PSY10004 : Impact of Positive Emotions on Friendships and Loneliness Assessment

The Impact of Positive Emotions on Friendships and Loneliness (see Appendix A)

The aim of the study was to test the effect of a gratitude and positive affect activity on social relationships and loneliness. The independent variable was gratitude level operationalized as the gratitude activity (experimental group) and positive affect exercise (positive affect group). The experimental group required participants to write reasons why they are grateful for a chosen friend, the positive affect group required participants to write about their favorite animal, food or hobby and the control group required participants to copy a paragraph. The dependent variables were social behaviour and loneliness measured by comparing participants' pretest and posttest scores from completing an online questionnaire and reaction time and accuracy, which were measured using a Stroop task.

The study used an experimental design which involves creating different levels of the independent variable and then testing them in order to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship (Christensen, Johnson, & Turnery, 2015, p. Para Page No volves random allocation of the participants to the different experimental conditions (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 245). Advantages of the design include being able to manipulate the independent variable very accurately and logically and compared to other designs, extraneous variables can be controlled for more easily by keeping them constant across different conditions (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 56). For instance, this study was conducted in a controlled laboratory environment therefore, variables such as the computer used is easily controlled for because all participants would have experienced the same environmental setting (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 56).

Moreover, limitations include not being able to test independent variables that cannot be manipulated such as the number of friends a participant would have (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 56). Therefore, in relation to this study an extraneous variable may arise in that some participants in the experimental condition may have a close friend that they are very grateful for and some may not have any close friends but instead family members that they are grateful for. Hence, these participants don't get to experience the gratitude activity because they are unable to write anything down. Another limitation is that research findings obtained from a controlled and artificial laboratory environment may reduce generalisability of the results to a real-world setting (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 57). For instance, in real-life feelings of gratitude for another individual is not always experienced by writing a paragraph about it, gratitude can also be experienced by expressing it verbally (Gordon, Arnette, & Smith, 2011).

Effects of spatial learning perspectives on virtual reality navigation (see Appendix B)

The aim of the study was to investigate spatial cognition in humans by testing whether participants will create a topographical-like or viewpoint-dependent portrayal of the environment when completing a virtual Morris water maze task (VMWM). The independent variable was the training exercises which required participants to find their way through the virtual environment to reach the visible platform under different conditions. The dependent variables were the overall distance and time taken to reach the hidden platform under test conditions.

The study used a within-participants design which involves exposing the same group of participants to every experimental condition (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 248). An advantage is the controlling of participant variables such as gender by keeping them the same across all conditions because the same participant is used for each condition (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 249). This is especially important when studies use cognitive measures (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 249) like the present study because spatial intelligence may vary between different individuals 3 advantage of not needing a large number of participants compared to other designs, because the number of participants required for the entire experiment is the same as the number of participants required for one condition, is important when a large sample is difficult to obtain (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 249). This advantage is conflicting with the present study because their population of interest was healthy adult humans, which is not a hard sample to find because the requirements of the participants are not rare or specific.

A major limitation is carryover effects (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 250) where participants' second performance on the VMWM task may be influenced by past experience, from having done the task before, and not the independent variable. Therefore, participants may perform better because they have had practice or perform worse because of experiences of boredom or tiredness. Furthermore, considering that this study is part of the Psychology Research Experience Program (REP), a majority of the participants are university students. This maybe an issue because Lee and Bednarz (2012) found that the average scores of university students were higher compared to high school students on a spatial thinking ability test therefore, reducing the general is ability of the results to other subgroups. Moreover, Astur, Tropp, Sava, Constable, Markus (2004) argued that the VMWM task is not a perfect representation of a real-life environment because it does not provide the participant with several sensory such as auditory and vestibular feedback. Therefore, spatial cognition performance may be different when navigating through a real-life environment compared to a virtual one.

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