This study is an experiment
This study is an experiment to see how quickly people with different personalities get bored when doing a boring task.
The study is a lab experiment because it needs to be carried out in a controlled environment so that we get valid measurements because the measurements we are taking are sensitive and can be changed depending on the environment.The research design is a correlational design and we are using this because it shows the strength of the relationship between extraversion and the time it took them to get bored.The variables that we are measuring in the study are the personalities of the participants to see if they are more of an introvert or if they are more of an extravert and we are also measuring the amount of time it took the participants to get bored and stop doing the task. To measure how introvert or extravert the participants are we produced a questionnaire and all the participants will fill out the questionnaire and then we will give them a score based on their answers and a high score would indicate they were more of an extravert and a low score would indicate they were more of an introvert. To see how long it takes for our participants to get bored we will set up a really boring task and then time how long it takes for them to get bored and stop doing the task.
To minimise error in the experiment we will test the participants individually to prevent competition occurring with fellow participants as this would alter our results as the participants doing the task may do the task for longer so they can ‘win’. Also we will be setting up a really boring task, so boring that it could in no way be seen as interesting. We will also be carrying out the task in a plain room so that there can be no distractions and we will also be reassuring the participants that they can leave at any time during the task and that they do not feel as though they have to stay, we will be doing this because the participants doing the task might not leave when they are bored and will carry on doing the task because they feel they have to but if they do that then that will alter our results because we are trying to find out how long it takes people to get bored but if the participants do not leave when they bored we will not be finding out what we have set out to find out.The materials that we are going to use in our experiment are a questionnaire to see what kind of personalities our participants have and for the task we are going to use a bag of rice. We developed the questionnaire by selecting questions that will give answers that indicate if someone does the things that an extravert is more likely to do or that an introvert is more likely to do.Before we do the experiment we will explain to the participants what they will be doing and we will ask them for their consent.
We don’t need to deceive our participants in the experiment but we won’t tell them what the results of the experiment are for as this could change the results because the participants may have a different attitude towards the task if they know what it is being used for and may not act naturally. To avoid stressing the participants we will make it perfectly clear that they can go whenever they want to during the task and that they can withdraw their data at anytime during the experiment. After the experiment has been done we will tell the participants what the whole experiment was about and what their results were used for. We will also reassure the participants that that their results were normal and they were what was expected and we will do this to avoid leaving the participants feeling anxious and feel as if something were wrong with them.ParticipantsWe used 20 participants in our experiment of which 11 were male and 9 were female and their ages ranged from 16-18.
We recruited them from Dartmouth Sixth Form. They were asked if they wouldn’t mind giving up some of their time to take part in our experiment. They were picked randomly as the participants weren’t required to have any special criteria to take part and anyone could take part.ProcedureWe asked the participants to fill out a questionnaire so we could determine how introvert or extravert they were. We didn’t tell tem exactly why they were taking part in the experiment because if we did this they may have acted unnaturally and this may have altered our results. Once the participants was ready to do the task we told them what they had to do and reassured them that they could leave at any stage during the experiment at any time.
Once they had done as much as they wanted they left.IntroductionAimIn the experiment we are carrying out we are testing Eysencks theory of personality in particular his work on introversion and extraversion. We are going to carry out an experimental test to see if extraverts get bored quicker and see if his theory is correct.Eysencks theory on personality suggests that each person has an optimum level of arousal. His theory suggests that each person has their own baseline level or arousal and he says that people with a high baseline don’t need much stimulation required to reach optimum and they avoid high levels of stimulation.
These people are introverts. People with a low baseline arousal need a lot of external stimulation required to reach optimum and they avoid situations that provide low stimulation. These people are extroverts.Furnham and Bradley (1997) carried out an experiment in which they compared the performance of introverts and extraverts on tasks with music and without. They found that the performance of introverts was poorer when the music was played but the extraverts’ performance was similar with or without music. This was in line with Eysencks theory.
Another experiment done was by Geen in 1984. In his experiments, he measured the preferred stimulation of introverts and extraverts and the effects on arousal and performance. The results showed that introverts prefer a lower level of noise than extraverts and that both introverts and extraverts showed no difference in arousal and performance with their preferred noise level.The study we are doing is a partial replication of Spielman’s study in 1963. He used 2 groups of people who had been identified as extravert and introvert and they had to tap on a plate using a metal stylus. He recorded the time the stylus was not in contact with the plate and this gave an index of performance (IRP’s) He found that the extraverts produced up to 15 times more IRP’s than the introverts.
This showed that the introverts didn’t get bored as quick and the extraverts needed a lot more external stimulation.The study we are doing has some similarities and differences to the Spielman study in 1963. Our study is trying to find the correlation between the extraversion and the amount of time it takes to get bored, as did Spielman’s study. The procedure of our study is similar to that ofSpielman’s as the recruitment of participants is the same and both studies asked the participants a questionnaire to determine how extravert/introvert they are.We expect to find that the participants who are more introvert to carry on doing the task for longer than those who are more extravert. We expect to find this because this is what Eysenk’s theory suggests should happen as the theory suggests that introverts need less external stimulation than extraverts.
We also expect to find this due to studies that have been carried out in the past. Spielman’s study in 1963 showed that that introverts carried on doing the task set to a better standard than the extraverts who got bored quite quickly.
