Research Methods powerpoint

1. Results
• Descriptive Statistics
– Means
• Non-Mortality Salience Condition(Asked to write about
dental pain)
– Life Orientation Scale Mean (IV): 4.33 (6 point scale)
– Death Anxiety Scale Mean (DV): 2.65 (6 point scale)
• Mortality Salience Condition(Asked to write about
death)
– Life Orientation Scale Mean (IV): 4.34 (6 point scale)
– Death Anxiety Scale Mean (DV): 3.48 (6 point scale)

2. ANOVA Results
• An F-test indicated no significant main effect of Life
Orientation Scores on Death Anxiety Scores (F(1,23) = 1.23,
p = .41). Life Orientation was not manipulated in our study
so there can be no comparison in terms of high and low Life
Orientation Scores.
• An F-test indicated no significant main effect of the
Mortality Salience Manipulation on Death Anxiety Scores
(F(1,23) = .78, p = .41). Those who were asked to write
about death (M = 3.48) did not score significantly different
than those who were asked to write about dental pain (M =
2.65).
• An F-test showed no significant interaction effect between
the Mortality Salience Manipulation and the Life
Orientation Scores (F(1,23) = .19, p = .90).

3. Tables
• I will add these to the presentation tomorrow

4. Discussion
• Hypotheses
– 1. Those who are manipulated to contemplate and
write about death will score lower on the Death
Anxiety Scale than those asked to write about dental
pain due to the Terror Management Theory.
– 2. Those who are optimistic will score lower on the
Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS) and those who are
pessimistic will score higher
– 3. Those who are manipulated to think about death
and are optimistic will score the lowest on the Death
Anxiety Scale (RDAS).

5. Discussion (cont.)
• None of our hypotheses were supported by
the data analysis
• The mean Death Anxiety score for those who
contemplated death (M = 3.48) was higher
than those who did not (M = 2.65).
– This finding disproves our first hypothesis

6. Limitations
• The small convenience sample used for our study
(N= 24) may have been a factor in the failure of
our study to find a significant result
– A smaller sample ultimately means less power to
detect small differences between the two samples of
interest, more likely to commit Type I or Type II error
• The design of our study was such that we could
not manipulate the Life Orientation of
participants. Instead, we used the Life
Orientation Scale to gauge participant’s
optimism/pessimism immediately prior to
assessing their Death Anxiety ratings.

7. Implications/Conclusions
• There is reason to replicate this study with more
participants and a different methodology due to the
existing literature on this topic.
• We included Gender as a variable last minute, and our
results seemed to show a small interaction effect
between Gender and Life Orientation Scores
– Direction for future research on this topic could explore
the effects of Gender on Death Anxiety in combination
with Optimism/Pessimism
• Final Message; We found no support for any of our
hypotheses. However, we believe with a larger sample
size we could find significant effects at the .05 level.