Chapter 4 Investigation: High Anxiety and Sexual Attraction Social psychologists throughout the years have shown that an aggression-sexuality link exists not only in various animal species but also in humans. Dutton and Aron (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1974) set out to show that a more general link exists in humans, namely emotional arousal of all kinds and sexual attraction. They set up their study to compare men in a high emotional arousal situation to men in a low emotional arousal situation.

Researchers wanted to test the notion that an attractive female is seen as more attractive by males who encounter her in a fear-arousing situation than by males who encounter her in a non-fear-arousing situation. In the high emotional arousal group, men deemed to be between the ages of 18 and 35 who crossed a suspension bridge 230 feet above rocks and shallow rapids in Capilano Canyon, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and were not accompanied by a female were approached on the bridge by an attractive female interviewer. The same interviewer also approached men who fit the same criteria but crossed a solid wood bridge 10 feet above a rivulet that ran into the main river. Both groups of men were interviewed on the bridge and were told that the interview was for a psychology class project on the effects of exposure to scenic attractions on creative expression. The men filled out a short questionnaire, after which the interviewer wrote her phone number down on a slip of paper and said that if they were interested in the results of the experiment they could call her. The researcher talked to 18 men on the suspension bridge and 16 men on the wooden bridge.

1. Wrte a paragraph giving the reader some background for the study

2. What is the research question? What are the population, and the sample? What is the parameter of interest?

3. How, where, and when was this data collected? Is this an observational study or an experiment?

4. What are the observational units, and what variables are being measured or recorded for each observational unit? Which variable is the explanatory variable, and which is the response variable? 5. What is the parameter of interest (the long-run difference in proportions), and how is this related to the observed statistic?

6. What is the statistic? How is this statistic being used to estimate the parameter?

7. How were the observational units for this study obtained? Did the researchers use random sampling? Even if the sampling process was not random sampling, can the researchers assume that this sample is representative of some population? Why or why not? To which population might they be able to generalize the results?

8. What are the groups in this study? Were the observational units randomly assigned to the groups? Based on the way that the groups were formed, is there potential for confounding variables?

9. Considering the design of the study, can the researchers draw cause-and-effect conclusions from this study? Why or why not?