Scientific Reading Assignment
Instructions:
You can choose any of the three articles (below) to read and answer questions about. As you read, keep in mind what you think is good about these and what you’d do differently. I don’t expect for you to know all of the details of how the results and statistics are calculated, but if there are parts that confuse you, feel free to ask me to explain that to you. Every study will have some limitations to it, but some will have more than others. The goal of this is for you to think critically about research. For some papers, there may be more than one study. If your paper has multiple studies, you only have to answer questions about the first study. However, I recommend reading the whole paper regardless. The questions you answer will be on the next page. For more assistance, an example is posted to Canvas.
Articles:
Pick one of these articles.
Dietze, P., & Knowles, E. D. (2021). Social Class Predicts Emotion Perception and Perspective-Taking Performance in Adults. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(1), 42–56. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/10.1177/0146167220914116
Valor-Segura, I., Expósito, F., Moya, M., & Kluwer, E. (2014). Don’t leave me: The effect of dependency and emotions in relationship conflict. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 44, 579-587. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12250
Gunraj, D. N., Drumm-Hewitt, A. M., Dashow, E. M., Upadhyay, S. S. N., & Klin, C. M. (2016). Texting insincerely: The role of the period in text messaging. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 1067–1075. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.003
Note:
Articles selected from https://www.everydayresearchmethods.com/2019/11/updated-list-articles-that-are-student-friendly.html
Scientific Reading Assignment EXAMPLE
Instructions: This assignment is designed to help you practice reading empirical articles. This will help you when writing your final paper and in future research and classes. There are three articles posted to Blackboard for you to choose from. Pick the one that interests you most then answer the following questions. While these don’t have to be answered in paragraphs, please answer each question in complete sentences. Questions have multiple parts, and it is important that you answer every question.
Article: The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice
Vezzali, Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E. (2015). The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45(2), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12279
The author is interested in how reading Harry Potter may reduce prejudiced attitudes. They want to know if Harry Potter would replicate findings from research done on studies created to reduce prejudice.
Previous research has found that knowing that someone in your in-group has had contact with an out-group can reduce prejudice. Studies by Cameron and colleagues from 2005 and 2006 have found that when children read stories about friendships between in-groups and out-groups, they were less prejudiced.
34 students in a fifth-grade classroom in northern Italy. They were mostly girls. This was a project done within the classroom with consent. It may not generalize to other countries or age groups. The translation of Harry Potter may impact the findings. Other age groups may have more formed opinions.
Two measures from Liebkind and McAlister’s (1999) attitudes towards immigrants scale were used. They also looked at identification with Harry Potter and the books/movies that participants previously read. This study also used two different passages from Harry Potter as the experimental and control.
Participants read one of two passages in an experiment. The two passages represent the experimental group and the control. Afterwards, their attitudes towards immigrants are tested.
This study found that only for those who identified with Harry Potter, those in the experiment group reported less prejudice than those in the control. This somewhat supports the hypothesis.
The author concludes that this indicates there is some evidence that supports the idea that Harry Potter passages may reduce prejudice.
This has a very small sample in a limited demographic. It also only represents the short-term effects of reading one passage. Furthermore, it compares two passages from the same book series and realistically, a reader would be exposed to both. However, it does utilize an experimental design that can help us determine causation. It also does study a population that would likely read the book.
Future work might look at how this series compares to another series or other intervention. How would the results look over the course of a few years?
The design of this study did not really test what the authors were interested in. It compares two paragraphs from Harry Potter meaning that we can’t really determine what would actually happen if someone read the full book. In the future, using more book passages would be beneficial. It also had a really limited sample. More classrooms could be incorporated to have more confidence in the results.
Summary: For the summary, include what you think is important information from the questions above. The summary should be 200-300 words, and if someone read it, they should be able to understand what the study was and what it was about. (20 points)
This study looked at how reading Harry Potter passages impacted prejudiced attitudes. Previous findings have shown that reading about in-groups and out-groups has reduced prejudice in readers, but these findings were limited to passages that were designed for this purpose. To test the effectiveness of reading Harry Potter, the researcher had 34 students in an Italian fifth-grade classroom read one of two passages from Harry Potter where one dealt with prejudice and the other did not. Participants then responded to a survey about their attitudes regarding immigrants. While both groups appeared to enjoy the passages equally and previously have similar attitudes towards immigrants, the researchers did find an effect of the experimental condition. However, these results were limited as they found only those who identified with the character of Harry Potter had an impact of being in the experimental vs the control group. While these findings do suggest that Harry Potter can impact attitudes, they come with several limitations. Notably, both the experimental and control groups were reading Harry Potter which limits its external validity. The study could also benefit from having a larger sample size, more variety in the study’s demographics, and follow-ups. However, this does present interesting results that support the notion that reading can help reduce prejudiced attitudes in children.