RESEARCH SCENARIO A research psychologist was interested in exploring psychopathy in a non-forensic Australian sample. S

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RESEARCH SCENARIO
A research psychologist was interested in exploring psychopathy
in a non-forensic Australian sample. She was interested in the
speed in which psychopaths and non-psychopaths process different
types of words, and how age impacts this relationship. She
predicted that the process speed of emotional words (e.g. love)
would be faster than neutral words (e.g. chair), and that this
effect would be stronger in psychopaths compared to
non-psychopaths. Previous research suggests that processing speed
is impacted by age, so the researcher controlled for this by
measuring it in her design and predicted that the effect of
psychopathy and word type on processing speed, would be younger
people compared to older people.
Age was measured by asking participants to self-report their age
as either “<40 years of age’ or ‘³40 years of age’.
Participants’ level of psychopathy was initially measured using a
brand-new-self-report psychopathy scale created by the
psychologist; higher scored indicating greater psychopathy.
Participants were classified as a ‘psychopath’ if they scored above
the mean sample score within their age group classified as a ‘non-
psychopath’ if they scored below the sample mean within their age
group. As they psychopathy measure was brand-new, no previous
studies had used the measure, nor had it been trialled in a pilot
study.
Participants at a major law firm were asked to volunteer for the
study with all employees receiving an email inviting them to
participate. Employees were told that participation was voluntary
and that their participation would not be recorded by the
organisation and no incentives were offered. At the law firm,
sufficient adults ‘³40 years of age’ initially volunteered, however
the number of participants ‘³40 years of age’ was initially very
low. To help rectify this, a greater number of younger participants
were recruited by asking psychology students ‘³40 years of age’ in
an online university Facebook group, to participate. The final
sample size had an equal number of each group. To be able to
participate in the study, participants had to sign a consent form
indicating that they were a healthy adult (no pre-existing mental
health or physical issues) and aged between 18 and 65. Participants
also received a debriefing statement outlining the purpose of the
study.
All data collection was performed on computers at a local
university computer lab. After completing a questionnaire related
to the variables described above, participants completed a
validated and reliable computer-based task designed to measure
processing speed of words (reaction time) in milliseconds. The
participants were presented with 20 neutral words (e.g. ‘chair’)
and 20 emotional words (e.g. ‘love’) one at a time on a computer
screen. All participants were presented with the 20 emotional words
first, followed immediately by the 20 neutral words. The average
speed with which they processed (read and clicked) neutral and
emotional words was recorded – so that each participant has a
measure of average processing speed for each word type. All words
were chosen so that the neutral and emotional words were equal
length and equal frequency of use in every-day conversation.