Lizzie Polenzani
PSY 121
Paper #1: Research & Critical Thinking
I do not believe the pill used in this experiment to be of assistance to the students in any way. There was more than one error in this experiment; all of which could have been altered, or fixed, in some type of way.
The experiment starts at the beginning of the semester with the professor asking fifteen students in his psychology class to volunteer to take a pill that will supposedly make them smarter. Sure enough, fifteen students volunteer, while the other fifteen do not. In class we learned about a psychologist that asked parents to sign their children up for a program that would benefit the child in school. It would pretty much prepare them for when they started school and make them ahead. She found that the children that were signed up for her program did in fact do better than those who did not participate.
C3 College Students
English: Students attending a Class on macro Econo...
Students at an end of semester partyHowever, this project turned out to be a waste of time and money because she did not use random assignment! So she decided to go back and completely redo the project. When she did this, she randomly chose children from all different backgrounds and ethnicities. In the end, the results were the complete and total opposite than the results from when she first did the project!
This, I believe, is because the parents who signed their children up the first time were ones that cared about their child's future, had the money to do it, or both. They wanted their kid to be ready for school and to pretty much learn how to learn. These are the parents you see signing their kid(s) up for several sports and making sure they're always busy doing something to better the child's future. That's not...