Realismo na Experimentação
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Overview
Fonte: Laboratórios de Gary Lewandowski, Dave Strohmetz, e Natalie Ciarocco – Universidade de Monmouth
Em um mundo ideal, os pesquisadores conduziam seus estudos em ambientes reais onde comportamentos acontecem naturalmente. Por exemplo, se você quiser ver o que influencia o comportamento de voto dos indivíduos, seria melhor vê-los votar. No entanto, a pesquisa nesses cenários nem sempre é ética ou mesmo prática. Além disso, um pesquisador pode querer mais controle sobre a configuração para identificar melhor as variáveis exatas que estão influenciando um resultado.
Quando os pesquisadores precisam realizar estudos em laboratório, eles tentam otimizar o realismo mundano, o que significa que eles fazem tudo o que podem para fazer o laboratório se sentir como uma experiência da vida real. Este vídeo demonstra um design de dois grupos que examina como os pesquisadores usam o realismo mundano em um laboratório para determinar se as avaliações positivas dos restaurantes estão conectadas ao nível de gorjeta dos comensais.
Estudos psicológicos geralmente usam tamanhos amostrais mais altos do que estudos em outras ciências. Um grande número de participantes ajuda a garantir que a população em estudo seja melhor representada e a margem de erro acompanhada do estudo do comportamento humano seja suficientemente contabilizada.
Neste vídeo, demonstramos este experimento usando apenas dois participantes, um para cada condição. No entanto, como representado nos resultados, utilizamos um total de 200 (100 para cada condição) participantes para chegar às conclusões do experimento.
Procedure
Results
Data were collected from 200 participants overall during a different instance of this study. This large number of participants helps to ensure that the results are reliable. If this research were conducted using just two participants, it’s likely that the results would have been much different, and not reflective of the greater population. A t-test was performed for independent means comparing the positive review condition to the negative review condition to see how they influenced tip amount (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Tip amount by condition. Shown is the mean tip amount, represented by the percentage of the bill, from participants who read positive or negative restaurant reviews before watching a subpar dining service.
Applications and Summary
Some tipping experiments can occur in actual restaurants. For example, Guéguen and Jacob studied how the color of a waitresses’ tee shirt influenced tipping.1 To do this, servers at five restaurants wore red, blue, black, yellow, green, or white shirts. The results indicated that servers who wore red tee shirts received higher tips, but only when the customer was a male. In another study, Stohmetz et al. showed that customers who received candy with their bill tipped more than those who did not.2
The use of mundane realism in research is particularly common when researchers want to study variables that cannot be easily manipulated for ethical or practical reasons.
Because it is often impractical to conduct experimental studies in casinos, gambling researchers commonly have participants come to a laboratory to gamble in a simulated setting. For example, researchers wanted to determine if gamblers’ beliefs in their own skill level or rituals influenced gambling behavior on a slot machine.3 Their results indicated that perceived skills (e.g., a false sense of control) led participants to want to continue gambling following a near-miss; however, ritual beliefs (e.g., superstitions) did not influence desire to continue playing.
References
- Guéguen, N., & Jacob, C. Clothing color and tipping: Gentlemen patrons give more tips to waitresses with red clothes. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. 38(2), 275-280. doi:10.1177/1096348012442546 (2014).
- Strohmetz, D. B., Rind, B., Fisher, R., & Lynn, M. Sweetening the till: The use of candy to increase restaurant tipping. Journal of Applied Social Psychology., 32(2), 300-309. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2002.tb00216.x (2002).
- Billieux, J., Van der Linden, M., Khazaal, Y., Zullino, D., & Clark, L. Trait gambling cognitions predict near‐miss experiences and persistence in laboratory slot machine gambling. British Journal of Psychology. 103 (3), 412-427. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02083.x (2012).
Transcript
Conducting research in a realistic setting is optimal, but unfortunately, is not always ethical or even practical.
For example, researchers cannot simply march into a voting booth and observe what factors influence individuals’ voting behaviors.
Instead, they can create realism in the laboratory by designing an authentic voting experience, which includes questioning and observing the exact variables that might influence the study’s outcome.
Using a realistic setting, this video will demonstrate how to design, conduct, analyze, and interpret an experiment that investigates whether restaurant reviews are related to a diner’s level of tipping.
In this experiment, a realistic restaurant setting is designed to allow the researcher to manipulate how restaurant reviews—positive and negative— influence participants’ dining behavior.
For the positive review group, participants are asked to read a critique that compliments the service. In contrast, the negative review group is asked to read a critique that condemns the service.
After reading one of the reviews, participants are then shown a video that depicts a dining scenario with subpar service and must imagine themselves as one of the diners and the researcher as the server.
Once the video is over, participants are given a bill for the imagined meal. The dependent variable is the amount of money left as a tip.
Thus, participants who read the positive review are hypothesized to be more forgiving of the subpar service and offer a higher tip than diners who read the negative review.
To begin the study, meet the participant at the lab door and welcome them into the Hawk Villa restaurant. Guide all participants through the consent process and discuss the overall plan for the session.
After the participant consents to the experiment, give them a wallet containing $136.10, divided into specific bill and coin amounts.
Randomly divide participants to one of two experimental groups by handing them either a positive or negative review.
When the participants finish reading the reviews, have them watch a video depicting a dining scene. Instruct the participants to imagine themselves as the diner and the researcher as the server.
After showing the video, return to the table with the bill.
Once the participant places money in the billfold, return to the table and ask if they need any change.
To conclude the experiment, debrief the participant and explain why simulating a restaurant in the lab was necessary for the experiment.
To analyze the data, first count the money each participant placed in the billfold. Subtract the bill total of $44.67 from the amount the participant left to calculate the tip amount. Then, calculate the tip percentage.
To visualize the data, graph the mean tip percentages by group. Notice that participants in the positive review condition tipped higher than those in the negative review condition.
Now that you are familiar with how to optimize realism within a laboratory environment, let’s take a look at how you can apply this approach to other forms of research.
Driving simulators are often used in the laboratory to safely investigate driving ability in individuals with visual deficits or those under the influence of a substance, such as alcohol.
In addition, researchers can study navigational skills in individuals by examining task performance in a simulated real-world environment.
Finally, researchers have adapted dance movements to engage patients who express poor mobility and balance, such as those with Parkinson’s disease, and subsequently monitored changes in motor performance.
You’ve just watched JoVE’s introduction to using realism in laboratory experiments. Now you should have a good understanding of how to design and conduct this type of study, and how to calculate results and apply the phenomenon conducting research using realistic settings.
Thanks for watching!