--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

For the first impression post I chose to watch the Myth Busters video. The prompt I chose to watch was “does weaving through traffic actually get you to destination faster?” I thought this was an interesting question because I have always been told by my parents to stay in one lane while stuck in a traffic jam because changing lanes will not matter in the end.

In this experiment, they had two different cars go through the same traffic route. This experiment had a constant of going on the same California freeway to go to the same destination. Another constant was that they both left at the same time of 7:30 in the morning. The difference between the cars was that one stayed in a single lane and the other was weaving in and out of the lanes. The results showed that the car that had been changing lanes actually was behind the car that stayed in one lane. They had changed lanes 17 times in 15 minutes and the car that had been in the same lane the whole time ended up passing them. This experiment answered the Myth Busters question only for one day.

There are both strengths and weaknesses to this experiment. Some strengths are that the team kept some constants between the two cars. They kept the same start time and the same route constant throughout the experiment. There are some weaknesses as well in this particular experiment. One weakness is that they only did one test. The more tests you have, the more accurate your results will be. Anything can happen in the short run, but to determine an answer to a question, you have to look at the long run. Another weakness is that different vehicles could have different results. If you have a larger vehicle, changing lanes may be harder to do than in a smaller SUV. You would need a greater distance between cars in order to change lanes multiple times. A third weakness I noticed was that there are different traffic flows on different times of the day and different traffic patterns. There could be a difference in traveling in the morning rush hour or the afternoon rush hour. Overall, I felt that this was a good question to create an experiment around, but the answer is not as simple as the question itself.

--Original published at Loretta Gabrielle

For the first impression post I selected option 2 with the Mythbusters to analyze the myth question of “Do waitresses get bigger tips when they have bigger breasts?”

During the video it had one woman wear three different sized bras to see if she would receive more tips as the size of her breasts increased. The experiment had the same woman wear the same outfit and arrive at the coffee shop at the same time of day for three days in a row with the same quality of service in each day. Based off of this experiment they kept several constants and the only change was the bra size in order to answer the question, do larger breasts equal larger tips?

The video accurately answered the question based off of the responses from the increased amount of tips received as the breast size increased. It had several different controlled variables which is necessary in order to find the outcome of a question. The constants included the customer service, outfit, person, and time in the same coffee shop.

The weaknesses surrounding the video assumed men would be the main contributor to the tips as the breast size increased. Not only would they be the ones focusing on in the study as demonstrated in the video, but one can infer that the Mythbusters assumed that men make more money in comparison to women as they were the larger ones focused on being able to tip. The issues surrounding this experiment implies that every man that walks into the coffee shop at the time this woman is working is a straight male. In January of 2017 there was an estimated of 10 million people who identified in the LGBTQ+ population and to assume every single man is going to tip solely based off of the breast size of a white female with larger breasts is impossible to know their motive. This is an inaccurate conclusion from this study and impossible to conclude that the reason they are tipping is because of the size of breasts and not because of other possible reasons. It not only assumes all men are straight but that all women who walked into the coffee shop at the time she worked are only lesbian or bisexual and attracted to her breasts, causing them to tip more.

Based off of the study it showed that women tipped 40% more with larger breast size whereas men tipped 30% more. This could lead to the question as to whether women tip more in general in comparison to men? Do women and men still tip regardless of the cashier? In order to conclude to whether or not breast size increased the tips, it would be necessary to answer the question of “Do women tip more than men?” along with “Do women and men still tip regardless of the cashier?” which could then have this draw the conclusion as to whether the breast size increased equated to more tips. Lastly, I find this study to be weak as they had three different days which accumulate different customers based off of the time of the week (different people will most likely come on Saturday than on a Monday). Not only this but if large breasts were the sole contributor of whether tips increase than the service of the cashier should be bad in order to focus on the why they are tipping more. In my opinion, if they tested every Monday at 12pm for one hour with low-effort service and still increased tips as the breast size increased, it would have a more accurate results from a more controlled experiment.

--Original published at Kealey's PSY105 Blog

“Are women better than men at reading emotions?”

For this week’s prompt I chose to critique the research methods used by the Mythbusters’ team in the clip, “Are women better than men at reading emotions. For the experiment, the hosts took pictures of their faces, each picture displaying a different emotion. Then, male and female test subjects tried to guess the emotion displayed by only the eyes of the original pictures and were judged by how many emotions they could discern correctly. Ultimately, the Mythbusters discovered that the women had significantly quicker responses and were more accurate than the men at correctly guessing the emotions depicted by the eyes on the screen.

The strengths of this experiment were the organized procedure the hosts planned and the way that they tested the subjects in the same manner. Some weaknesses the experiment displayed included the test content and the degree of conclusiveness that the judges asserted the results with. For the test content, each host displayed faces they thought would convey whatever emotion they were told to emote. However, I believe that we do not have control over how our faces react to emotions. Consequently, the faces that the hosts think they would make and the faces the would actually make showing certain emotions could be different and affect the accuracy of the results. Therefore, the subjects were only interpreting simulated expressions of emotions, not actual displays of true emotion. The test content could have been improved by attempting to capture faces in true states of emotion. For example, the expression of fear could have been captured by taking a picture of someone watching a scary scene in a horror film.

Also, the margin in the accuracy average of correct emotions guessed by the genders may not have been big enough to proclaim with absolute certainty that women are generally better than men at reading emotions. The test subjects may not have been randomized enough and there may not have been a large enough sample size to conclude that the statistics of the experiment were significant enough to explain the entire population of men and women. The hosts could have concluded their results with more certainty by enlisting subjects of different ages, cultural backgrounds, etc. and increasing their number of test trials by expanding their sample size.

--Original published at CatherinesCollegeBlog

I chose the second option for this chapter’s first impression post. For this prompt, I selected the video that tested whether beer goggles really exist. The popular myth argues that the more alcohol a person consumes, the more attractive other people will appear to that person. In this video, two men and one woman rated several photos of women and men respectively, then proceeded to drink alcohol and re rate the photos. They had five seconds to score each photo, so the ratings were based on gut reactions.

This experiment included a number of strengths, one of which was including both genders in the study to make it more extensive. The subjects of the experiment all received the same amount of alcohol as well, which kept it consistent. The scores the photos received were all averaged, which helped show a trend of the results more clearly. Since the initial rating of photos had to be completed in five seconds, the ratings were based on gut reactions which are often more honest answers. There was a decent amount of photos included in the study, but additional photos could have been included to strengthen the argument.

This experiment also had several weaknesses. The three people performing the study rated a set of photos three separate times, once while sober, another while buzzed, and a final time while drunk. It would make more sense to rate the same set of photos all three times; however, they instead received a new set of photos each time said to be exactly as attractive as the first set of photos. Attractiveness is subjective, so photos of different people cannot be treated as the same photos for an experiment that should be testing the attractiveness of the same people. In the video, it appears that all three test subjects consume the same amount of alcohol, including a beer and a scotch. The amount and combination of alcohol affects people very differently depending on gender, age, previous consumption, tolerance, lifestyle, and many other factors. The challenge is that one person in this experiment may have felt much more drunk than another, which could have influenced the decisions they made when rating photos. They should have used blood alcohol content as the measure to consider each test subject drunk as soon as they reached a certain level. Although each test subject reacted a bit differently in terms of rating photos more generously, the experiment would have been more improved if it included a larger sample. Additionally, there should have been a control group present that either consumed no alcohol or consumed something appearing to be alcohol. If the experiment included another group of people who thought they were consuming alcohol, this could also test whether or not the myth plays more of a role in increasing attractiveness than the actual alcohol does. It is possible that simply being aware of the beer goggles theory would lead someone to find another more attractive if they think they have already had a few beers.

--Original published at Kirsten's Kreations

For my first impression post I chose option #2, critique on a Mythbusters video. I chose to do the video about talking on a phone while driving vs. driving drunk.

Off the bat the first thing that catches my attention is the driving course. This to me is a strength because it is a controlled environment which makes it better for the results to determine the surroundings to not be a cause of influence and there is no chance of innocent people being hurt. The driving course also is  weakness because it doesn’t properly reflect a real life situation with the surroundings. To fix this they should have used a set like they do to film t.v. shows so it can accurately give the person the feel of where they would drive while giving safety to civilians not part of the experiment.

The four parts to the test can also be viewed as a strength and weakness. What stands out most as a weakness is the time test because it isn’t an accurate portrayal of a real life situation. I feel as thought that part could have been left out leaving only the three other parts to be tested. The last part of the test which is an accident avoidance challenge is a strength because it is the most accurate part of it all. There are many cases where people, even when sober, can run into a problem where they have to swerve and do the best they can to avoid an accident. The parallel parking can be viewed as a weakness because people rarely use parallel parking or know how to, instead a parking lot should have been used because it is a more common situation.

Lastly, using an older flip phone is a strength. Even though the time this was filmed flip phones were more common than they were today, the concept of having one hand on the wheal rather than a hands free device. A hands free device can be distracting but its not as distracting as trying to talk while driving with one hand at all times even when it should be with two.

--Original published at Tiffany'sCollegeBlog

In this assignment, I chose option number two of which I had the choice of watching 8 mini videos. I narrowed it down to watching “Do Waitresses Get Bigger Tips When They Have Bigger Breasts?” and “Do Hands Free Devices Improve Driving Safety?” After watching both videos, I chose “Do Waitresses Get Bigger Tips When They Have Bigger Breasts” because I felt that this video was more relatable as I have personally experienced this label. My own personal experience has led me to a few strengths that I liked about the video. A few strengths that I noticed were that they chose a place that generates a lot of tips, a coffeehouse; the attire of the women in the experiment was good and consistent, she tried to smile as much as she could but it seemed like she smiled more with men than she did with the women and the size deviation was very good. As far as the weaknesses go, I felt that they showed more mens’ reactions versus the women (they maybe showed three women to the ten men); it only truly focused on the males and how they reacted; there were also blurred faces of some of the men and when she explained the tips from the women, she only talked about the the money and there was no controlled experiment to compare it to. To fix the “problems” that they had, they should have focused not on just the money but the expressions from everyone and the amount of men versus women. If I had to do this experience on my own, I would keep track of the different sexes, the amount of tips from each sex, and the facial and body language from each person, male or female. This makes me wonder if women with bigger breasts actually play it up and “show off” and if breast size actually matters or are waitresses just flaunting to get more tips? In conclusion, there is a lot that could be changed and tweaked to replicate this experiment to have similar results. 

--Original published at Jenna'sPSY105blog

For my first impression blog, I decided to choose option 2 in the prompt stating that we had to critique a mini myth from Myth Busters. The myth that I chose to discuss is “Are Women Better Than Men at Reading Emotions?” The experiment was composed of five people who each displayed their best impression of five different emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and confusion) in photographs. Then, people were brought in and were shown the pictures, but only the eyes were shown. The people were then asked to state which emotion they thought was being emitted in the photo. They were shown 17 photos After taking the average of men’s scores and then that of women’s scores, it was concluded by comparing the two averages that women are indeed better at reading emotions than men.

One thing that the people did well with when conducting this experiment was having constants. All of the people who were photographed did the same five emotions, so the test subjects only had five emotions to choose from when guessing. Another thing that was a smart thing to do was that they eliminated a human subject because they realized that he could not express the emotions need for the experiment. If they would have left those photos in for the people to guess, it would have been very hard to determine the different emotions and could have inaccurately affected the data.

Something I found to not be very good during the experiment was I feel that the test question was too vague for the experiment that was run. Just because women happened to be better guessers when looking at photographs does not mean that in real life with real people it is that way too. Another flaw in the concept of the experiment is that so much more goes into emotions than just someone’s eyes. And the emotions are not genuine so it was not a good representation of reading someone’s real feelings. If this experiment were to be done again, in order to improve it I would suggest having the people observe the one’s portraying the different emotions in person or through a two-way mirror where they would be able to see them personally. I also feel that it would be better to let them see their entire face versus just the eyes. Lastly, I do not feel that there were enough participants. Most experiments have a very large number of participants so that they can collect as much data as possible in order to determine whether or not the data is valid.