Question

Testing whether Story Spoilers Spoil Stories

A story spoiler gives away the ending early. Does having a story spoiled in this way diminish suspense and hurt enjoyment? A study1 investigated this question. For twelve different short stories, the study’s authors created a second version in which a spoiler paragraph at the beginning discussed the story and revealed the outcome. Each version of the twelve stories was read by at least people and rated on a to scale to create an overall rating for the story, with higher ratings indicating greater enjoyment of the story. The ratings are given in Table 1 and stored in StorySpoilers. Stories to were ironic twist stories, stories to were mysteries, and stories to were literary stories. Test to see if there is a difference in mean overall enjoyment rating based on whether or not there is a spoiler.

Enjoyment ratings for stories with and without spoilers

Story                       1     2     3      4       5        6       7       8        9      10      11      12

With spoiler          4.7 5.1   7.9   7.0   7.1    7.2 7.1   7.2   4.8   5.2     4.6     6.7

Original                 3.8 4.9   7.4   7.1   6.2    6.1 6.7   7.0   4.3 5.0     4.1    6.1

Give the test statistic and the P-value.

Round your answer for the test statistic to two decimal places and your answer for the P–value to four decimal places.

test statistic

P –value

Give the conclusion.

a. Reject .

b. Do not reject.

Is there evidence of a difference in enjoyment rating based on whether or not there is a

spoiler?

Answer:

a. No evidence of a difference

b. There is evidence of a difference and mean enjoyment is greater without a spoiler

c. There is evidence of a difference and mean enjoyment is greater with a spoiler

Answer 1