Stimulus Materials and Researcher Instructions

Stimulus Materials and Researcher Instructions – Spring, 2021 – Fake News Study

Instructions: This Spring, we are going to run a series of studies looking at how comments regarding “fake news” on Facebook impact participant ratings of Facebook users. Our independent variable in the study (the variable that we control) is how a Facebook user responds when others call a story the user shared “fake news”. That is, the fake news poster will either politely agree that the story was fake, politely disagree that the story was fake, or rudely disagree that the story was fake. We will measure what participants think about our fake news poster as well as the fake news itself.

1). For your first experimental study, you will play the role of researcher, and you will collect data from three different participants (though you will combine your data with other class members, so your final data set will have 100 to 140 people!). There are two phases to this study. In the first phase, you will orally ask participants if they are willing to participate in a research study. In the second phase, participants will complete a five-part survey. In Part One, participants read the Facebook page for Corey McMillan, getting some general information about Corey and looking at a recent Facebook story that Corey shared as well as several comments regarding the validity of that story. In Part Two, participants will rate their impressions of Corey (Note that the name “Corey” is gender-neutral. This way all participants can complete ratings about Corey that don’t rely on gender expectations). In Part Three, participants will rate Corey’s comments as well as the comments of two other Facebook users. In Part Four, participants will complete demographic questions. Finally, in Part Five, participants will tell us what they recall about Corey’s final response. To run this study, use the following steps:

A). Your first task is to approach three different participants (not all at the same time!). Preferably, they will be people that you do not know, and cannot be taking a psychology research methods class during the Summer or Fall semester of 2020 or the current Spring 2021 semester. Please DO NOT complete this study yourself, and if possible use only FIU students as participants (no family / friends – You will use them in a later replication study toward the end of the Spring semester, and they cannot participate twice). There are 48 students in our class, so with each getting data from 3 people, our final sample will be around 140 participants total.

1). Note that there will be a “Covid alternative” to data collection if you are unable to collect data yourself. Ask your instructor about that option, but there is a good chance that you will already see some pre-completed “Covid Alternative” documents in Canvas.

2). Even if you use the “Covid Alternative”, read the information below, as it will help you write your future papers. You don’t need to mention that you used the Covid Alternative, but you will pretend like you did collection the information yourself.

B). Phase I: Informed Consent

1). Informed Consent:

· Ask the potential participant if he or she is willing to participate in a study for your research methods class. You will get their informed consent verbally. Tell them:

“Hello, I am conducting a study for my research methods class. I was wondering if you would be willing to participate. The study takes about five to ten minutes. There are no risks to participating, and the main benefit is that I can complete my class assignment. Will you participate?”

· An oral Yes or No response is fine. If they say no, thank them and find a different participant. If they say yes, move to the next step (Phase II – Questionnaire).

C). Phase II: “Questionnaire”

1). General Instructions

· After getting participant’s oral informed consent, randomly give them ONE of the three “Research Study – Florida International University – Spring 2021” documents. These three documents contain our independent variable for the study (Again, note that we have one independent variable with three levels). One third of our research participants will be in the “Rude Disagree” condition, one third will be in the “Polite Disagree” condition, and one third will be in the “Polite Agree” condition (More on this below!)

· Ask participants to follow the instructions at the top of the questionnaire. Tell them to read EVERYTHING on the Facebook page, as they will answer questions about it later and will need to do so through memory. They can move through the five “Parts” in this survey at their own pace. Make sure they complete all questionnaire parts (though they can leave some demographic questions blank if they do not want to provide the details).

2). Questionnaire

· In Part I, we ask participants to look at the Facebook “About” page for a person named Corey McMillan. The page contains a picture masthead (full of American flags) and Corey’s profile picture (a silhouette of a man and woman hugging – Note that it is not specified which person is “Corey”, so Corey could be either the man or the woman). The page also includes a generic “Intro” section, “Photos”, “Friends”, and “Life Events” on the left side of the page. On the right side of the page is a comment from Corey followed by a story Corey shared (“FCC forces CNN to change its accreditation from “news” to “entertainment”). The story is followed by two comments by other people (Peyton Halliburton and Riley Anderson) who both say that the CNN story Corey shared is fake news. Please note that EVERYTHING on Corey’s Facebook page up to this point is identical across all three of our conditions (but don’t tell participants that!). So what differs? Corey’s last post at the bottom of the page.

· In Condition RD, or the “Rude Disagree” Condition, Corey responds in a rude manner to Peyton and Riley, disagreeing that the story is fake. Corey mocks the two commenters (who called his shared story “fake”) by going on a rude tirade. Specifically, Corey says:

· “You liberal idiots never think, do you? Of course the government can regulate cable news networks when it comes to news items. Like I said, look it up if you don’t believe me (If you can pull your heads out of your butts long enough to do a quick google search you’ll find out for yourselves!). The US government holds news stations to really high standards when it comes to accuracy and truthfulness. You morons can’t call the story I shared fake just because it doesn’t support your own point of view.”

· In Condition PD, or the “Polite Disagree” Condition, Corey responds in a more polite manner, though still disagrees that the story is fake. Corey says:

· “You gave me some stuff to think about. Unfortunately, you guys are wrong. Of course the government can regulate cable networks when it comes to news items. Like I said, look it up if you don’t believe me (If you do a quick google search I’m sure you’ll find that out for yourselves!). The US government holds news stations to really high standards when it comes to accuracy and truthfulness. You can’t call the story I shared fake news just because it doesn’t support your own point of view.”

· In Condition PA, or the “Polite Agree” Condition, Corey responds in a polite manner and agrees that the story is fake. Corey says:

· “You gave me some stuff to think about. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The government doesn’t regulate cable news networks. I told you to look it up if you didn’t believe me (Then I did a quick google search myself and found out you were correct!). Although the US government should hold news stations to really high standards when it comes to accuracy and truthfulness, cable news isn’t regulated. I don’t like it when people call something fake news j

Stimulus Materials and Researcher Instructions

Stimulus Materials and Researcher Instructions – Summer, 2020 – Charity Study

Instructions: This Summer, 2020, we are going to run a study looking at how participants respond to a charity oriented social-media scenario. We will do this by showing participants a fake Facebook page that contains a user asking his friends to donate to a charity for his birthday followed by three slightly different versions of comments from his friends: 1) comments in which all of the friends donate a high dollar amount 2) a middle dollar amount, or 3) or a low dollar amount. We will use a social psychological concept called normative social influence to see if the donation amount creates a norm for participants about what they should donate. We anticipate that participants will be willing to (hypothetically) donate more themselves when the Facebook friends donate a high dollar amount (compared to a low dollar amount).

1). For your first experimental study, you will play the role of researcher, and you will collect data from three different participants (though you will combine your data with other class members, so your final data set will have nearly 140 people!). There are two phases to this study. In the first phase, you will orally ask participants if they are willing to participate in a research study. In the second phase, participants will complete a five-part survey. In Part One, participants will read the “About” page for a Facebook user named Michael Bezjian, get some general information about Michael, look at his Birthday donation request for a charity called “Unlikely Heroes”, and read the comments that eight of his friends gave him regarding how much they donated to the cause. In Part Two, participants provide ratings and opinions about the charity and how much money / time they themselves would be willing to donate if they had the opportunity to do so. In Part Three, participants provide their opinions about Michael, his friends, the charity “Unlikely Heroes”, and their own feelings about how charitable they consider themselves. In Part Four, participants complete demographic questions. Finally, in Part Five, participants tell us about the general nature of the donations Michael’s friends gave him (our manipulation check in this study). To run this study, use the following steps:

A). Your first task is to approach three different participants (not all at the same time!). They must be people that you do not know, and cannot be taking a psychology research methods class during the Fall, 2019 semester or the Spring, 2020 semester. Please DO NOT complete this study yourself, and use only FIU students or strangers as participants (no family / friends for this study – You might use them in a later replication study toward the end of the summer semester). There are 48 students in our class, so with each student getting data from 3 people, our final sample will be around 140 participants total.

B). Phase I: Informed Consent

1). Informed Consent:

· Ask the potential participant if he or she is willing to participate in a study for your research methods class. You will get their informed consent verbally. Tell them:

“Hello, this semester in my psychology research methods class, we are collecting different types of data (demographic information, open-ended questions, scaled questions, etc.) that we will analyze in our statistical lab. I was wondering if you would be willing to participate in my study. The study takes about five to ten minutes. There are no risks to participating, and the main benefit is that I can complete my class assignment. Will you participate?”

· An oral Yes or No response is fine. If they say no, thank them and find a different participant. If they say yes, move to the next step (Phase II – Questionnaire).

C). Phase II: “Questionnaire”

1). General Instructions

· After getting participant’s oral informed consent, randomly give them ONE of the three “Research Study – Florida International University – Summer, 2020” documents. These documents contain our primary independent and dependent variables for the study. One third of our research participants will be in the “High” condition, one third will be in the “Middle” condition, and one third will be in the “Low” condition. Participants should not know what condition they are in.

· Ask participants to follow the instructions at the top of the questionnaire. Tell them to read EVERYTHING on the Facebook page, as they will answer questions about it later and will need to do so through memory. They can move through the five “Parts” in this survey at their own pace. Make sure they complete all questionnaire parts (though they can leave some demographic questions blank if they do not want to provide the details).

2). Questionnaire

· In Part I, participants look at the Facebook “About” page for a user named Michael Bezjian. The page contains a picture masthead profile picture of Michael, a generic “About” section (which contains basic information About Michael), fake advertisements, a “Friends” list with selfies of six friends, and a plea from Michael to donate to his chosen birthday charity (You have probably seen or made similar requests to your own friend, right? That is, “Rather than getting me a gift this year, donate to a charity.”). This plea is followed by a description of the charity and a picture with a donation link. Please note that EVERYTHING on the Facebook page up to this point is identical across all three conditions (but don’t tell participants that!). So what differs? A small portion of the comments from his friends! You will notice that in all surveys, the comments say virtually the same thing in the same order and with the same friend making the same comment, but the amount of money they said they donated differs. It is either a high dollar amount, a middle dollar amount, or a low dollar amount. That is …

· In the “High” condition, friend comments note that they will donate a high dollar amount to “Unlikely Heroes”, Michael’s chosen birthday charity. For example, the friends make comments like, “Count me in for $45, Mike. Sounds like a good cause”, or “Hi Michael. I just donated $50. Make sure you provide more pics of the kids!” Note that all eight comments include donations that are either $45 or $50.

· In the “Middle” condition, friend comments note that they will donate a more middling dollar amount to “Unlikely Heroes” of either $25 or $30. For example, the friends make comments like, “Count me in for $25, Mike. Sounds like a good cause”, or “Hi Michael. I just donated $30. Make sure you provide more pics of the kids!” As you can see, the wording is identical to the high condition, though the dollar amounts are lower

· In the “Low” condition, there are once again eight comments from Michael’s friends, but the dollar amounts are either $5 or $10. Again, the wording of the comments are identical to the high and middle conditions, but the dollar amount is much lower in this condition

· A quick note for you (the researcher): If you look at the bottom of the survey in the footer on the second survey page, you will see one of the following: “H”, “M”, or “L”, which relate to the three study conditions – That is, H is for “High”, M is for “Middle”, and L is for “Low”. It’s a nice shorthand so you can tell which survey the participant completed (but this is not something you need to report in your papers – it’s just a handy reference for YOU as you collect data)

· In Part II, participants will read a short set of instructions asking them to imagine that they could also donate to the charity. (Lots of published research has grants that allow them to pay participants, but the participants can then donate some of that money to the charity used in the study materials. We can’t do that here, of course, but we do ask them to imaging that we gave them $100 and they could donate none, some, or all of that money to “Unlikely Heroes”). Participants will then complete three questions using open-ended questions: 1) How much would you donate, 2) how much do you think others would donate, and 3) if you could donate time instead, how much time would you donate? Note that in all three question, participants will provide a number ranging from 0 to 100 (in either dollars or hours). This gives us a ratio scale ranging from 0 to 100 for all three questions. In your analyses for Paper II in a few weeks (which focuses on the methods and results for this study), you’ll analyze one of these three statements.

· In Part III, participants first rate their impressions of Michael Bezjian (the Facebook user). Here, participants are asked to agree or disagree with five statements about Michael, all using an interval scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 6 (Strongly Agree). (Please note that I used the word “statement”, as these are not really questions). These statements include, “Michael seems like a warm person”, “Michael seems like a generous person”, “Michael seems like a stingy person”, “Michael seems to care about others”, and “Michael seems like a selfish person”. The next five statements are similar, but focus on Michael’s friends and whether the participant agrees that they are also warm, generous, stingy, caring, or selfish. The next two statements focus on participant impressions of the charity, “Unlikely Heroes”. The final statement is, “In my everyday life, I feel that I am generally more charitable than other people.” Although you can look at any (or all) of these statements when you write Paper II, you only need to focus on one of them in your later analyses.

· The statements most relevant to our study are 6 through 10, or those focusing on Michael’s friends. (We will virtually ignore the Michael statements, the charity statements, and the self-statement, as they are more “filler” statements to mask the presence of those we really care about: statements 6 through 10). As you will see in the predictions (below), we generally expect participant impressions of Michael’s friends to differ depending on the condition, with participants in the High condition more strongly agreeing that his friends are warm, generous, and caring than those in the other conditions. Participants in the Low condition will see Michael’s friends as more stingy and selfish than the other conditions.

· In Part IV, participants will complete demographic questions. Most of these items are easy to complete without violating participant’s privacy, but they will know they can leave blank any question(s) they feel uncomfortable answering.

· In Part V, participants will tell us whether the dollar amounts that Michael’s friends noted in their comments was low ($5 to $10), middle ($25 to $30), or high ($45 to $50). Unlike the statements in Parts II and III (which used ratio or interval scales, allowing us to analyze them with t-Tests or ANOVAs), the nominal scale used in Part V (three answer options in no particular order) only permit us to use a chi square analysis. We’ll discuss those more as we get to Paper Two.

D). Once participants have completed the questionnaire, debrief them regarding the study. That is, tell them about normative social influence and your main hypothesis. Read them the following:

“Thank you for participating. The purpose of this study is to determine if the amount of money donated by Facebook friends to a charity influences the amount of money that participants are willing to hypothetically donate to the same cause. To study this, all participants read the same Michael Bezjian Facebook page where he asked friends to donate to the “Unlikely Heroes” charity for his birthday. Although the comments his friend provided were virtually identical, they differed in the amount of money that Michael’s friends donated. In our low dollar condition , his friends donated $5 or $10. In our middle dollar condition , his friends donated $25 or $30. In our high dollar condition , his friends donated $45 or $50. Using a social psychology concept called normative social influence, we expect that the dollar amounts donated by Michaels’ friends will set up a norm regarding what is appropriate for participants to donate.

In general, participants in the high dollar condition should be more generous with their own donations and look more favorably on the donations of other donors than participants in the low dollar condition, with participants in the middle dollar condition falling between these extremes.

More specifically, we predict that participants in the high dollar condition will be willing to donate more money and time to a charity and think that other participants would similarly donate more money than participants in the low dollar condition, with middle dollar condition participants falling in the middle. We also predict that participants in the high dollar condition will rate other donors as being more warm, generous, and caring as well as less stingy and selfish than participants in the low dollar condition, with middle dollar condition participants once again falling in the middle.**

We will test these hypotheses in our methods course this semester. Thank you for participating!

**Methods Students: Note that the underlined paragraphs above will be helpful when you write Paper I! In fact, you can use that underlined paragraphs in your first paper if you like (just copy and paste it into your hypotheses). However, the predictions ARE NOT INCLUDED in your minimum page count. That is, you can copy/paste the predictions, but they do not count in the page minimum! Also note that in the last paragraph, I highlighted seven different dependent variables (dollar amount donated, time donated, ratings of warmth, generosity, etc.). Since you are not required to analyze every dependent variable in Part II and Part III of your survey, feel free to edit this last paragraph to include ONLY the two dependent variables that you actually analyzed (this applies mostly to Paper II when you figure out which DVs you want to focus on in your Results Section analysis. There is no point in making predictions about dependent variables you did not actually analyze, so just focus on the two dependent variable most relevant to your own study in your predictions.)

2). Hold onto the completed questionnaires, as you will use them in an upcoming lab. You will enter data into SPSS and analyze it during your lab. Important note: Each student researcher is responsible for collecting data from three participants (one participant for each study condition – H, M and L). However, we will combine survey data from ALL students in your lab section, so your final sample will include at least 140 or so participants. In your papers (especially Paper II), you will use this total set of research participants (at least 140), NOT just the three that you collected yourself. Don’t even discuss “Three participants”, as that is not correct. Discuss ALL 140 participants in your papers

3). One last note: Pay close attention to these instructions! You can use them as the basis for Paper II later this semester when you discuss your methods section. That being said, these instructions are too long for a methods section, and includes information you will need to omit for Paper II. When writing that paper, make sure to only report the important aspects (what you actually did in the study). Write about what you actually did in the study!