Describe an experiment to test a hypothesis about some aspect of social behavior in which you are interested. In your description, indicate the independent and dependent variables, and explain the purpose of random assignment and other procedures to assure the validity of the experiment. Indicate the confounding variables that random assignment would control, as well as those that it would not. Indicate how you would control confounding variables not controlled by random assignment, such as experimenter effects. Discuss the mundane and experimental realism of your study, and any practical or ethical issues with the experiment. Why must experiments be replicated? Explain why a correlational study could not determine if one variable caused the other, and why only an experiment can do so. What would be the alternative explanations for a correlation of the independent and dependent variables that you proposed in the absence of doing an experiment?
