Everyday Research Methods

Psychological consequences of a "nearly natureless world"

Humans who can see nature views from their windows tend to be happier. 
Photo: © Amla Sanghvi

The examples in this post come from an extended piece by journalist Alan Lightman. He writes about how, 

For more than 99 percent of our history as humans, we lived close to nature. We lived in the open. The first house with a roof appeared only 5,000 years ago...

Lightman argues that in our modern lives, most of us spend most of our time working on computers and interfacing through screens, and this shift has potential consequences for our well-being. 

One of the psychological concepts the journalist uses as evidence in this article is known as "connectedness to nature." Two social psychologists developed a connectedness to nature scale (CNS), which is a self-report questionnaire with multiple items on it, including

"I often feel a sense of oneness with the natural world around me"
"I feel as though I belong to the Earth as equally as it belongs to me"
"I think of the natural world as a community to which I belong"

People who score high on this scale are said to have more connectedness to nature. 

Here's how the journalist describes one line of research with the CNS:

In recent years, psychologists have undertaken a number of studies to investigate correlations between scores on the CNS test and well developed methods for measuring happiness and well-being. In 2014, the psychologist Colin Capaldi and his colleagues at the Public Health Agency in Canada combined 30 such studies, involving more than 8,500 participants. The psychologists found a significant association between nature connectedness and life satisfaction and happiness. 

a) The quote above describes a meta-analysis. Can you see why? 

b) If you were to sketch the association found in Capalidi's meta-analysis, how would you do so? Sketch a scatterplot, labeling the axes mindfully.

c) Is the research above considered correlational or experimental? 

Here are two quasi-experimental studies that the journalist reviewed: 

Hospital patients in rooms with foliage or windows looking out on gardens and trees do better after surgery. Workers in offices with windows that open up to pastoral-like views have less anxiety, more positive work attitudes, and more job satisfaction.

d) Pick one of the studies above and identify the quasi-independent variable and the dependent variable(s) in the study. Sketch a small bar graph of the results described.

e) What makes these studies quasi-experiments instead of true experiments? 

e) Given the studies described above, come up with your own nature-related hypothesis to test. For example, what else, besides well-being, might the CNS be correlated with? Or, what other variables, besides hospital views and office views, might be worth studying with a quasi-experiment?

 

 

Does psychopathy predict success?

The study empirically tested the widely-held hypothesis that psychopathy would be associated with more career success. Photo: Mangostar/Shutterstock

It's a common belief that to get ahead in business or politics, people have to be driven, callous, and unsympathetic. Is it true? A journalist for Forbes magazine reviewed a study by personality psychologist Hedwig Eisenbarth. The study used methods you're learning about in Chapters 8 and 9.

The journalist introduces the topic with an interview with the researcher: 

“There is this public opinion or belief that psychopathy is related with higher success — that individuals high on psychopathic traits would be successful CEOs or politicians,” says Hedwig Eisenbarth, ...lead author of the research. “People often think so because they associate the cold-bloodedness, fearlessness, and low empathy that psychopathy is characterized by with high income positions....we wanted to find out if this actually has an empirical basis.”

The journalist reported that the study used a representative sample of New Zealand adults. The sample size was 2300. 

The researchers measured three key variables: psychopathy, professional success, and occupational prestige. Psychopathy was operationalized via self-report responses to surveys that measured "fearless dominance, self-centered impulsivity, and coldheartedness." Professional success was operationalized via self-report measures of job satisfaction and job security. And occupational prestige was operationalized as a combination of socioeconomic status and the status of their job. 

The results went against the prevailing view that psychopathy is associated with more job success. Here's the journalist's summary:

From these measures, the researchers were able to test their core hypothesis — that people with psychopathic personality tendencies would be less likely to achieve high levels of professional success. They found this to be mostly the case. Individuals higher on the fearless-dominance aspect reported higher subjective professional success while individuals higher on self-centered impulsivity reported lower subjective professional success. Furthermore, those higher on coldheartedness showed lower occupational prestige. 

Questions

a) The paragraph above reports three bivariate correlations. You can sketch each one of them on its own scatterplot. Do that now--use the text to decide what variables go on each axis as well as what the slope of the scatterplot should be.

b) Note that the journalist describes above the direction of the bivariate correlations, but does not mention the strength of the relationships. How spread out were the dots on your sketched scatterplots for a)? The spread of the dots is an indicator of how strong you think the relationships might be. Make adjustments if necessary.

The journalist reported a regression result, as well:

These associations held true even when the researchers accounted for other variables that might have influenced their predictions, such as gender, education level, age, and duration of job tenure.

c) Why might it be important to control for the variable of gender in these relationships? Explain how one gender might be higher on both of the variables in each scatterplot.