Psychology

Final Project

Jamie Buckner

Experimental Psychology

PSY-322

Professor Tangen

Final Project

By conducting this experiment I witnessed 20 people ages ranging from 21-30. They were given a half a glass of Pepsi and were told that it was Coke. After drinking it they were then given a glass of Coke and was told it was Pepsi. I then asked if anyone could tell the difference between the two. Out of the 20 people 9 of them were able to tell the difference.

In the beginning of the experiment I thought that it would be easier to do it in a public place and get random peoples opinion to see what they thought, but thinking about the area of study I wouldn’t have known if they were heavy coke or Pepsi drinkers. I also considered doing it without it being controlled and seeing if they knew what type of soda it was based on just the taste.

My confound variables were the heavy coke or Pepsi drinkers. By them being heavy soda drinkers it made the others think twice about what exactly they drank and made them confused with their answer.

The contextual factors were that it was done in my home and the volunteers were friends and I knew who were heavy soda drinkers. Ethically they were my friends and sometimes doing an experiment with friends people tend not to be serious. The cultural problem was that all of my volunteers were either in the military or affiliated with the military.

The external validity of my experiment was that people in the military tend to drink a lot of soda, if it was a different group of friends I think I would have gotten a different outcome. The operational definition was Heavy Coke drinkers would know the difference in the sodas.

If the experiment was done with people who were not controlled I believe that the outcome would have been different. The outcome of the experiment made me realizes that it is difficult to do an experiment and explain everything from independent validity to theoretical implications....