The Three Groups:
Group 1 - Priming with Music
This group will only be primed with music. I've chosen Vivaldi's Spring to be used for the purposes of this experiment. Similarly to John Bargh's landmark study (The Automated Will:
Nonconscious Activation and Pursuit of Behavioral Goals) the participants will be asked to solve a word search with thirteen "neutral," non-priming words in it. (For example, "turtle," or "building.") They will complete this task while listening to Vivaldi. Next, they will be given ten minutes to find as many words possible in three following word searches with the themes "colors," "foods," and "animals." Lastly, they will be given a short survey. The last two tasks are what I will be analyzing: specifically the number of words found on the three word searches and their answers to the survey questions.
Group 2 - Priming with Words
This group will only be primed with words. The subjects will complete a word search with thirteen words on it, several of which are aimed at priming for motivation and high-performance. Some of these words include "strive," "succeed," and "achieve." It was necessary to give Group 1 a similar word search with neutral words in order to keep as much of the experimental procedure between groups as constant as possible. Next, they will complete the same two tasks completed by Group 1 following the initial word search.
Group 3 - Priming with Music and Words
This group will be primed with both words and music. Participants will complete the same word search done by Group 2, except in this group, subjects will listen to Vivaldi while doing it. As in Group 1 and Group 2, they will proceed to work on the three themed word searches and the survey.
After collecting all of my data, I will have to analyze it and look for differences in results. If you are interested in taking a look at the word searches and survey I'm using, they are attached below.
Materials: Three Word Searches, Neutral WS and Survey, Prime WS and Survey
Materials: Three Word Searches, Neutral WS and Survey, Prime WS and Survey
Yay! You went with Vivialdi. How did you decided on word searches as being the designated activity?
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ReplyDeleteDo you have a prediction based on your research and the groups of students? I'm looking forward to your results!
ReplyDeleteI decided on the word searches just because one of the most famous studies similar to what I did used a similar method. I wanted to use a method that has worked in the past and just add music to the equation.
ReplyDeleteGoing into the experiment, I had hopes that the group with the music and priming words would perform the best, but as of now, the data are looking pretty inconclusive. Also, I should mention that there's still a lot of controversy around the effects of background music (especially when multitasking by listening to the music and doing something else), and I'm thinking that in my experiment the music functioned more as background music than as a prime for intellectual arousal. Because of this, I'm not sure whether my results will tell me exactly what I was looking for in the beginning.
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