Describe the research design the researcher used, including the type of variables, and identify the conditions that are created using factorial combination.

Question

A researcher examined whether people's responses to injustice depend on whether the offender in a hypothetical scenario is a male or a female, and whether the offender apologized (or not) after the offense. Participants were randomly assigned to the gender of the offender condition (female, male) and apology condition (present, absent).

Participants read a hypothetical scenario in which a person (male or female) acted unjustly and the action results in severe harm. Half of the participants read that the offender apologized; the other half read the same scenario except no apology was mentioned. Participants then rated the extent to which they would forgive the offender using a 0 (no forgiveness) to 9 (complete forgiveness) rating scale. The researcher predicted that participants' forgiveness would be greater following an apology compared to the apology-absent condition. The researcher also predicted that the gender of the offender would have no effect on forgiveness.

The researcher observed the following means:

Answer 1

This experiment is a 2 ? 2 complex design; each of the two variables are random groups variables. The four conditions of the experiment are: Male Offender—Apology Present, Male Offender—Apology Absent, Female Offender—Apology Present, Female Offender—Apology Absent.