Week17a+Alternative+Explanations

Question 1: What was the Purpose of the study? What did they try to find out? [|Per5FrancisF] "The purpose of this study is to prove if partners that have known each other for a long time can sense each other's emotions through certain scents in their sweat." [|Per2SandeepS] "The study's purpose was to determine whether or not romantic couples can "smell," sense, the feelings of the other". [|Per5EllaE] "The purpose of this study was to show how well people knew their partner's feelings or emotions through smell."

Question 2 (Please answer in one post): 2a: Identify: Independent and dependent variables.

"The independent variable is the sweat and the dependent variable is the ability of the person to identify their partner's smell" Correction: 'sweat' is not a variable, but - amount of sweat, source of sweat, are variables.

[|Per5FrancisF] a: the dependent variable is the amount of ability to identify each of the couples emotions and the independent is the amount of time each couple spent together. 2b: What could be other effects on the dependent variable that are not according to plan? List at least THREE effects. [|Per2MiguelCaldera] -the size of the person -does the person have a sweating dissorder -the amount of emmotion each person feels about certain things [|Per2LouisaCh] - Maybe the odor they smelled wasn’t from sweat, - they couldn’t really smell the other person’s sweat, - they smelled their own odor instead of their partner’s. [|Per2RjB] -The mood of the participants, - the participants' physical condition. [|Per5JazzmineD] -Amount of sweat collected -Time spent together between the couples could be different
 * //This was the correct answer. So, cudos to Francis (and to whoever took example from him!)//**


 * //Can you see what I am heading for?//**

__Question 3 (Please answer in one post)__: 3a. What did the researchers conclude? A common problem amongst your responses is the confusion between results and discussion, and it is not uncommon. To say "Partners recognized each others' emotions about 2/3 of the time" is a results that they measured. The conclusion could be that "Partners tend to be more successful in recognizing each others' emotions" (or the oposite, if you this is what they concluded).

3b. Is their conclusion reliable? Here you MUST quote from the text to support your argument. [|Per4AndrewB] "Although people often picked out loved ones’ emotional smells, they could not say whether those odors actually came from their partners. This means that it isnt reliable because they couldnt tell whether the odors they smelled came from their partners or not."

//**My response:**// Considering the vast number of variables that could have affected the participants response to their partners' scent (the list in question 2 is only the geinning!), it woudl require to include many many people in such a study. But, look at the following quote: " "(**The researcheres) studied 20 heterosexual couples that had been living together, either married or unmarried, for one to seven years**." Which means that they expected to learn abotu partners' behavior and sensation based on 20 people, that could have been, accidentally, all moody that day! That makes their results not reliable to begin with!

We are now practicing the importance of experiment size on the reduction of the effect of the EXPERIMENTAL ERROR (random, non-planned affecting variables) on the results. Week 18 and our lesson tomorrow (tuesday) will be all about that!

Stay TUNED......