Reference no: EM133102844
The data analyses from a study published in the journal Psychological Science in 2015 (Dawtry, Sutton, & Sibley, 2015). The researchers were interested in perceptions of wealth inequality. They began with an established fact: Wealthy people tend to view society as already wealthy and thus are satisfied with how things are; less wealthy people tend to be dissatisfied with wealth inequality and thus desire social change. In their research, Dawtry et al. (2015) sought to examine why this is the case. They tested two competing hypotheses:
Hypothesis A: Older people tend to have accumulated more wealth than younger people have had a chance to, and are therefore more likely to see the world as being fair than younger people.
Hypothesis B: Wealthy people are surrounded by other wealthy people, which causes them to incorrectly estimate how wealthy the rest of the world is. Seeing the rest of the world this way (as being more wealthy as it actually is) leads them to perceive the world as being fairer than less wealthy people perceive the world.
Research Method. To determine which hypothesis best explained the fact that wealthy people are satisfied with how things are, the authors conducted a study with 305 American participants, recruited from an online participant pool. The procedure was as such:
1. Participants first reported their age (in years) and their own annual household income.
2. Participants then estimated the average annual income of those within their own social circle (defined as "adults you were in personal, face-to-face contact with at least twice this year").
3. Participants then estimated the annual household income for the entire US population.
4. Finally, participants rated their level of satisfaction with and perceived fairness of the current system. These two items were intended to measure "perceived fairness," using 1-9 scales in which 1 = extremely unfair/extremely dissatisfied and 9 = extremely fair/extremely satisfied. The two items were averaged together to form a composite.
Data Analysis
we have to determine which hypothesis (Hypothesis A or Hypothesis B) is better supported.
- First, the researchers tested the assumption underlying the study, that personal wealth is positively correlated with perceived fairness with the system.
The researchers obtained the following value for Pearson's r:
- correlation between personal wealth and perceived fairness, r = .18, p = .001
Interpret this correlation, in terms of the assumption underlying the research below
- Next, the researchers examined a series of correlations, between perceived fairness, wealth, age, social-circle income, and US income. They obtained the following values of Pearson's r:
- correlation between estimated social-circle income and perceived fairness, r = .24, p = .001
- correlation between estimated average US income and perceived fairness, r = .17, p = .003
- correlation between age and perceived fairness, r = -.01, p = .908
- correlation between age and personal wealth, r = .02, p = .760
In light of these correlations, conclude whether there is support for Hypothesis A and/or whether is support for Hypothesis B below (there could be support for both)