A social psychologist conducted a study to examine how people explain their own successes and failures. Eighty university students completed a series of 20 anagram puzzles. After finishing, participants were told (randomly and regardless of actual performance) that they had either succeeded or failed on the task. Participants then completed a questionnaire asking them to explain their performance.
Explanations were coded as either internal (e.g., ability, effort) or external (e.g., task difficulty, luck). The results are shown in the table below.
Outcome told to participant | Internal attribution (%) | External attribution (%) |
|---|---|---|
Success | 79 | 21 |
Failure | 28 | 72 |
A reviewer of the original study notes that participants were recruited by asking for volunteers from psychology classes, which may mean that the sample over-represents students who are particularly conscientious or motivated. The reviewer argues this could have systematically influenced participants' attribution patterns.
Which of the following changes would most directly address the reviewer's concern?
Increasing the number of anagram puzzles to improve the reliability of the outcome measure
Randomly selecting participants from the broader university population rather than relying on volunteers
Adding a control group that completes the puzzles without being given any feedback on their performance
Using blind coding of participants' attributions to reduce experimenter bias
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