34 CHAPTER 1
APA Goal 2: Scientific Inquiry and
Critical Thinking
A Sample Experiment
Addresses APA LO 2.4: Interpret, design, and conduct basic
psychological research.Many people have a somewhat negative stereotype of college athletes’ academic abilities—
believing that they are graded and promoted based on their athletic performance rather than
their classroom performance. Evidence does exist for poorer performance on academic tests
of athletes when compared to nonathletes in college (National Collegiate Athletic Association,
2002; Purdy et al., 1982; Upthegrove et al., 1999). But is this negative performance the result
of poor academic ability, or could it be the effect of the negative stereotype itself? The follow-
ing experiment (Jameson et al., 2007) was designed to examine the latter possibility.
In the experiment, 72 male college athletes from the sports teams of a university were
given an intellectual test. Half of the athletes answered a brief questionnaire before taking the
test, whereas the other half received the same questionnaire after taking the test. The ques-
tionnaire asked three questions, with the third question being, “Rate your likelihood of being
accepted to the university without the aid of athletic recruiting.” This item was designed to bring
the negative stereotype of athletes (“dumb jocks”) to the forefront of students’ minds, oper-
ationalizing a “high threat” for that stereotype. The difference in threat level between the two
groups before taking the intellectual test represents the independent variable in this experiment.
Those students who answered the “high threat” question before the intellectual test (the
experimental group) scored significantly lower on that test (the measurement of the depen-
dent variable) than those who answered the question after the test (the control group). The
researchers also found a correlation between the students’ exposure to the “high threat” ste-
reotype condition and accuracy on the intellectual test: The more students believed that they
got into college primarily because of their ability in sports (based on their rating of that third
question), the worse they performed on the subsequent test. The researchers concluded
that obvious negative stereotypes in higher education may be an important cause underlying
the tendency of college athletes to underperform in academics.