, did you find an order effect? If you didnt find the effect why do you think you didnt find it? What were the most common reasons your participants gave for picking the product they picked? What are the implications of your findings?
Rubric
300 Words
-Used Proper APA formatting (1)
-Accurately replicated the experiment and clearly describes the methodology used (3)
-Accurately and clearly outlines their findings and answers all questions (e.g., Did you find an order effect?, If not, why do you think you didn’t find it?, What were the most common reasons your participants gave for picking the product they picked?, etc.) regarding their findings (9)
-Proper sentence structure and grammar (2)
