Hi class,

As you know, we are going with the idea of including learned helplessness as our new independent variable in study two for this methods section. That is, in some conditions participants will complete a series of pre-study practice anagrams that are really easy while others will complete a series of pre-study practice anagrams that are very hard. I’ll refer to this independent variable as the Helplessness condition.

We will continue to focus on the same expectation manipulation from study one for our first independent variable, but we will only keep the “High expectations (8 out of 10)” versus “Low expectations (2 out of 10)” levels of that independent variable (We will drop the “Middle expectations (5 out of 10)” condition. It often overlapped with the “Low” expectation group in study one, so keeping both the “Middle” and “Low” conditions is needlessly repetitive). I’ll call this the Expectation condition.

Consider our new independent variable again (Helplessness). Here we will focus on introducing the idea of “Easy versus Hard” tickets. That is, after completing the informed consent form (an electronic version on canvas), students will complete five “practice” anagrams. They will be told that the purpose of this practice session is to familiarize them with solving anagrams. However, there are two different versions for this independent variable.

1). For the Easy condition, participants will complete five easy anagrams, all of which have several solutions. For example, consider the anagram TARSDE, which can be rearranged to spell the words Stared, Trades, Treads, Daters

In this Easy condition, all five anagrams can be solved, and all have at least four potential answers to ensure they are easy to solve

2). For the Hard condition, participants will complete five hard anagrams, only one of which is solvable. For example, consider the anagram TARSDE, which can be rearranged to spell the words Stared, Trades, Treads, Daters

Because we do not want to dramatically increase the chance that participants in the Hard condition will know that there are unsolvable anagrams in this study, those in the Hard condition will receive one anagram out of five that is solvable (TARSDE). The rest will be impossible to “solve”.

This gives us a 2 (Expectation Condition: High versus Low expectations) X 2 (Helplessness Condition: Easy versus Hard practice anagrams) factorial design. That is, there will be four conditions:

Condition #1 – High expectations and Easy practice anagrams

Condition #2 – High expectations and Hard practice anagrams

Condition #3 – Low expectations and Easy practice anagrams

Condition #4 – Low expectations and Hard practice anagrams

As you begin writing your study two literature review for Paper III, keep this new “learned helplessness” independent variable in mind. You’ll need to find prior research that looks at scarcity and use that literature to help support or justify your study predictions. Good keywords for PsycInfo might be “learned helplessness”, “performance”, “hopelessness”, “pessimism”, and the like.

For your hypothesis, remember that you will need to focus on both main effects (the effect of each independent variable on its own) and an interaction (the influence of both independent variables interacting together). Each of your scaled dependent variables—like “Imagine you solved 5 out of 10 anagrams. Rate your level of satisfaction with this potential outcome”, which is on a scale ranging from 0 (I would not feel satisfied) to 10 (I would feel satisfied)—will need its own main effect and interaction hypotheses. I’ll give you an example below, but you will need to think about the hypothesis for your second dependent variable yourself.

1). Main Effect, Expectation Condition (High versus Low). DV = “Satisfied”

After imagining they solved 5 out of 10 anagrams, participants in the high expectation condition will be less satisfied with that potential outcome than participants in the low expectation condition.

(Note that this is similar to our study one prediction. The only thing that really differs is the lack of the “middle” condition. This prediction ONLY looks at the independent variable “Expectation Condition”)

2). Main Effect, Helplessness Condition (Easy versus Hard). DV = “Satisfied”

After imagining they solved 5 out of 10 anagrams, participants in the easy anagram practice condition will be less satisfied with that potential outcome than participants in the hard anagram practice condition.

(Note#1: The reasoning behind this prediction is that those who practiced with easy anagrams will expect an easy “real study” anagram task. If they expect the task to be easy but imagine only solving 5 out 10 anagrams, they should feel less satisfied with that lower anagram solving rate.)

(Note #2: You will write your second literature review with this prediction in mind – find support to back it up! But again here, this prediction ONLY looks at the independent variable “Helplessness Condition”. If your research does not support this prediction, feel free to alter it, but you do need to justify why you think you might get your predicted outcome using prior studies in your second literature review).

3). Interaction, Expectation Condition (High versus Low) X Helplessness Condition (Hard versus Easy). DV = “Satisfied”

After imagining they solved 5 out of 10 anagrams, participants will feel the least satisfied if their expectations were high and they had easy practice anagrams than in all other conditions, but most satisfied if their expectations were low and they had hard practice anagrams. Participants given both high expectations and hard practice anagrams as well as those with low expectations and easy anagrams will give more middling satisfaction ratings.

(Note that you need to justify this interaction prediction as well through your literature review. If you disagree with the prediction, that is fine. You can alter it, but you do need to justify the predictions that you create given the new helplessness independent variable).

Keep in mind that each dependent variable you plan to look at in your study two will need similar main effect and interaction hypotheses. You also want some overlap between study one and study two, so you might want to focus your predictions for study two on the same dependent variables you analyzed in study one.

Also keep in mind that I gave you some insight into the “Potential Anagram Performance” satisfaction dependent variable in the examples above. When we look at the “Actual Anagram Performance” dependent variables, we probably will not see satisfaction levels for either the main effect of expectations, the main effect of helplessness, or the interaction of expectations X helplessness. But we will see if the data confirms that outcome when we start analyzing study two!

Good luck as you work on Paper III.