1.23 Haters are gonna hate, study confirms. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology asked a group of 200 randomly sampled men and women to evaluate how they felt about various subjects, such as camping, health care, architecture, taxidermy, crossword puzzles, and Japan in order to measure their dispositional attitude towards mostly independent stimuli. Then, they presented the participants with information about a new product: a microwave oven. This microwave oven does not exist, but the participants didn’t know this, and were given three positive and three negative fake reviews. People who reacted positively to the subjects on the dispositional attitude measurement also tended to react positively to the microwave oven, and those who reacted negatively also tended to react negatively to it. Researcher concluded that “some people tend to like things, whereas others tend to dislike things, and a more thorough understanding of this tendency will lead to a more thorough understanding of the psychology of attitudes.”

  1. What are the cases?

200 men and women.

  1. What is (are) the response variable(s) in this study?

Attitude towards microwave oven product.

  1. What is (are) the explanatory variable(s) in this study?

Dispositional attitude measurement.

  1. Does the study employ random sampling?

Yes, the 200 men and women are randomly sampled.

  1. Is this an observational study or an experiment? Explain your reasoning.

This is an observational study since there is no control group or assignment to a treatment.

  1. Can we establish a causal link between the explanatory and response variables?

No we cannot establish a causal link because this study was not experimental.

  1. Can the results of the study be generalized to the population at large?

Yes because the sample was random.