Question

In order to test the effectiveness of hypnotic analgesia, 10 deeply hypnotized volunteers are compared with 10 unhypnotized participants on the amount of time each person can hold his or her hand in a bucket of ice water. Identify the independent variable and the dependent variable.

Answer 1

Answer:

Independent Variable: Hypnotic analgesia is the independent variable, as the psychologist is controlling and changing it to study its effectiveness through two groups of subjects (experimental and control groups, with use of analgesia and no use of analgesia respectively).

Dependent Variable: The duration of pain relief in a hypnotized state is the dependent variable, as it is being measured by checking the amount of time each subject can hold his/her hand in an ice water bucket. The data comparison for both groups will display the effectiveness of the independent variable.

Explanation: An important aspect to identify an independent variable is that it is the variable whose effect is being studied and it is the variable that is being changed to see the effect on the dependent variable. Now, the dependent variable is the one that is actually being tested and that is dependent on the independent variable. The dependent variable is being measured after variations made in the independent variable. From this perspective, the above-mentioned are the identified variables in the given study.