16. Stasser and colleagues (1989) conducted a study involving discussions of three different “candidates,” which were described to participants in a way the researchers intended to make the candidates equally attractive. Thus, before analyzing their main results, they wanted to first test whether the three candidates were in fact seen as equally attractive. Of the 531 participants in their study, 197 initially preferred Candidate A; 120, Candidate B, and 214, Candidate C. The researchers described the following analysis:

The relative frequencies of prediscussion preferences . . . suggested that we were not entirely successful in constructing equally attractive candidates.

. . . [T]he hypothesis of equal popularity can be confidently rejected,

212, N = 5312 = 28.35, p 6 .001. (p. 71)

(a) Figure the chi-square yourself (your results should be the same, within rounding error).

(b) Explain this result to a person who has never had a course in statistics.