Question

Design an experiment to test whether drinking alcohol influences people's tendency to become socially aggressive. Be sure to specify your experimental hypothesis and identify your dependent and independent variables, as well as your experimental and control conditions. Identify any experimental procedures that would help to ensure the reliability of your research.

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.

(Answer) For the experiment, one might take a classroom of students who are well acquainted with each other. The classroom will be divided into two equal groups for the control group and the experimental group. All of the students should be of age to drink.

The control group and experimental group will both be given the game of “monopoly” to play with each other. The experimental group will be getting some drinks for the game while the control group will be sober. After playing the game in a state of intoxication, both groups can be closely observed for their behavioural changes.

Hypothesis – Since it is assumed that alcohol makes people aggressive, the group that plays monopoly in a state of intoxication might quarrel more than the group that is sober.

Independent variable – The game of monopoly

Dependent Variable – The behaviour of the students

Reliability – For internal validity, one can make sure that there is no statistical regression by having students of extreme personalities in the groups. Also, there should be no student with a history of aggressive behaviour.

Methodology – A correlation coefficient between levels of alcohol and behavioural change can be measured.